It doesn't have to be a ground breaking discovery, it could just be a little detail that raises questions about what we've previously thought.
For decades, it has been thought that the first Black Deaf graduate of Gallaudet University was Andrew Foster. He suffered bullying and completed his degree in only three years, graduating in 1954. He has been honored as a visionary leader for his work after graduation, as he and his wife established 32 schools for the deaf in 13 countries across Africa. He changed the shape of Deaf education in Africa before dying in a plane crash in 1987; he has been one of Gallaudet's most legendary alumni ever since.
But Foster was not actually the first Black Deaf graduate of Gallaudet. That was Hume Le Prince Battiste, who graduated in 1913. Why the confusion? Because Battiste, who was Black, registered as "Indian" when he applied to Gallaudet. Prior to his entry to college, he was listed as Black in South Carolina census records, and the superintendent of his K-12 school wrote to Gallaudet asking how Battiste could be admitted even though he was Black, given that Gallaudet barred Black students at the time. We don't have the Gallaudet president's reply, but Battiste showed up, registered as "Indian," and maintained for the rest of his life that he was Indian - going so far as to list himself on future census records as Catawba, a tribe from his native South Carolina.
Although there have been murmurs since the 1980s that Battiste was actually Black, his self-created fiction that he was Native American conquered the narrative for decades (Hairston and Smith, 1983). It has only been in the past five years or so, through the efforts of his descendants, that his Black heritage has actually come to light. It's a fascinating story of passing in Jim Crow America - Battiste found life so much better as an "Indian" than as a Black man, that he kept it up his whole life (including as a minor league baseball player) until he passed away in 1968.
But if Battiste was the first actual Black Deaf graduate of Gallaudet University, what of Andrew Foster's legend? Does it vanish? Does it matter that he was the first openly Black Deaf graduate, the first who had suffered the discrimination of 1950s white students harassing him? Does it matter that Battiste became a tire salesman while Foster founded dozens of schools? There are no real answers here, of course. But it is an interesting turn to the legend of Foster, the story of race in America, and how we esteem and honor superlatives and prominent members of our community.
Further reading:
Have you heard that the eruption of Vesuvius might not have happened on August 24, AD 79, but rather in the fall of that same year?
The August 24 date comes from a letter of Pliny the Younger, who was an eyewitness to the eruption and ca. 20 years later wrote about what he saw to the historian, Tacitus. These two letters (one about the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, in the eruption, and the second about his own experiences during the event) are remarkable documents, telling us in significant detail about how the eruption appeared to happen, and the human reaction to the event. And the most common version of this letter says it happened nonum kal. septembres or nine days before the kalends of September; August 24, in our reckoning. This date has been repeated so often you'll find it all over popular media, in scholarly publications without any question, and everywhere in between.
However, there are multiple copies of this letter from the manuscripts which preserve it, and those copies don't all report the same date; some say the eruption happened in the fall. But the August 24 story fits a great narrative - it was the day after the Vulcanalia, the festival of the god Vulcan who lived beneath the actively-erupting Mt Etna, and the volcano was believed to be his forge. The Romans believed that the gods could be angered if the rites dedicated to them weren't carried out correctly - so, what better story than that of the destruction by eruption of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and associated towns the day after this festival to a god who lived beneath a volcano?
There had been scholars (such as Grete Stefani) who had argued in favor of the fall date, but their arguments gained little traction. Speaking as someone who dismissed their arguments (and was taught by others!), the evidence that supported their assertions seemed circumstantial. In sum, they had intriguing statements but they weren't enough to tip the balance.
Until 2018. New excavations in Region 5 of Pompeii began to reveal new spaces and new data, and one of those items is a charcoal graffito that begins *XVI K NOV...*that is, 16 days before the kalends of November. The Kalends in the Roman calendar was the first day of the month, so this inscription was written 16 days before that; i.e. October 17.
So this is very intriguing - but, I should say, not accepted by all scholars - evidence for reevaluating the time of year of the eruption. The graffito was written in charcoal, a material that is very easily rubbed or washed away. You can see in pictures of the graffito that it is legible but not very dark, and has been rubbed away in part (there's been some dispute about the bit written after the date, in fact, because it's been abraded). This has led some archaeologists to say that this must have been placed on the wall in the same year as the eruption, and probably shortly before it - so if it was written on October 17, perhaps an October 24 date - which is one attested by a copy of Pliny's letter - is the most likely.
I should add this hasn't bee universally accepted. The graffito doesn't include the year (the Romans didn't write that as commonly as we do, so it's omission is pretty standard). The argument it had to have been written in AD 79 is based on circumstantial evidence, but the graffito was found in an indoor room, and it's possible that charcoal may have lasted on a wall if it was protected from the elements and not touched/rubbed at. However, it was also found in the atrium of a home - the main receiving room, and one that would have had high traffic (it was under construction at the time, so at the least we could say workmen were passing through somewhat frequently). So, it was indoors - and protected? But not hidden away - so not protected? We can't say for sure.
With the news of this graffito hitting the media, we suddenly reevaluated the evidence of a fall eruption with new eyes. The wind was blowing toward the south, which buried Pompeii under the ash fall which missed Herculaneum and other places - this is a wind we would expect in the fall, not summer (see Rolandi et. al. 2007). People were wearing wool cloaks, the pomegranates and grapes were ripe, a coin was found that dates to an important event in the Emperor Titus' reign, which happened in September of 79. Bits of the story we'd either explained away ('maybe a looter dropped that coin') or just dismissed (the botanical evidence) suddenly seemed really significant.
With the charcoal graffito, though it is not a smoking gun (and no single piece of data in this story is) the preponderance of evidence seems to have tipped; the fall date has become one that some (many? most? impossible to quantify) now believe, and the August 24 date gets less press and attention. I don't want to say that we all now have fallen in line with a fall date, but as someone who dwells somewhat within the world of Pompeian archaeology, I would say the scales have tipped.
Osanna, Massimo, 2020. Pompei. Il Tempo Ritrovato: Le Nuove Scoperte. (Rizzoli)
Rolandi, Paone, Di Lascio, and Stefani, 2007. "The AD 79 Eruption of Somma: The Relationship Between the Date of the Eruption and the Southeast Tephra Dispersion." Journal of Volcanolocy and Geothermal Research 169, pp. 87-98
Stefani, Grete, 2006. "La vera data dell'eruzione." Archeo 260, pp. pp. 10-13.
DiGiuseppe, Helga, 2021. "L'iscrizione a carboncino che non data l'eruzione del Vesuvio." Oebalus: Studi sulla Campania nell'Antichità 16, pp. 41-62
