Henry Louis Gates Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. 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 he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. "[14], As a mediator between those advocating separatism and those believing in a Western canon, Gates has been criticized by both. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." At one point, Johnny even told the KKK in a statement that Vivian was white. It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. 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. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. DNA-derived genealogical information may also collide with other ways of rendering kinship and relation. But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. 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. 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. The minister would call on her. This is called an admixture test. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. 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. Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, considered Gates's emphasis on there being "little discussion" of African involvement in the slave trade to be unfounded, stating that "today, virtually every history of slavery and every American history textbook includes this information". The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. As Elizabeth Alexander comments in Faces about her own family history, We dont even know the half of it. That profound uncertainty makes it all the more troubling that Gladwell translates the peculiar institution into a personal burden. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. 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. 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. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. 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. 3. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. And we filmed the whole thing. That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. In 2006, Gates wrote and produced the PBS documentary "African American Lives," the first documentary series to use genealogy and genetic science to provide an understanding of African-American history. In front of all these people and all these viewers. 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 you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. Gates has joined the Sons of the American Revolution. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. 6.4K views 13 years ago Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates, takes a few minutes to call CNN from Martha's Vineyard and talk to Don Lemon about the. [25][26][27] Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.[28]. GROSS: It's mind-boggling. [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. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. [36], In 1974, Gates learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. 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. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." 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. 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. Sergeant Who Arrested Gates Tells His Story : NPR Jakes and Chris Tucker. GROSS: But it's making me think of how much death figured into your formative thoughts - the death of your grandfather, which led you to see the picture of your great-great-grandmother, everybody's deaths through your mother memorialized in those obituaries. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. Isn't that a cool thing? We're all admixed. Hollywood Life 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. 266. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. 22,158 talking about this. And at this point, I'd run over to my mother and say, Mama, I'll never pass for white, Mama. He was 97, as you said. 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. GROSS: Totally stunned. Sgt. GATES: And think about it. In 2020, Gates received the 400 Years of African American History Commission's Distinguished 400Award. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, That belief is shared by Native groups that similarly objected to the Human Genome Diversity Project, as described in the work of Jenny Reardon and Kimberly TallBear. James . 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. Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. They lived together. 1. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. When I did Morgan Freeman's family tree, it was obvious through his DNA that he was descended from a white man who was an overseer on a plantation in Mississippi. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. In July 2022, Gates announced that he would serve as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, a new glossary of language that will contain popular phrases used by historical Black figures and modern-day Black Americans. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. And if you're Ashkenazi Jewish, you might have a higher risk for those kind of things or Tay-Sachs. or subscribe. And we'd have the chess board set up. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? In "Root Worker," a short . Time will tell. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic Credit: Getty What is Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s net worth? He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. Crockett Jr., Stephen A. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. GATES: No. I go, goodbye. 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. Soyinka persuaded Gates to study literature instead of history; he also taught him much about the culture of the Yoruba, one of the largest Nigerian ethnic groups. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. And she was a beautiful woman. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. He introduced the notion of signifyin to represent African and African American literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. Henry Louis - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard 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. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. February 12, 2010. And a doctor from the Philippines taught me to play chess at West Virginia University Medical Center in Morgantown, W.Va. And he'd come around in rounds. So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? 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? If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. Alexanders relation to Colbert or Longorias to Ma underscores a central theme of the series: Underlying the many faces of America is a fundamental genetic unity. Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. 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 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. GROSS: Is that too personal? I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. And, although full genome sequencing is becoming more common and affordable, haplotype grouping relies upon the more narrow analysis of mtDNA and Y-DNA. 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. 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. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: Yeah. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. Gat. Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. Or they stayed home, and they listened to or played music. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. Thank you. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. 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. This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. What is race? American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950), Critical studies and reviews of Gates' work. . August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. We defended the right of every American to vote. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . Mixing cutting-edge DNA research and old-school genealogical sleuthing, FINDING YOUR ROOTS . The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . Du Bois Professor of the Humanities in 1991. 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. He's also written for Time magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. And I think that that's sad. In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. I'm here to ask, on behalf of our production staff, if you will be a guest in next season GATES: Of "Finding Your Roots." So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. He looked white. 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. But I also watched TV. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. GROSS: OK. On your mother's side, you found out that you had three men in the family who were freed slaves - freed before 1776. People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? But it's just not those two genetic lines. Was this an equal sexual relationship? Johnny Cash's Daughter Reacts To Mom's Black Ancestry On TV - Hollywood And it's for my father. And they would be published in the newspaper. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores 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. And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. The book tells of Gates's childhood growing up in the 1950s in a close-knit extended family and an equally close-knit small-town community. 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. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. 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. She is author of the forthcoming Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Politics of Health and Race, and is at work on a book about genetic ancestry tracing and African diaspora culture. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. 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. Stay informed daily on the latest news and advice on COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report. GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. 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.. In an essay that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote in 2018 for the Encyclopdia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence, he identified voting as the most important form of resistance against hate. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. 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. While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. 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". You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. And I learned a lot about the medium. My Daddy, the Jailbird - The Daily Beast And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. It's a gift - and for my mom. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. He is on the boards of many notable institutions, including the, In 2010, Gates became the first African American to have his, In December 2014, Gates was announced as one of 14 recipients of a 2015.