Surprises From the Past

'1491': Ken Wright has a thought-provoking review of the book '1491' over at NewWest. He calls his piece 'Out With the Old New World, and in With the New Old World.' The title is descriptive of the surprising, even shocking, revelations and theories being produced by recent archaeological, anthropological and other scientific research about the state of the environments and civilizations of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus. In a nutshell: civilizations much more advanced than originally thought; environments heavily managed by natives in creative and sustainable manners; all massively impacted by a widespread epidemic of germs from the Old World that preceded most of the European arrivals by many years. (Above, reconstruction of the Native American city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, c. 1250 AD.)

Unseen Photos: I also recently took some time to study dozens of produced by photographers for the Birmingham News of Alabama during the early days of the civil rights movement. These often moving depictions of racial and civil rights battles from 1956-65 didn't see the light of day until February of this year. In all, the negatives of five thousand unpublished photos stashed in a closet for decades were discovered in 2004 by an intern at the newpaper. Many of the photographs were reportedly suppressed by the paper in an effort to cover up embarrassing truths about the city’s race relations:

Why weren't more of the photos published 40 or 50 years ago?

"It was difficult for people to see," said Horace Huntley, director of oral history at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "People were embarrassed by it. The city fathers were embarrassed by it."

The National Press Photographers Association provides more background on the found photos along with similar finds elsewhere.