Black History

Unearthing History: The Remarkable Journey of John Wesley Gilbert

John Wesley Gilbert, a trailblazing figure, broke barriers as an educator, missionary, and the first African American archaeologist. Notably, he was the inaugural graduate of Paine College and the first African American to earn a master’s degree from Brown University.

Published

8 months ago

October 3, 2023

Oakland Post

John Wesley Gilbert had a wide-ranging career as a professor, archaeologist and minister. Wikipedia photo.

By Tamara Shiloh

Born free on July 6, 1863, in Hephzibah, Georgia, to Gabriel and Sarah, who were formerly enslaved farm hands, Gilbert’s early life revolved around education and hard work. After attending local public schools while laboring on a farm, he enrolled at Augusta Institute in 1878, where he later embarked on a teaching career at Ware High School in Richmond, Georgia.

Gilbert’s craving for knowledge led him to become the first student at the newly established Paine College in Augusta, where he studied Greek and other foreign languages from 1884 to 1886. His academic journey then took him to Brown University in Rhode Island, where he stood among the first 10 Black students and earned his A.B. degree in 1888.

In 1888, he began dating Osceola K. Pleasant, a teacher and Paine College and Fisk University graduate. The couple married in 1889 and raised four children together. During his time at Brown University, Gilbert received a scholarship to attend the American School of Classics in Athens, Greece, becoming the first African American to participate in archaeological fieldwork.

His excavations led to the discovery of the ancient Greek city of Eretria, and he crafted the first map of the area. Returning to Brown in 1891, Gilbert focused on archaeology and made history again, becoming the first African American to earn an advanced degree from the university — a master’s in Archaeology in 1891.

After his academic pursuits, Gilbert brought his wealth of knowledge back to Paine College in the fall of 1891. Now a professor, he taught Greek, Latin, English, French, German, and Hebrew, becoming the first African American instructor at the institution.

Gilbert’s dedication extended to theological studies at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta in 1896, where he received his Doctorate of Divinity degree and became a Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) minister. His scholarly contributions earned him a prestigious position within the American Philological Association in 1897.

Dr. Gilbert accepted the position of president at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama, in 1913. His passion for education remained unyielding, leading him back to Paine College, where he taught Greek, Hebrew, and New Testament literature. Concurrently, he served as the Dean of the Divinity School until his retirement in 1920.

On Nov. 18, 1923, the world mourned the loss of John Wesley Gilbert, a true pioneer and visionary, in Augusta, Georgia. In honor of his legacy, a low-income housing project was named after him in 1941, and in 1968, Paine College dedicated a Chapel to commemorate both Gilbert and Rev. Walter R. Lambuth.

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Black History

Book Review: ‘The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America’

Your toes didn’t wait long before they started tapping. They knew what was coming, almost as soon as the band was seated. They knew before the first notes were played and the hep cats and jazz babies hit the floor to cut a rug. Daddy, it was the bee’s knees but in the new book “The Jazzmen” by Larry Tye, if you were the Sheik on the stage, makin’ cabbage wasn’t all that swank.

Published

4 days ago

May 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Courtesy of Lisa Frusztajer

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Your toes didn’t wait long before they started tapping.

They knew what was coming, almost as soon as the band was seated. They knew before the first notes were played and the hep cats and jazz babies hit the floor to cut a rug. Daddy, it was the bee’s knees but in the new book “The Jazzmen” by Larry Tye, if you were the Sheik on the stage, makin’ cabbage wasn’t all that swank.

Louis Armstrong was born in 1900 or thereabouts in a “four-room frame house on an unpaved lane” in a section of New Orleans called “Back o’Town … the Blackest, swampiest, and most impoverished” area of the city. His mother was a “chippie,” and the boy grew up running barefoot and wild, the latter of which led to trouble. At age twelve, Armstrong was sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for recalcitrant Black boys, and that changed his life. At the “home,” he found mentors, father-figures and love, and he discovered music.

For years, Bill “Count” Basie insisted that he’d grown up with “no-drama, no-mystery, and nobody’s business but his,” but the truth was “sanitized.” He hated school and dropped out in junior high, hoping to join the circus. Instead, he landed a job working in a “moving-picture theater” as a general worker. When the theater’s piano player didn’t come to work one day, Basie volunteered to sit in. He ultimately realized that “I had to get out … of Red Bank [New Jersey], and music was my ticket.”

Even as a young teenager, Edward Ellington insisted that he be treated like a superstar. By then, his friends had nicknamed him “Duke,” for his insistence on dressing elegantly and acting like he was royalty. And he surely was — to his mother, and to millions of swooning female fans later in his life.

Three men, born at roughly the same time, had more in common than their ages. Two of them had mothers “who doted” on them. All three were perform-aholics. And, for all three, “Race … fell away as America listened.”

Feel up to a time-trip back a century or more? You won’t even have to leave your seat, just grab “The Jazzmen” and hang on.

In his introduction, author Larry Tye explains why he so badly wanted to tell the story of these three giants of music and how Basie’s, Ellington’s, and Armstrong’s lives intersected and diverged as all three were near-simultaneously performing for audiences world-wide. Their stories fascinated him, and his excitement runs strong in this book. Among other allures, readers used to today’s star-powered gossip will enjoy learning about an almost-forgotten time when performers took the country by storm by bootstrapping without a retinue of dozens.

And the racism the three performers encountered disappeared like magic sometimes, and that’s a good tale all by itself.

This is a musician’s dream book, but it’s also a must-read story if you’ve never heard of Basie, Ellington, or Armstrong. “The Jazzmen” may send you searching your music library, so make note.