Well, I'll tell you a funny story. Jr. (Design School Visiting Committee 1984-89) in honor of their daughters, Brooke Higgins Bing Williams, Harvard College 1988, and Eden Branford Bing Williams, Harvard . Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. I found the first edition when I was an adult. GROSS: Yeah. 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. 3. Sgt. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. GATES: That's true. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. 5. When my daughters were born, I had them tested for sickle cell because - black people are not the only people in the world that have sickle cell. 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. And that is a long time. Copyright 2019 NPR. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). GROSS: But it's making me think of how much death figured into your formative thoughts - the death of your grandfather, which led you to see the picture of your great-great-grandmother, everybody's deaths through your mother memorialized in those obituaries. GATES: For which she paid cash. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. Recently, he has enraged many of his colleagues in the African-American studies fieldespecially those campaigning for government reparations for slaveryby insistently reminding them, as he did in a New York Times op-ed last year, that the folks who captured and sold Blacks into slavery in the first place were also Africans, working for profit. 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. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. The Surprise in Cory Booker's Family Tree - The Root They - but you're absolutely right. GROSS: Yeah. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. We'd spit in a test tube. A Letter from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to his daughters Maggie and Lisa I enjoy the unselfconscious moments of a shared cultural intimacy, whatever form they take, when no one else is watching, when no white people are around. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. Thank you so much for accepting this award. The minister would call on her. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). It comes from slavery. It's a gift - and for my mom. Now think about that. And I hope they are. Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. 6. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. The "You. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. Moreover, these genetic techniques may be inconsistent with the aims of conventional genealogy. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. Would you do it? GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. "My father was so sad. And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. What do you think of that? www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. After receiving a doctoral degree in English language and literature in 1979, Gates taught literature and African American studies at Yale University, Cornell University, Duke University, and Harvard University, where he was appointed W.E.B. And I loved the news. 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. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. "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. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge - Boston Magazine We'll hear more after a short break. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). 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. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Sergeant Who Arrested Gates Tells His Story : NPR 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. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. Gates was the host and co-producer of African American Lives (2006) and African American Lives 2 (2008) in which the lineage of more than a dozen notable African Americans was traced using genealogical and historical resources, as well as genealogical DNA testing. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. 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". Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. 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)? In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. The furor over the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. erupted again Thursday following sharp criticism of the Cambridge Police Department by President Obama. Testing showed he had ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Ireland and England. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". 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? 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. And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. Gates serves as the chair for the Selection Committee for the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship Program that is sponsored by the Fletcher Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Fletcher Asset Management. Race is a social construction. Time will tell. His writing includes pieces in The New York Times that defend rap music and an article in Sports Illustrated that criticizes Black youth culture for glorifying basketball over education. 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. [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. 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. Family tree of Henry Louis GATES - Geneastar In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. A white doctor misdiagnosed the injury as psychosomatic after Gates told him he wanted to become a doctor, Gates wrote in a New York Times article, "About Men: A Giant Step," in 1990. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. This is FRESH AIR. And he'd make a couple - a move. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. So that was a steal. 10. 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. For example, while haplogroupssets of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are gene-sequence variants that are inherited together and categorized by letter and number (A, L3D, R, U5b, etc. But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. And GATES: Yeah. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) - Instagram What percent would be from Europe? GROSS: Yeah. GATES: And think about it. 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? Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube Cambridge police officers were dispatched. [25][26][27] Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.[28]. However, in the 60s amid the Civil Rights Movement, Vivian had been the target of attention from white supremacists since they believed she looked Black. And your father was a tailor, which is why we GATES: And my mother went to Atlantic City. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. I killed my mama. But it's just not those two genetic lines. Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? It's the damnedest thing I ever heard. Of course not. Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. He is on the boards of many notable institutions, including the, In 2010, Gates became the first African American to have his, In December 2014, Gates was announced as one of 14 recipients of a 2015. (Note: Clotel (1853) by William Wells Brown is recognized as the first novel published by an African-American author, but it was both written and published in London.) So what I did - my father and I agreed, for science, that we'd put our genomes in the public domain so that any scholar or student can study our genome. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. 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. In 1980 Gates became codirector of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Yale. It feels heartbreaking, Rosanne Cash admitted through tears after finding out that an ancestor of her mother, Vivian Liberto Cash the first wife of singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, who both received threats from the KKK was enslaved. 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. And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. GATES: But I have an announcement to make GATES: For you. 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. GROSS: I've interviewed many people over the years. "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. And they have a horse-drawn carriage. That's not the way it was. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. 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. 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. GATES: Yeah. 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. My Daddy, the Jailbird - The Daily Beast From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. So you GATES: Because of this white man. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. 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). He also learned that one of his African ancestors includes a Yoruba man who was trafficked to America from Ouidah in present-day Republic of Benin. Accuracy and availability may vary. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. Gates Devastated by Arrest, Says Daughter - CBS News Gates wrote, executive-produced, and hosted the series, which earned the 2013 Peabody Award and a NAACP Image Award. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. Advertisement 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. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." Even with the aid of cutting-edge 21st-century genealogydigitized archival records and genetic analysiswe may never know the ins and outs of how Gladwells fifth-great-grandmother came to be a slaveholder. 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. 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. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. What is Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s net worth? | The US Sun He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. Johnny Cash's Daughter Reacts To Mom's Black Ancestry On TV - Hollywood So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? Mixing cutting-edge DNA research and old-school genealogical sleuthing, FINDING YOUR ROOTS . And they would be published in the newspaper. GROSS: So given this kind of really rich mix that you've just described and all the surprises that you've just described, what does race mean to you? This is FRESH AIR. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. Henry Louis Gates Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. But mutations exist. GROSS: So having done your, like, ancestry and everything, were you close to your parents? And they fought in the Revolutionary War. Henry Louis - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard I love you being black. GROSS: Huge story. GROSS: Whoa. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." 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. 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. 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 And I have my mother's certificate from this vocational school where she learned to be a seamstress. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores GROSS: Totally stunned. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. I was more of a bookworm. Rosanne Cash became tearful after learning that her mom, Vivian Liberto Cash, had a Black great-great grandmother who was subjected to a life of slavery. Gates argued that the pervasiveness and centrality of signifyin in African and African American literature and music means that all such expression is essentially a kind of dialogue with the literature and music of the past. Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr. So I would say, you know, no, I don't think so. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. "[30][31], Following a trip to China, Gates returned home to his residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square on July 16, 2009, only to find the front door jammed. doi:10.2307/1208745. 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. Wants W. E. B. DuBois, Wole Soyinka and Phyllis Wheatley on the Nation's Reading Lists, As Well As Western Classics like Milton and Shakespeare". He introduced the notion of signifyin to represent African and African American literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. 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. James . While assignment to the haplogroup L3x, for example, indicates an ancestor in what is now Ethiopia at least 50,000 years ago, this interesting detail does not fill in the contours of the family tree. In the early 1980s Gates rediscovered the earliest novel by an African American, Harriet E. Wilsons Our Nig (1859), by proving that the work was in fact written by an African American woman and not, as had been widely assumed, by a white man from the North. Read about President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. And consequently, you are now a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. February 12, 2010. On hand again is admixture analysistesting that probes a persons full nuclear DNA for genetic indicators said to be suggestive of ancestry; percentages of African, American Indian, European, or Asian descent are inferred from those informative markers. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. In Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992) and elsewhere, Gates argued for the inclusion of African American literature in the Western canon. This is FRESH AIR. Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." In July 1976, Gates was promoted to the post of lecturer in Afro-American Studies, with the understanding that he would be promoted to assistant professor upon completion of his doctoral dissertation. No one's ever asked me that, but the answer's yes because I studied with a person who has been on your show, Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, when I went to the University of Cambridge. It's called the Beer Summit. What is race? [33], Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. In 2020, Gates received the 400 Years of African American History Commission's Distinguished 400Award. All rights reserved. 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. We might think of Faces of America, then, as an allegory of the simultaneous diversity of our experiences and the deep interpenetration of our histories. What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. But then President Obama called you both together. ", 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. Henry Louis Gates reveals celebrities' family history in 'Finding Your They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. That's a long time when you're young. Thank God. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. Henry Louis Gates Daughters Elizabeth is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke in May 2010. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon.