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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.. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. He earned his B.A. 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). [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. We defended the right of every American to vote. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." 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. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. 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. Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. GROSS: OK. JSTOR1208745. 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. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. They came in slave ships. Hollywood Life And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. Cambridge police officers were dispatched. 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. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. And you - the last scene is the funeral. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. And when I was a young teenager, early adolescence, my father and I connected through the news. [4] He also learned that he has 50% European ancestry, including Irish forebears; he was surprised his European ancestry turned out to be so substantial. I love you being black. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. Was this an equal sexual relationship? GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." This is called an admixture test. It was just misdiagnosed. "My father was so sad. Historical evidence suggests that intraracial slavery was uncommon, and that when it did occur, sometimes free men and women of color purchased enslaved relatives and friends to rescue them from the cruelty of the chattel system, if not the social death of slave status. 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. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. GROSS: Yeah. Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . GROSS: So you assume it was not a consensual relationship, but she managed to own her own home five years after being freed from slavery. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. Gates was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. And your father was a tailor, which is why we GATES: And my mother went to Atlantic City. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. 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. [citation needed] Gates has been criticized by John Henrik Clarke, Molefi Kete Asante, and the controversial Maulana Karenga, each of whom has been questioned by others in academia.[15][16][17]. In July 2022, Gates announced that he would serve as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, a new glossary of language that will contain popular phrases used by historical Black figures and modern-day Black Americans. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. 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. It's a lot of data to process. Author Herb Boyd, who teaches African and African-American history at the College of New Rochelle and City College, CUNY, argued that despite the complicity of African monarchs in the Atlantic slave trade, the United States "was the greatest beneficiary, and thus should be the main compensator". Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. They flew him in from San Francisco. In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. And, although full genome sequencing is becoming more common and affordable, haplotype grouping relies upon the more narrow analysis of mtDNA and Y-DNA. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," right? 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). You were 9 years old when you found her picture. 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. Obama then held a much-publicized meeting with Gates and James Crowley, the officer who had arrested Gates, which became informally known as the beer summit because Obama invited the two for beers in the White House Rose Garden. 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. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012, Gates has been host of the television series Finding Your Roots on PBS. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. Thank you so much for accepting this award. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. Ozzy & Sharon Osbournes Grandkids: Meet Their Grandchildren, Click to Subscribe to Get Our Free HollywoodLife Daily Newsletter, Rosanne Cash: 5 Things To Know About Johnnys Daughter Whos Speaking Out About His June Carter Affair, 'Finding Your Roots' Preview: Jeff Goldblum Reveals How His Mom Helped Him Fight A Bully, Ozzy & Sharon Osbournes Grandkids: Meet Their Grandchildren, Beautiful Nature-Inspired Baby Names Used By Celebrity Parents, Did Vanderpump Rules Tom Cheated on Ariana With Raquel? And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. GATES: Yeah. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. 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. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. And I hope they are. The book tells of Gates's childhood growing up in the 1950s in a close-knit extended family and an equally close-knit small-town community. And I learned a lot about the medium. 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. And he fought in - for the Continental Army. 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. GATES: Yeah, yeah. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. A new season of Finding Your Roots premieres January 4, 2022! 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. Later, he acquired and authenticated the manuscript of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a novel from the same period that scholars believe may have been written as early as 1853. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. 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. Based on admixture testing, Longoria is told that she is 70 percent European, 27 percent Native American, and 3 percent African. In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. Yeah. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). GATES: He wasn't even out the door, and I moved into his bedroom. We are unable to fully display the content of this page. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. The fruits of the unearthed family treehistorical coherence; redemptive narratives of migration and assimilation; intergenerational social mobilityare unevenly dispersed. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. This ancestor was Vivians maternal great-great grandmother, a Black woman named Sarah Shields, whom Rosanne learned about for the first time ever during an episode of the PBS show Finding Your Rootsthat aired in Feb. 2021. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. You have to get permission. They were buried next to each other. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged And he mustered in in Winchester, Va., on Christmas Day, 1778, and was mustered down the Continental Army in April of 1784. 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. Of course not. After receiving two fellowships in 1970, he took a leave of absence from Yale to visit Africa, working as an anesthetist in a hospital in Tanzania and then traveling through other African nations. We'll hear more after a short break. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. I go, goodbye. The first time we met was when I interviewed him for "The Reflection Effect," an essay I wrote for O, the Oprah Magazine about the power of nostalgia to drive happiness and build resilience after loss. GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Now think about that. 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. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. And she throws herself on the casket. I hope you never come back, you know? 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. He argued that the material, which the government charged was profane, had important roots in African-American Vernacular English, games, and literary traditions, and should be protected. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. In "Root Worker," a short . Joness tale offers some insight into the appeal of genealogy, another effort at reconnection with home and kin, and ballast against the tumult of modern living. And we filmed the whole thing. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. After that I would say I was a teacher. [8] The first African American to be awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Gates sailed on the Queen Elizabeth 2 for England, where he studied English literature at Clare College, Cambridge and earned his Ph.D. degree. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. This is FRESH AIR. And I showed up from Yale, and he became my mentor. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities in 1991. The "You. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Thank God. 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. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. "[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. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. GROSS: Totally stunned. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. So I want to read something that you wrote about her. 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 . 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. Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. He loved the news. GATES: OK. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). 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: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? I was more of a bookworm. And then black people would tell each other - they would say, you know, be sure to watch "The Late Late Show" tonight because "Imitation Of Life," which is my favorite film - 1934, with Claudette Colbert. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Gates has joined the Sons of the American Revolution. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. 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. [11] Additionally, he is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. 5. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later. It's the damnedest thing I ever heard. GATES: Yeah, I loved books. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. 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. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year.