If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. 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. It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. And it's for my father. His name was John Redman. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. 3. Stay informed daily on the latest news and advice on COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report. 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. . 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. Many of us were troubled. In 1980 Gates became codirector of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Yale. 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. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. 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. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. And we'd have the chess board set up. 1. GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. Season 8. 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). Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. summa cum laude in history from Yale University and his M.A. 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. [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. In 1984, Gates was recruited by Cornell University with an offer of tenure; Gates asked Yale whether the university would match Cornell's offer, but they declined. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. I told them that I did not want to know if I had any of the sort of - I don't know - the slam-dunk genes for Alzheimer's disease. He looked white. After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. 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 . And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. 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. Some critics suggest that adding Black literature will diminish the value of the Western canon, while separatists say that Gates is too accommodating to the dominant white culture in his advocacy of integration of the canon. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. 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. Gates wrote, executive-produced, and hosted the series, which earned the 2013 Peabody Award and a NAACP Image Award. In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. Henrys research also led him to discover a census from 1870, which revealed that Rosannes great-great grandfather a man named Lafayette Robsinson was mixed-race. Upon learning this, Rosanne recalled the long-running rumors of her mothers background and said, So, it was, at least, a small part true., Related: After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. And that is a long time. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. [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. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. GATES: He wasn't even out the door, and I moved into his bedroom. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. And they stayed home, and they read. [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. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. And I sat down. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. ", 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. I go, goodbye. Crockett Jr., Stephen A. 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. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. 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. Corrections? Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". Sgt. If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com. And remarkably, she's now able to. Terry. They lived together. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. So (laughter) given the example that President Obama set in calming down that kind of argument in America over you and this officer, what do you hear now coming from our president? GROSS: Totally stunned. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." And I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. Hollywood Life DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. At the age of 14, Gates suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint in his hip while playing touch football. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an American treasure. 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. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. 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 you - the last scene is the funeral. I was more of a bookworm. 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. 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. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., called the book "an attempt to size Lincoln up through the eyes of Black Americans who visited the 'people's house' that their people had built and in whose names they were determined to win the fight for freedom and citizenship." GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. [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. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. Ostensibly one familys illness narrative, the story is also an allegory about how the experience of migrationwhether forced through slavery, pogroms, or economic vulnerability, or motivated by hope for a better futuremay generate a latent or conscious yen for community. We delineate our individual and collective identities based upon inclusion in and exclusion from groups. 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. 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. Discomfort is also experienced by the viewer. Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. 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. And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. Moreover, these genetic techniques may be inconsistent with the aims of conventional genealogy. In the show, notable guests discover their family roots based on genealogical research and DNA results. "My father was so sad. Read about President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. This is called an admixture test. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. It's called the Beer Summit. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. They came in slave ships. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". By Alondra Nelson. 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. And what's the real showstopper for me is the fact that my three sets of my fourth great grandparents lived 18 miles from where I was born. 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. 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? 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? 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. After that, everything stopped. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. Thank God. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. You were 9 years old when you found her picture. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. 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. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . GATES: No. But mutations exist. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. 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. So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? GROSS: Yeah. 2. It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. I can do it. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. GROSS: Yeah. They flew him in from San Francisco. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. Having grown up in an African-American community, however, he identifies as Black. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. 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. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. ". 4. 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. 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. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician, who told Gates' mother that his problem was 'psychosomatic'. [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. 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. And then when we go - when you were buried, she would stand up. And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. 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. What percent would be from Europe? GROSS: I've interviewed many people over the years. The new season of his TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now showing on PBS. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? And tears just streamed down my face. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. 266. 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). Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. 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. 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. 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. We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. Signifyin is the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Thank you so much for accepting this award. But they came from someplace else. GATES: Well, the average African-American GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. 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. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. It doesn't exist. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. Or they stayed home, and they listened to or played music. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Omissions? 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). Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. Gates collaborates with genetic scientists, including Eric Lander and David Altshuler, of the Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Harvard professor George Church, progenitor of the Personal Genome Project; and personal genomics companies such as 23andMe and Knome Inc. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. Does race exist? They were buried next to each other. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. 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. 22,158 talking about this. And she throws herself on the casket. GATES: The Gateses all looked - my father looked white. The world just isn't like that. or subscribe. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. 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. 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? He introduced the notion ofsignifyinto represent Black literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. 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. In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. Brooke Williams. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. 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.. 5. And then you see this white girl next to Claudette Colbert. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. 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). They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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 I gave it to her for birthday. Yet no lens is provided through which to interpret this genealogical bombshell. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. In the first series, Gates learned that he has 50% European ancestry[22] and 50% African ancestry. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. 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. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash.
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