He has affirmed the value of the Western tradition, but has envisioned a more inclusive canon of diverse works sharing common cultural connections: "Every Black American text must confess to a complex ancestry, one high and low (that is, literary and vernacular) but also one white and black there can be no doubt that white texts inform and influence black texts (and vice versa), so that a thoroughly integrated canon of American literature is not only politically sound, it is intellectually sound as well. For example, while haplogroupssets of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are gene-sequence variants that are inherited together and categorized by letter and number (A, L3D, R, U5b, etc. 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. GATES: I said, thank God. Signifyin is the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative. 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. 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". 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). That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. What percent would be from Europe? That's a long time when you're young. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. So we knew he was Irish. 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. "Black people were so angry at me. Author Herb Boyd, who teaches African and African-American history at the College of New Rochelle and City College, CUNY, argued that despite the complicity of African monarchs in the Atlantic slave trade, the United States "was the greatest beneficiary, and thus should be the main compensator". The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. 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. 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. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. But mutations exist. Du Bois Center there at Harvard, one of 5. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. 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. After that I would say I was a teacher. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. [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. of Hutchins Center at @harvard. Tune in for all-new episodes as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores fascinating ancestries and family mysteries for an array of . GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. And I showed up from Yale, and he became my mentor. And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. JSTOR1208745. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). Corrections? It was astonishing. "My father was so sad. GROSS: Totally stunned. February 12, 2010. Then he'd come back. 266. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. 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. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. And remarkably, she's now able to. 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. 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. 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. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. Mixing cutting-edge DNA research and old-school genealogical sleuthing, FINDING YOUR ROOTS . While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later. 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. Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. The "You. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. In 2021, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. And I wanted to be from them. It doesn't exist. OK. 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. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and professor at Harvard University, the seriess subtitles"The Promise of America, Making America, Becoming American, and Know Thyself"suggest assimilation, a melting pot rather than a tossed salad notion of the United States. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. Rosanne Cash became tearful after learning that her mom, Vivian Liberto Cash, had a Black great-great grandmother who was subjected to a life of slavery. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). [11] Additionally, he is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. In the years that followed he earned a reputation as a literary archaeologist by recovering and collecting thousands of lost literary works (short stories, poems, reviews, and notices) by African American authors dating from the early 19th to the mid-20th century. GROSS: And it made me think about - because I was just reading this - it made me think about how a president can set the tone for the country on so many things, including, you know, racial issues, immigration. 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. She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. 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. It's a gift - and for my mom. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. So you're saying I should have been an undertaker. 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. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. [35] As of 2021, Gates is married to historian Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset. We have the great privilege of having Professor Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard University, the Director of the W.B. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. It was a horrible, horrible thing. GROSS: Huge story. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. 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 only did black people. Even if you were free and you were black GATES: In most states, you weren't allowed to vote. So I'm out there. I found the first edition when I was an adult. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. GATES: Right after the Beer Summit, it all went away. I killed my mama. 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. They came in slave ships. We'd spit in a test tube. 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. 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. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago. 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. This program examined the genealogy of 12 North Americans of diverse ancestry: Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdrich, Malcolm Gladwell, Eva Longoria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor of Jordan, Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep, and Kristi Yamaguchi. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. That seems to be one of the programs aspirations. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. 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. So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. My mother was a seamstress, as you know. 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. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. 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. Catch #FindingYourRoots Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings). Henry Louis Gates Daughters Elizabeth is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke in May 2010. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. Remember all the talk about post-racialism that GATES: We thought when Obama - we had turned a corner, and we could, you know, beat our - the plowshares into pruning hooks - right? In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. The book tells stories about Gates's parents, his lifelong nickname, Skippy, and his brother, Rocky. 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. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. GATES: For which she paid cash. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. And it's for my father. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. They - but you're absolutely right. After receiving a doctoral degree in English language and literature in 1979, Gates taught literature and African American studies at Yale University, Cornell University, Duke University, and Harvard University, where he was appointed W.E.B. And you - the last scene is the funeral. You have to get permission. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. The minister would call on her. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. [citation needed] Gates has been criticized by John Henrik Clarke, Molefi Kete Asante, and the controversial Maulana Karenga, each of whom has been questioned by others in academia.[15][16][17]. [36], In 1974, Gates learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. 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. That's not the way it was. It's the damnedest thing I ever heard. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." A new season of Finding Your Roots premieres January 4, 2022! [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. 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. "[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. When asked by National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Bruce Cole to describe his work, Gates responded: "I would say I'm a literary critic. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. Yeah. 3. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. GATES: Yeah, yeah. And then it was a property requirement. What percent would be Native American? They flew him in from San Francisco. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. 6. Was this an equal sexual relationship? Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. Even with the aid of cutting-edge 21st-century genealogydigitized archival records and genetic analysiswe may never know the ins and outs of how Gladwells fifth-great-grandmother came to be a slaveholder. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. I love you being black. 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. And most DNA companies in the United States will tell you that they have never tested an African-American who is 100 percent from sub-Saharan Africa. His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of Black literature and Black culture, he does not advocate a "separatist" Black canon. GROSS: It's mind-boggling. GROSS: I've interviewed many people over the years. 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. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. 9. And I was exhilarated. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. 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. We'll hear more after a short break. And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. And my brother went off to dental school. Now think about that. Updates? DNA-derived genealogical information may also collide with other ways of rendering kinship and relation. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Since 2012, he has hosted a PBS television series, entitled Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr..[24] The second season of the series, featuring 30 prominent guests across 10 episodes, with Gates as the narrator, interviewer, and genealogical investigator, aired on PBS in fall 2014. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. ", The lesson of "Finding Your Roots" - we're all immigrants. 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". Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. Moreover, these genetic techniques may be inconsistent with the aims of conventional genealogy. GATES: And think about it. Amid discussion of Malcolm Gladwells roots, Gates discloses that the best-selling authors Jamaican maternal ancestor, a free woman of color, owned slaves of African descent. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. And then you see this white girl next to Claudette Colbert. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. He argued that the material, which the government charged was profane, had important roots in African-American Vernacular English, games, and literary traditions, and should be protected. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. That yearning manifests itself in many ways, from anomie to ethnic mutual-aid associations. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. And when they analyzed my mitochondrial DNA, it went to England. GATES: Don't you? It's beautiful. 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 was just misdiagnosed. 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. In 2020, Gates received the 400 Years of African American History Commission's Distinguished 400Award. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. In front of all these people and all these viewers. Know Thyself, the final episode, which shares its title with the slogan of Knome Inc., focuses mostly on genetic genealogy. And that is a long time. GATES: OK. or subscribe. He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. Graduated from Piedmont High School in 1968, Gates attended Potomac State College of West Virginia University before transferring to Yale University, from which, in 1973, he earned a bachelor of arts degree in history, summa cum laude, and he gained membership in Phi Beta Kappa. 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. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. By Alondra Nelson. These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. Both would be just as important. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. Many of us were troubled. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. Thank God. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. 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. Thank you for being you. In "Root Worker," a short . Gates traced the practice of signifyin to Esu, the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, and to the figure of the signifying monkey, with which Esu is closely associated. And I was in the hospital for six weeks. Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. 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. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. Race is a social construction. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. 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. The daughter of prominent black scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said her father's arrest last week at his Cambridge home has deeply saddened him. And when I was a young teenager, early adolescence, my father and I connected through the news. 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.
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