www.negroartist.com

I received an unsolicited e-mail the other day from someone who would rather “keep [his] name and contact information private.” The author of this e-mail explained that he authored and hosted a site– http://www.negroartist.com/

The author went on to explain that:

“This site was developed for everyone to use freely at no charge… in other words I will place an artist, dealer, writer etc. on here at no charge. I directly link to their site or provide their direct contact information.”

As this is the philosophy of our own Project Past web site (although we are a platform for anthropologists, archaeologists & historians), it caught my attention…

Take a look at the site….it is rather busy, but has a good amount of content. For my interest, it not only includes hundreds of links to African-American artists (such as Blue Lady by Kelvin Curry pictured to the right), but it also has quite a lot of content relating to African-American history….including galleries of 19th & 20th century images of African-Americans (including negative popular-culture stereotypes) and hunks of slave narratives.

The site is quite eclectic in its attempts at being comprehensive, but it is a worthwhile endeavor….check it out.

A Halloween Posting:The Mysterious Skull of William Wirt

William Wirt was born on November 8, 1772 at Blandensburg, Maryland and died February 18, 1834. He was a prominent lawyer in the early days of the republic, a statesman, and an author.

Wirt acted as prosecutor in the conspiracy trial of Aaron Burr in 1807 and served as United States Attorney General from 1817 to 1829. Over the course of his career, he argued over 170 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1832 Wirt was the unsuccessful nominee of the Anti-Masonic Party for the Presidency of the United States….His head, apearantly, has been sitting on a shelf in D.C. Council member Jim Graham’s office for a year and half.

A Washington Post article of October 20, 2005 outlines how Doug Owsley, reknowned forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian and famous skull measurer, had to climb down into the Wirt family crypt and confirm that the skull was indeed that of the Honorable Mr. Wirt.

“The mystery of the missing skull is a macabre tale that includes grave-robbing, an eccentric collector, a Washington politician, a former attorney general and a mysterious skull sitting in an old tin box. It all began around Christmas of 2003, when Bill Fecke, then manager of Washington’s Congressional Cemetery, got a phone call from a man who wouldn’t identify himself. “What do you know about William Wirt’s skull?” the mysterious caller asked…”

Sounds like a movie trailer, doesn’t it? Read the whole article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902374.html