Portrait of John Wesley Gilbert from Twentieth Century Negro Literature, ed. Daniel Culp (Atlanta: J. L. Nichols & Co., 1902), 191
The First Black Archaeologist: Exploring the Life and Work of John Wesley Gilbert
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Born into slavery in rural Georgia, John Wesley Gilbert (1863-1923) rose to national prominence as a classical scholar, teacher, community leader, and missionary. As a member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1890–91, Gilbert was the first African American to conduct archaeological work in Greece. Yet for many decades, his pioneering achievements were forgotten. Professor John W.I. Lee, who recently published the first biography on Gilbert, shares his years-long quest to reconstruct the archaeologist's remarkable life and career.
John W.I. Lee is professor of history at UC Santa Barbara. He grew up in Asia and Hawai’i, studied history at the University of Washington (Seattle), and received his PhD in history from Cornell University. His publications include A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon’s Anabasis (Cambridge University Press, 2008), The Persian Empire (The Great Courses, 2012), and The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert (Oxford University Press, 2022).
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