And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. My mother was a seamstress, as you know. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. 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. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. 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). 3. And it's just crazy. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later. 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. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. 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. So I'm out there. Historical evidence suggests that intraracial slavery was uncommon, and that when it did occur, sometimes free men and women of color purchased enslaved relatives and friends to rescue them from the cruelty of the chattel system, if not the social death of slave status. GROSS: But you also wanted to know who were your African ancestors. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. It was astonishing. Henry Louis Gates Bio, Wiki, Age, Wife, Finding Your Roots, and Net Worth 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? GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? My great-great-grandfather's now been found. 1. Corrections? In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. 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. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. After that I would say I was a teacher. Yeah. That's the way it is. The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. GATES: I said, thank God. 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic Credit: Getty What is Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s net worth? But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. 266. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). Gates has joined the Sons of the American Revolution. 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. Crockett Jr., Stephen A. Henry Louis Gates, Sr. (1913 - 2010) - Genealogy - geni family tree I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. 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. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. 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. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Advertisement GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? 1. In 2021, Gates became the seventh recipient of the, In 2021, Gates received the prestigious Gold Medal from. There we go. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. 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. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the. And he'd make a couple - a move. Finding Your Roots | Season 8 Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. At the age of 14, Gates suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint in his hip while playing touch football. After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. 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. 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. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. 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. Now think about that. Copyright 2019 NPR. Alondra Nelson is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she also holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. And consequently, you are now a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. 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." 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. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - The National Endowment for the Humanities And you got this from the 1870 census - (reading) that Jane Gates, age 51, female, mulatto, laundress and nurse, owns real estate valued at $1,400; born in Maryland; cannot read or write. If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. 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. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. 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. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. GATES: That's true. So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. It's called the Beer Summit. 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. Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. 8. GATES: Right after the Beer Summit, it all went away. 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. 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. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. GROSS: Was that reflected in the way you wanted to say goodbye to your father at the funeral? OK. In the show, notable guests discover their family roots based on genealogical research and DNA results. So that was a steal. doi:10.2307/1208745. 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. In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. And then it was a property requirement. 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. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. I can do it. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. The new season of his TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now showing on PBS. Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. I'm going to be black. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- [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. He was 97, as you said. GATES: For which she paid cash. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. Du Bois Center there at Harvard, one of Gat. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. GROSS: I saw his picture in the obituary. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. I think you know where I'm heading here. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). They lived together. He looked white. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." I found the first edition when I was an adult. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. GATES: Well, the average African-American GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. 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. And when I was a young teenager, early adolescence, my father and I connected through the news. You said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. He loved the news. This ancestor was Vivians maternal great-great grandmother, a Black woman named Sarah Shields, whom Rosanne learned about for the first time ever during an episode of the PBS show Finding Your Rootsthat aired in Feb. 2021. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. And it's for my father. Johnny Cash's Daughter Reacts To Mom's Black Ancestry On TV - Hollywood Gates' Daughter Speaks Out CBS 2.04M subscribers Subscribe 53K views 13 years ago Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama. And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. (Note: Clotel (1853) by William Wells Brown is recognized as the first novel published by an African-American author, but it was both written and published in London.) According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. He's also written for Time magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. ". 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. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. 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. [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. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? He learned the truth when he appeared on an episode of the new PBS series Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, with his fair skin and blue eyes, had long . . GROSS: OK. 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. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: Whoa. GROSS: So when you had your DNA done, did you have a wish for a certain area of Africa or a certain group of African people who you wanted to be your ancestors? February 12, 2010. I only did black people. 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. That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. [1] He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. 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. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012, Gates has been host of the television series Finding Your Roots on PBS. 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Recipients Announced Accuracy and availability may vary. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. 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 . Opinion | The 'Lost Cause' That Built Jim Crow - The New York Times Other TV credits included the documentary miniseries Wonders of the African World (1999), Black in Latin America (2011), The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), and Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (2019). In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. 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. In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. 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, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. 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. So we knew he was Irish. So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. Sgt. People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. In 2009, when I did "Faces Of America," a retail value of full genomic sequencing was $300,000. GATES: No. Gates and daughter vie on the Vineyard - The Boston Globe 22,158 talking about this. Season 8. In 1980 Gates became codirector of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Yale. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. Or they stayed home, and they drew. And they have a horse-drawn carriage. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 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. So I want to read something that you wrote about her. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. And my mother used to write the eulogies, the obituaries for all the black people in the Potomac Valley, where I grew up. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. In "Root Worker," a short . ", 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. And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. I hope you never come back, you know? Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. And before I started school - I started school when I was, well, 5, turning 6 - I would get dressed up, and I would go to church with my mom. We'll hear more after a short break. Whereas prior shows relied heavily on analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome (Y-DNA), yielding results that included at most about 2 percent of ones complete genetic inheritance, in Faces techniques are used that probe deeper into more of the genome. We'd spit in a test tube. Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, announced a slate of futuristic new policies in a campaign video Friday. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. And I was shocked by that. GATES: And then when they did my admixture, I'm 50 percent sub-Saharan African and 50 percent European and virtually no Native American ancestry, which really pisses my family off. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. So reading this - that she's a mulatto; she'd been a slave - the first question that comes to my mind - and I don't know if it was the first question that came to yours - was, was she raped by the man who owned her? The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. But it's just not those two genetic lines. 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 claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. Was this an equal sexual relationship? 9. But mutations exist. Henry Louis Gates Daughters Elizabeth is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke in May 2010. His mother cleaned houses. GROSS: There's some people who are trying to use genealogy to out people who are white supremacists and say, oh, you think you're so pure white, that that's such a big deal? GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. 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. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". PDF University of Washington School of Law Omissions? 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. In 2020, Gates received the 400 Years of African American History Commission's Distinguished 400Award. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. 7. They - but you're absolutely right. 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.
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