Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. In July 2009 Gates was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct: After returning from traveling abroad, Gates had forced open the door to his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which precipitated a call to police from a neighbour who believed a robbery might be underway. I can do it. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. After that I would say I was a teacher. The new season of his TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now showing on PBS. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. PDF University of Washington School of Law In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. What is race? And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? He has affirmed the value of the Western tradition, but has envisioned a more inclusive canon of diverse works sharing common cultural connections: "Every Black American text must confess to a complex ancestry, one high and low (that is, literary and vernacular) but also one white and black there can be no doubt that white texts inform and influence black texts (and vice versa), so that a thoroughly integrated canon of American literature is not only politically sound, it is intellectually sound as well. The show makes use of gene-sequencing techniques that have become widely available since African American Lives first aired, like whole-genome sequencing, which entails the mapping of all six billion base pairs in a persons DNA. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born Sept. 16, 1950, in Keyser, W.Va. His father worked at the local paper mill during the day and as a janitor at a telephone company at night. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise, "Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Biography, Books, & Facts", "African American Lives The Past Is Another Country 2 4of4 YouTube", "Finding Your Roots: Decoding Our Past Through DNA", "The biggest brother: interview with Henry Louis Gates, black America's foremost intellectual", "Yale Afro-Am Chair Resigns After Remarks of Yale Pres", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. to continue at Harvard", "Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade", Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, "Henry Louis Gates Jr. announced as editor-in-chief of the new Oxford Dictionary of African American English", "What It Means to Be Black in Latin America", "Ben Affleck's slave-owning ancestor 'censored' from genealogy show", "Ben Affleck Demanded PBS Suppress His Slave-Owning Ancestry", "Citing Ben Affleck's 'Improper Influence,' PBS Suspends 'Finding Your Roots', "PBS' 'Finding Your Roots' returning in January after Ben Affleck controversy", "West Virginia Weslesyan College biography", "Black Studies' New Star: Henry Louis Gates Jr", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. On 'The Black Church' and His Own Bargain with Jesus", "MacArthur Fellos Program: Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Literary Critic | Class of June 1981", "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement", "Mister Jefferson and The Trials of Phillis Wheatley,", "2015 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award Winners Announced", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. Receives duPont Award for The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross", "Read Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Acceptance Speech for the duPont Award", "Chicago Tribune Announces 2019 Literary and Heartland Award Winners", "Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Named Don M. Randel Award Recipient | News | The Harvard Crimson", "Encarta Africana, the First Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Black History and Culture, Launches Today", Bibliography of Gates's publications and responses to it, African American National Biography Project, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_Louis_Gates_Jr.&oldid=1142289654, African-American history of West Virginia, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows, Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Television personalities from West Virginia, African-American television personalities, Members of the American Philosophical Society, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2009, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Gates has received numerous honorary degrees, including a. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ", The Letters page of The New York Times of April 25, 2010, featured criticism and examination of Gates's views in response to his op-ed. of Hutchins Center at @harvard. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. So that was a steal. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube Henry Louis - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. GROSS: Yeah. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. GATES: He wasn't even out the door, and I moved into his bedroom. Even if you were free and you were black GATES: In most states, you weren't allowed to vote. As a literary theorist and critic, Gates has combined literary techniques of deconstruction with native African literary traditions. Transcript: Q&A with Henry Louis Gates Jr. January 16, 2009 Greg Hicks: Everyone welcome, this is a very special moment for us and we really want this to be just as informal as possible. )supply information about human population groups dating as far back as 150,000 years, the time horizon of admixture testing is the past 500 years. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. But it's just not those two genetic lines. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. At one point, Johnny even told the KKK in a statement that Vivian was white. But on the other hand, Terry, there were a lot of people who never forgave the country for electing a black man to the White House. We'll hear more after a short break. I hope you never come back, you know? 9. In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later. American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950), Critical studies and reviews of Gates' work. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. And when they analyzed my mitochondrial DNA, it went to England. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. 35 (1): 212227. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. Professor Gates is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard and has produced numerous books and documentaries about African-American history. In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. - like the Bible says? Henry Louis Gates reveals celebrities' family history in 'Finding Your And we'd have the chess board set up. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. And I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." The program documents a 3,000-mile journey Gates took through Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Tanzania, with his then-wife, Sharon Adams, and daughters, Liza and Meggie Gates. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. In the face of migration and movement and so-called nontraditional family forms, both conventional and genetic genealogy allow us to freeze for a moment the flux of the modern human experience. She is author of the forthcoming Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Politics of Health and Race, and is at work on a book about genetic ancestry tracing and African diaspora culture. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. And your father was a tailor, which is why we GATES: And my mother went to Atlantic City. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Britannica A new season of Finding Your Roots premieres January 4, 2022! GATES: For which she paid cash. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. And most DNA companies in the United States will tell you that they have never tested an African-American who is 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa. In 1980 Gates became codirector of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Yale. GROSS: It's mind-boggling. The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . As of February 2022, Gates, 71, serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and as the Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. He introduced the notion ofsignifyinto represent Black literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. Gates graduated as valedictorian of his high school class in 1968 and attended a local junior college before enrolling at Yale University, where he received a bachelors degree in history in 1973. The daughter of prominent black scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said her father's arrest last week at his Cambridge home has deeply saddened him. Jakes and Chris Tucker. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. GATES: Yeah. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. I love you. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. This program examined the genealogy of 12 North Americans of diverse ancestry: Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdrich, Malcolm Gladwell, Eva Longoria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor of Jordan, Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep, and Kristi Yamaguchi. That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. Thank God. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. [18] To build Harvard's visual, documentary, and literary archives of African-American texts, Gates arranged for the purchase of The Image of the Black in Western Art, a collection assembled by Dominique de Mnil in Houston. But the ancestry is being investigated against the will of the people being outed. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. [33], Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. The arrest attracted national attention after U.S. President Barack Obama controversially declared that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" in arresting the 59-year-old Gates. Gates traced the practice of signifyin to Esu, the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, and to the figure of the signifying monkey, with which Esu is closely associated. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. GROSS: There's some people who are trying to use genealogy to out people who are white supremacists and say, oh, you think you're so pure white, that that's such a big deal? I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. Coproduced, hosted, and written by Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W.E.B. Gates's prominence led to his being called as a witness on behalf of the controversial Florida rap group 2 Live Crew in an obscenity case. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. We'd spit in a test tube. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. One wishes that Gates, an inimitable literary scholar well before he became a pathbreaking Renaissance man, might have alluded to another of Edward P. Joness works, The Known World, a historical novel exploring life in an antebellum community in which both blacks and whites hold black slaves, by way of even partial explanation. The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, African American who fought in the Revolutionary War, Alfred I. duPontColumbia University Award, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, The National Institute of Social Sciences, Who's Black and Why: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. GATES: But then they did another special test. Alexanders relation to Colbert or Longorias to Ma underscores a central theme of the series: Underlying the many faces of America is a fundamental genetic unity. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. 6. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. And I was exhilarated. Yeah. In Root Worker, a short story by Edward P. Jones, a chronically ill African-American woman who migrated to Washington, D.C., from North Carolina returns to the South with her husband and daughter, a physician, in search of the cure that has eluded her for decades in the North. GROSS: Huge story. The minister would call on her. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. GROSS: OK. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: "Colored People" [11] Additionally, he is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Wikipedia GATES: Yeah, I loved books. In the second season of the program, Gates learned that he is part of a genetic subgroup that may be descended from or related to the fourth-century Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Contemporary Literature. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. Was this an equal sexual relationship? It was astonishing. The technical aspects of genetic ancestry tracing are explained, but without sufficient social context, much the way a manual can tell you how to operate a car without explaining automobiles role in modern industry, the development of suburbia, or the emergence of youth culture. Whereas prior shows relied heavily on analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome (Y-DNA), yielding results that included at most about 2 percent of ones complete genetic inheritance, in Faces techniques are used that probe deeper into more of the genome. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. In 1984, Gates was recruited by Cornell University with an offer of tenure; Gates asked Yale whether the university would match Cornell's offer, but they declined. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores Other works by Gates included Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties (1994), Colored People: A Memoir (1994), The Future of the Race (1996; with Cornel West), Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (1997), The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: Americas First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (2003), America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans (2004), In Search of Our Roots (2009), and Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019). So what that means is that it's the percent of - if you had a perfect family tree, what percent would be from sub-Saharan Africa? GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. His mother. Faces expands on those outings in topic and technique, branching out from the genealogies of prominent blacks to those of a multiracial, multiethnic group of notables, including the actors Eva Longoria and Meryl Streep, the writers Louise Erdrich and Malcolm Gladwell, the musician Yo-Yo Ma, the poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander, the comedian Stephen Colbert, and Gates himself. James . Gates developed the notion of signifyin in Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self (1987) and The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988). Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. He was there in exile because he had been in prison and to be offering civil war for 27 months and was given a fellowship at the University of Cambridge. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. NPR's Michel Martin speaks with professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. about the forthcoming episode of Finding Your Roots which features actor Joe Manganiello discovering he is of African descent. Having grown up in an African-American community, however, he identifies as Black. Terry spoke to Henry Louis Gates in front of an audience last May when he was in Philadelphia to receive WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. Was Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian, Black? Roseanne Cash learned the [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. Brooke Williams. What percent would be from Europe? And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. GATES: Yeah, yeah. For $50,000, they sequenced my father, me and then 12 of the guests who were in "Faces Of America" - not a full genome but a dense genotyping. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Ostensibly one familys illness narrative, the story is also an allegory about how the experience of migrationwhether forced through slavery, pogroms, or economic vulnerability, or motivated by hope for a better futuremay generate a latent or conscious yen for community. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He wrote his first column (about Little League games) at age 12 for the Piedmont Herald in West Virginia and continued to write for his high school and college newspapers. GROSS: And it's a way of outing people as not being who they think they are and not recognizing that we're all descended from so many different people. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. In front of all these people and all these viewers. Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. It's incredible that the mystery to my family tree - I'm looking toward Africa, and it was 18 miles away in Moorefield, W.Va., County Courthouse. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. It's the damnedest thing I ever heard. He loved the news. [35] As of 2021, Gates is married to historian Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. This is FRESH AIR. This trip came 25 years after Gates worked at a hospital in Kilimatinde, near Dodoma, Tanzania, when he was a 19-year-old pre-medical student at Yale University. Since 1995, Gates has been the jury chair for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which honors written works that contribute to society's understanding of racism and the diversity of human culture. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician, who told Gates' mother that his problem was 'psychosomatic'. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities in 1991. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (born September 16, 1950, Keyser, West Virginia, U.S.), American literary critic and scholar known for his pioneering theories of African and African American literature. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. His name was John Redman. And she was a beautiful woman. Gates Devastated by Arrest, Says Daughter - CBS News And he'd make a couple - a move. And they would be published in the newspaper. I'm here to ask, on behalf of our production staff, if you will be a guest in next season GATES: Of "Finding Your Roots." Isn't that a cool thing? And before I started school - I started school when I was, well, 5, turning 6 - I would get dressed up, and I would go to church with my mom. So reading this - that she's a mulatto; she'd been a slave - the first question that comes to my mind - and I don't know if it was the first question that came to yours - was, was she raped by the man who owned her? In an article for Newsweek, journalist Lisa Miller reported on the reaction to Gates' article: The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable.
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