August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. I found the first edition when I was an adult. Over . 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. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. And consequently, you are now a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. The new season of his TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now showing on PBS. Gatess own genealogical narrative, unfurled against the backdrop of images of his family gathering in the kitchen or tender interactions with his nonagenarian father, Henry Louis Gates Sr., is also quite moving. Both would be just as important. Gates wrote, executive-produced, and hosted the series, which earned the 2013 Peabody Award and a NAACP Image Award. 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. And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. [33], Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. GROSS: OK. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. Testing showed he had ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Ireland and England. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. 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. 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. 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. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician, who told Gates' mother that his problem was 'psychosomatic'. The former vice president has become the Democratic front-runner with primary victories across the country. GROSS: Yeah. This is called an admixture test. And he fought in - for the Continental Army. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". It was astonishing. This is FRESH AIR. Jakes and Chris Tucker. )supply information about human population groups dating as far back as 150,000 years, the time horizon of admixture testing is the past 500 years. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. 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. 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. Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. 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? As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. 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. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. Gates and daughter vie on the Vineyard. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. 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. 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 is FRESH AIR. So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. 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. There we go. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. 266. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. And I loved the news. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. In 2019, Gates received the Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award, 2019 for "The Annotated African American Folktales," which he edited with Maria Tatar. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. By Alondra Nelson. Updates? Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. That yearning manifests itself in many ways, from anomie to ethnic mutual-aid associations. Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. He was there in exile because he had been in prison and to be offering civil war for 27 months and was given a fellowship at the University of Cambridge. In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. And at this point, I'd run over to my mother and say, Mama, I'll never pass for white, Mama. But I think that Donald Trump's rhetoric and some of his actions - for instance, after Charlottesville - encourage unfavorable race relations in the United States. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. What percent would be from Europe? In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. More than anyone else, the historian is responsible for "entertaining the idea remotely" that Gates could become a writer. It's incredible. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. 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. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. 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". We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. He earned his B.A. Coproduced, hosted, and written by Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W.E.B. It was just misdiagnosed. 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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Time will tell. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). GROSS: You had family that passed for white. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. 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. 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). You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. And I sat down. And remarkably, she's now able to. In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. Brooke Williams. Omissions? Or they stayed home, and they drew. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. Isn't that a cool thing? When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. 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. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. Then he'd come back. [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. 7. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. GATES: Don't you? We delineate our individual and collective identities based upon inclusion in and exclusion from groups. [18] To build Harvard's visual, documentary, and literary archives of African-American texts, Gates arranged for the purchase of The Image of the Black in Western Art, a collection assembled by Dominique de Mnil in Houston. The latter, tracing the ancestral history of contemporary figures, was especially popular. So I'm out there. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. Biology matters. And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. . Thank God. February 12, 2010. And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. Does race exist? GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. His name was John Redman. 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. GATES: Yeah. And I gave it to her for birthday. 1. 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 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. But mutations exist. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? 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. That's not the way it was. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. "[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. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. And I learned a lot about the medium. 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. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. GROSS: I saw his picture in the obituary. And my mother used to write the eulogies, the obituaries for all the black people in the Potomac Valley, where I grew up. Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. 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. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. What percent would be Native American? And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. We have the great privilege of having Professor Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard University, the Director of the W.B. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. And then it was a property requirement. That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. 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. And she throws herself on the casket. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. His mother cleaned houses. 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. And I hope they are. GROSS: Totally stunned. 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. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. 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 I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." You have to get permission. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. [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. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, announced a slate of futuristic new policies in a campaign video Friday. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. We are unable to fully display the content of this page. Thank you for being you. 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. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. I can do it. And that is a long time. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. Discomfort is also experienced by the viewer. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." You were 9 years old when you found her picture. 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 said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. The book tells stories about Gates's parents, his lifelong nickname, Skippy, and his brother, Rocky. 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). I'm going to be black. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: 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. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. 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. Was this an equal sexual relationship? In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. NPR's Michel Martin speaks with professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. about the forthcoming episode of Finding Your Roots which features actor Joe Manganiello discovering he is of African descent. 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. I go, goodbye. In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. They had two geneticists. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. 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. 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. GATES: That's true. [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. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? Prosecutors later dropped the charges. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. 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. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. He notably explored genealogy as host of the series African American Lives (200608), Faces of America (2010), and Finding Your Roots (2012 ). In 2021, Gates was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and elected to the Johnsonsians (Society). 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. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. [35] As of 2021, Gates is married to historian Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged After that I would say I was a teacher. I mean, they know Donald Trump. Since 1995, Gates has been the jury chair for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which honors written works that contribute to society's understanding of racism and the diversity of human culture. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. In front of all these people and all these viewers. And we filmed the whole thing. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. My mother was a seamstress, as you know. 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 So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. 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. 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. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family.
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