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. Race is a social construction. You were 9 years old when you found her picture. [10] At Harvard, Gates teaches undergraduate and graduate courses as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, an endowed chair he was appointed to in 2006, and as a professor of English. 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. It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. 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. He earned his B.A. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. . The series is the latest iteration of Gatess innovative, fascinating foray into the nexus of genealogy and genetic ancestry testing that began four years ago with African American Lives (and continued with African American Lives 2 and Oprahs Roots). When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. 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. I hope you never come back, you know? 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. In a February episode of the PBS show, "Finding Your Roots," host and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Rosanne Cash with her DNA results and family genealogy. 1. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." More than anyone else, the historian is responsible for "entertaining the idea remotely" that Gates could become a writer. Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. And I was shocked by that. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. 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. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. 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. Gates also notes that it is equally difficult to decide who should get such reparations and who should pay them, as slavery was legal under the laws of the colonies and the United States. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. And GATES: Yeah. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. As a literary historian committed to the preservation and study of historical texts, Gates has been integral to the Black Periodical Literature Project, a digital archive of Black newspapers and magazines created with financial assistance from the National Endowment for the Humanities. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. The world just isn't like that. OK. GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. 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. 35 (1): 212227. In "Root Worker," a short . And tears just streamed down my face. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." [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. After that, everything stopped. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is an American literary critic and scholar who is known for his pioneering theories of African literatures and African American literature. Sgt. GROSS: It's mind-boggling. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. GATES: Yeah. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. 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. I only did black people. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic Credit: Getty What is Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s net worth? You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. Updates? Now think about that. TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: Because you've talked to everybody about their genealogy, I want to talk with you about yours and what you've learned about yourself and the larger meaning of what you've learned about yourself. [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. And she throws herself on the casket. 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. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. The minister would call on her. "My father was so sad. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. Gates and daughter vie on the Vineyard. 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. 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. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. We delineate our individual and collective identities based upon inclusion in and exclusion from groups. In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. 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? 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. 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. The work extended application of the concept of "signifyin'" to analysis of African-American works. GROSS: Is that too personal? GROSS: Totally stunned. 3. Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. They had two geneticists. And I think that that's sad. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). In 2020, Gates received the 400 Years of African American History Commission's Distinguished 400Award. I mean, they know Donald Trump. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. 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? So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. 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. All rights reserved. He draws on structuralism, post-structuralism, and semiotics to analyze texts and assess matters of identity politics. That's not the way it was. And then when we go - when you were buried, she would stand up. What percent would be Native American? His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. ", 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. 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. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. Gates hosted Faces of America, a four-part series presented by PBS in 2010. 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. It was a horrible, horrible thing. But I think that you should have to get permission before someone is creeping around in your DNA. 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. 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. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. Advertisement And we have a wall of degrees at home. 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 . I love you. GATES: For which she paid cash. GROSS: Yeah. In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 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. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. 4. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. 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. 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". Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. So I want to read something that you wrote about her. If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com. "[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 book tells stories about Gates's parents, his lifelong nickname, Skippy, and his brother, Rocky. 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. American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950), Critical studies and reviews of Gates' work. It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. 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. And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. [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. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. 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. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later. 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? 8. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. 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. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago. I killed my mama. Then he'd come back. "Black people were so angry at me. 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? What percent would be from Europe? Cambridge police officers were dispatched. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. Corrections? In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. 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. 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. (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.) And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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