Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Britannica And another person to interpret my genetic data because it's 6 billion base pairs, right? His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. It comes from slavery. 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. 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. Since 2012, he has hosted a PBS television series, entitled Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr..[24] The second season of the series, featuring 30 prominent guests across 10 episodes, with Gates as the narrator, interviewer, and genealogical investigator, aired on PBS in fall 2014. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. GROSS: Yeah. And then it was a property requirement. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . Contemporary Literature. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. And when I was a young teenager, early adolescence, my father and I connected through the news. Family tree of Henry Louis GATES - Geneastar The series combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and historical research in genetics to tell guests about the lives and histories of their ancestors. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. GROSS: Yeah. In 2021, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. GATES: Yeah. That's not the way it was. Gates hosted Faces of America, a four-part series presented by PBS in 2010. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Signifyin is the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. GATES: The Gateses all looked - my father looked white. He's also written for Time magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. So that was a steal. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. 10 Things You Didn't Know About Henry Louis Gates Jr. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. Of course not. 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. 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. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. And we have a wall of degrees at home. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. 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. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. There we go. Henry Louis Gates' Daughter: "Now It's An Issue Of Race - YouTube So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. He applied the notion to the interpretation of slave narratives and showed how it informs the works of Phillis Wheatley, Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, the early African American writers of periodical fiction, Ralph Ellison, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, and Soyinka. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: Yeah. Amid discussion of Malcolm Gladwells roots, Gates discloses that the best-selling authors Jamaican maternal ancestor, a free woman of color, owned slaves of African descent. And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. 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? My mother was a seamstress, as you know. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. And GATES: Yeah. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - The National Endowment for the Humanities Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. GROSS: Yeah. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. 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. 3. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. [25][26][27] Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.[28]. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. Henry Louis Gates reveals celebrities' family history in 'Finding Your And she throws herself on the casket. From the 1980s Gates edited a number of critical anthologies of African American literature, including Black Literature and Literary Theory (1984), Bearing Witness: Selections from African American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century (1991), and (with Nellie Y. McKay) The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997). 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. Du Bois Center there at Harvard, one of Finding Your Roots | Season 8 GATES: Well, I was on "The View." 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 I sat down. GATES: Well, the average African-American GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. GROSS: Whoa. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. I was more of a bookworm. 5. At one point, Johnny even told the KKK in a statement that Vivian was white. Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Wikipedia Yeah. 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. He 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. Or they stayed home, and they listened to or played music. It's a lot of data to process. It was just misdiagnosed. PDF University of Washington School of Law My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," right? In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. 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. We fought to keep the pipeline of opportunity open, and, despite our ideological differences, we found a way to link arms against every form of bigotry.. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. GROSS: So when you had your DNA done, did you have a wish for a certain area of Africa or a certain group of African people who you wanted to be your ancestors? Having grown up in an African-American community, however, he identifies as Black. [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. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis Gates Bio, Wiki, Age, Wife, Finding Your Roots, and Net Worth GATES: Yeah, I loved books. And I think that that's sad. As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. "[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. And I was exhilarated. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) - Instagram And he'd make a couple - a move. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. Accuracy and availability may vary. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. GATES: OK. When the physical damage finally healed, his right leg was two inches shorter than his left. 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. Each of the genetic analyses used in Facesadmixture analysis, haplotype grouping, and relative mappingincorporate underlying assumptions and algorithms that may be incompatible with the other techniques. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. But then President Obama called you both together. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician, who told Gates' mother that his problem was 'psychosomatic'. Yet no lens is provided through which to interpret this genealogical bombshell. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. GROSS: Was that reflected in the way you wanted to say goodbye to your father at the funeral? While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. And that is a long time. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). 9. But I also watched TV. Fifty or a hundred years from now, he explains, my hope for the present generation is that a future Du Bois will look back on our time and say that, in this era of fracture, we drew a line. In front of all these people and all these viewers. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. 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. Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows Jakes and Chris Tucker. And we filmed the whole thing. "[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. 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. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. When asked by National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Bruce Cole to describe his work, Gates responded: "I would say I'm a literary critic. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. But we can expect some acknowledgment and interpretation of technologys limits. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. And my brother went off to dental school. 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. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. Based on admixture testing, Longoria is told that she is 70 percent European, 27 percent Native American, and 3 percent African. How 'Finding Your Roots' became a cultural phenomenon And that night - and then daddy showed my brother and me, Dr. Paul Gates now, chief of dentistry at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital GATES: Well, it's the spirit of my mother. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. Updates? In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". GROSS: OK. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. We'd spit in a test tube. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. That's the way it is. I killed my mama. 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 2. 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. It doesn't exist. Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. And I showed up from Yale, and he became my mentor. Many of us were troubled. Now think about that. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores I think you know where I'm heading here. [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. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. [1] He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. My dad got into a public battle with the KKK and so I knew about that, and it was scary, Rosanne said during the PBS special. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. or subscribe. As we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King today, we're going to listen to an interview Terry recorded with historian Henry Louis Gates. 7. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. 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. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. Isn't that a cool thing? Remember all the talk about post-racialism that GATES: We thought when Obama - we had turned a corner, and we could, you know, beat our - the plowshares into pruning hooks - right? [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]. Yet genealogy is, at the same time, put to the task of heightening awareness of human relatedness, be it experiential or biological. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. 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. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. Yeah. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: "Colored People" And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? The show's third season was postponed after it was discovered that actor Ben Affleck had persuaded Gates to omit information about his slave-owning ancestors. 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. And I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." 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. 10. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. 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. He learned the truth when he appeared on an episode of the new PBS series Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, with his fair skin and blue eyes, had long . He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. What percent would be Native American? 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. 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. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of Black literature and Black culture, he does not advocate a "separatist" Black canon. GROSS: And then your slightly more contemporary ancestors not having any rights in the country, you know, or very few rights - not being able to vote, having to live in segregation. In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. On DNA Testing And Finding His Own