And then you see this white girl next to Claudette Colbert. His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). This is FRESH AIR. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. And I'm wondering if being laid up from an injury for a while affected your desire to - and your time to immerse yourself in books. So I would say, you know, no, I don't think so. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. 8. After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. summa cum laude in history from Yale University and his M.A. In 2006, Gates wrote and produced the PBS documentary "African American Lives," the first documentary series to use genealogy and genetic science to provide an understanding of African-American history. GATES: admixture, I'm 50 percent sub-Saharan African and 50 percent European and virtually no Native American ancestry, which really pisses my family off. GROSS: Totally stunned. [23] He had known of some European ancestry, but was surprised to learn the high proportion; he also learned that he was descended from John Redman, a mulatto veteran in New England of the American Revolutionary War. From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. 7. He has insisted that Black literature must be evaluated by the aesthetic criteria of its culture of origin, not criteria imported from Western or European cultural traditions that express a "tone deafness to the Black cultural voice" and result in "intellectual racism". If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. After that I would say I was a teacher. They lived together. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. It was just misdiagnosed. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. In "Root Worker," a short . African-American - I love to joke about this. This is FRESH AIR. Even if you were free and you were black GATES: In most states, you weren't allowed to vote. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Louis-Gates-Jr. African American Registry - Biography of Herny Louis Gates, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Gates's critically acclaimed six-part PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, traced 500 years of African-American history to the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. He was 97, as you said. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. Read about President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. His mother. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." But I think that one of the mottos of finding your roots is that there is no such thing as racial purity, that these people who have fantasies, these white supremacists, of this Aryan brotherhood, you know, this Aryan heritage that is pure and unsullied and untainted, that they're living in a dream world. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. And then when we go - when you were buried, she would stand up. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. 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. And you got this from the 1870 census - (reading) that Jane Gates, age 51, female, mulatto, laundress and nurse, owns real estate valued at $1,400; born in Maryland; cannot read or write. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? That belief is shared by Native groups that similarly objected to the Human Genome Diversity Project, as described in the work of Jenny Reardon and Kimberly TallBear. He's also written for Time magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. Gates Devastated by Arrest, Says Daughter - CBS News Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. As I have written elsewhere, this new kinship category, DNA cousins, or what Gates calls autosomal cousins, suggests that flexible kinship is being made on the new (or is it the rather old) terrain of biology. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". 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 only did black people. At Yale University in 1973, he was one of 12 students selected as a Scholar of the House, a program that allows seniors to write a book or compose a symphony or follow a similar passion instead of taking classes. Would you do it? GATES: Don't you? (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Will we reach consilience"William Whewells term for the combining of information from different domains toward the unity of knowledgebetween conventional and genetic genealogy (and, moreover, among the types of genetic analysis at play)? Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. ", The lesson of "Finding Your Roots" - we're all immigrants. . And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. 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). In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. 9. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge - Boston Magazine 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. Discomfort is also experienced by the viewer. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. As Faces of America concludes, the connections among several of the participants are revealed using a technique developed by Altschuler and his colleague Mark Daly that is similar to 23andMes Relative Finder. These DNA cousins share several million of the three billion base pairs, suggesting a common ancestor a few or tens of generations in the past. I can do it. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. "Signifyin'" refers to the significance of words that is based on context, and is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. 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. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. All rights reserved. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. Sgt. In 2021, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. There we go. It's - remember, it's - my father dragged my brother and me upstairs in his parents' home and made us wait why he'd look through half a dozen of his father's scrapbooks, about which we knew nothing - complete mystery, a secret to us - looking for that obituary. 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 latter, tracing the ancestral history of contemporary figures, was especially popular. So I'm out there. In front of all these people and all these viewers. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. I found the first edition when I was an adult. GATES: For which she paid cash. GATES: Yeah. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. [5], At the age of 14, Gates was injured playing touch football, fracturing the ball and socket joint of his right hip, resulting in a slipped capital femoral epiphysis. In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". Video of the day: Drake and 21 Savage's "Spin Bout U" NYC's Extra Butter and Russ & Daughters Join Forces on 50th-Anniversary PUMA Clyde NYC's Extra Butter and Russ & Daughters Join Forces on 50th-Anniversary PUMA ClydeTwo quintessential Lower East Side outposts celebrate the downtown staple sneaker.HypebeastDylan Kelly Culture: Henry As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. Or they stayed home, and they drew. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. But then President Obama called you both together. Before the PBS episode, the world only knew that Vivian was reported to be of Sicilian heritage on her dads side, and German/Irish on her mothers side. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. I am descended from - on my father's side - from a white man who impregnated a black woman and, on my mother's side, from a white woman who was impregnated by a black man. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., called the book "an attempt to size Lincoln up through the eyes of Black Americans who visited the 'people's house' that their people had built and in whose names they were determined to win the fight for freedom and citizenship." "[13] After his 2003 NEH lecture, Gates published in the same year a book entitled The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, about the early African-American poet. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." That seems to be one of the programs aspirations. We're listening to the interview Terry recorded with Harvard historian, author and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates before an audience at WHYY in Philadelphia last May. 266. Yet genealogy is, at the same time, put to the task of heightening awareness of human relatedness, be it experiential or biological. Terry. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. Jakes and Chris Tucker. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. And GATES: Yeah. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) - Instagram His mother cleaned houses. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. GATES: So if you were a Martian and came down to look at my DNA results, you'd think I was a white boy, you know? 10 Things You Didn't Know About Henry Louis Gates Jr. [7] In his major scholarly work, The Signifying Monkey, a 1989 American Book Award winner, Gates expressed what might constitute an African-American cultural aesthetic. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. I regret we are out of time. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. 1. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. 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. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. And she was a beautiful woman. 1. Tune in for all-new episodes as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores fascinating ancestries and family mysteries for an array of . The former vice president has become the Democratic front-runner with primary victories across the country. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. But mutations exist. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. OK. The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. GATES: OK. Catch #FindingYourRoots Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings). And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. GROSS: OK. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. In 2021, Gates was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and elected to the Johnsonsians (Society). He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. Opinion | The 'Lost Cause' That Built Jim Crow - The New York Times They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. 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. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Henry Louis - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. At the time, only Vivians European background had been known, and this discovery in her ancestryresurfaced thanks to a profile on Johnnys first wife in The Washington Poston May 16. And I learned a lot about the medium. Isn't that a cool thing? And they would be published in the newspaper. [29] His op-ed begins and ends with the observation that it is very difficult to decide whether or not to give reparations to the descendants of American slaves, whether they should receive compensation for the unpaid labor of their ancestors, and their lack of rights. Still, as the sociologist Troy Duster wrote in The Chronicle Review (Deep Roots and Tangled Branches, February 3, 2006) regarding the use of this analysis in the first African American Lives, these tests rel[y] excessively on the idea of 100-percent purity, a condition that could never have existed in human populations. We learn, too, that Yo-Yo Ma is 100 percent Asian, that Streep is 100 percent European, and, in a nod to comedy and to how quickly ancestry can become racial classification, that Colbert is 100 percent white man! What is one to make of an admixture test that reveals no mixture at all? You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, And it's for my father. Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? Corrections? 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. Advertisement As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out CBS 2.04M subscribers Subscribe 53K views 13 years ago Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama. The current PBS documentary miniseries Faces of America traces the family histories of 12 prominent people who, over the course of several hours and with the aid of conventional and genetic genealogy, come to fasten their varied tribulations and successes to the arc of ancestry. As a result of research he conducted as a MacArthur Fellow, Gates discovered Our Nig, written by Harriet E. Wilson in 1859 and thought to be the first novel written in the United States by an African American. He argues, "It can't be real as a subject if you have to look like the subject to be an expert in the subject,"[13] adding, "It's as ridiculous as if someone said I couldn't appreciate Shakespeare because I'm not Anglo-Saxon. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. Lolita Buckner Inniss, a professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, argued that notwithstanding African involvement as "abductors", it was Western slave-owners, as "captors", who perpetuated the practice even after the import trade was banned. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden eventually extended an invitation to Gates and the Cambridge officer who was involved to share a beer with them at the White House, which they accepted. And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? My mother was a seamstress, as you know. Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. And I loved the news. Gates's web series, "Black History in Two Minutes (Or So)", which he executive produces with Robert F. Smith and Dyllan McGee, earned five Webby Awards, including for Best Podcast: Documentary and Best Video Series: Education & Discovery (2020), Best Podcast: Documentary and Best Social Video: Discovery & Education (2021) and Best Social Video: Discovery & Education (2022).