People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. 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. Thank you for being you. And she was a beautiful woman. 4. 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. 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? They - but you're absolutely right. But it's just not those two genetic lines. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," right? 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. OK. 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. 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. So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. And I wanted to be from them. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). I only did black people. In the show, notable guests discover their family roots based on genealogical research and DNA results. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. GATES: Yeah. 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). On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: OK. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. Accuracy and availability may vary. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. And they stayed home, and they read. 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. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. This is FRESH AIR. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. Gat. His mother. 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. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. 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. In an article for Newsweek, journalist Lisa Miller reported on the reaction to Gates' article: The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable. 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. 7. Of course not. 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. 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? (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. Video of the day: Drake and 21 Savage's "Spin Bout U" NYC's Extra Butter and Russ & Daughters Join Forces on 50th-Anniversary PUMA Clyde NYC's Extra Butter and Russ & Daughters Join Forces on 50th-Anniversary PUMA ClydeTwo quintessential Lower East Side outposts celebrate the downtown staple sneaker.HypebeastDylan Kelly Culture: Henry The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. GATES: But then they did another special test. And she throws herself on the casket. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. Brooke Williams. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. ". And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? His name was John Redman. In 2021, Gates became the seventh recipient of the, In 2021, Gates received the prestigious Gold Medal from. And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." 8. ", The lesson of "Finding Your Roots" - we're all immigrants. [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. GATES: admixture, I'm 50 percent sub-Saharan African and 50 percent European and virtually no Native American ancestry, which really pisses my family off. 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. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. 35 (1): 212227. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Omissions? [10] At Harvard, Gates teaches undergraduate and graduate courses as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, an endowed chair he was appointed to in 2006, and as a professor of English. We are unable to fully display the content of this page. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. After that I would say I was a teacher. So that was a steal. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. - like the Bible says? 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? Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. 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. Thank you. They flew him in from San Francisco. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. "Black people were so angry at me. And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. I can do it. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. 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. 5. I love you. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). It was astonishing. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. 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. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. You know, no matter how different we appear phenotypically, under the skin we're 99.99 percent the same. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. Both would be just as important. In 2019, Gates received the Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award, 2019 for "The Annotated African American Folktales," which he edited with Maria Tatar. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. 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. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. Gatess own genealogical narrative, unfurled against the backdrop of images of his family gathering in the kitchen or tender interactions with his nonagenarian father, Henry Louis Gates Sr., is also quite moving. And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? But they came from someplace else. [25][26][27] Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.[28]. I mean, they know Donald Trump. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. In 2009, when I did "Faces Of America," a retail value of full genomic sequencing was $300,000. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. We defended the right of every American to vote. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. 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. Was this an equal sexual relationship? Gates also notes that it is equally difficult to decide who should get such reparations and who should pay them, as slavery was legal under the laws of the colonies and the United States. 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. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. 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. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. Would you do it? And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. But mutations exist. 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? 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. After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. of Hutchins Center at @harvard. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. And I showed up from Yale, and he became my mentor. This is called an admixture test. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, African American who fought in the Revolutionary War, Alfred I. duPontColumbia University Award, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, The National Institute of Social Sciences, Who's Black and Why: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. And GATES: Yeah. 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. "We deconstruct ethnic identities to show that when the lights came down, everyone was sleeping with everyone else -- that's the way human history goes!" . And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. And, although full genome sequencing is becoming more common and affordable, haplotype grouping relies upon the more narrow analysis of mtDNA and Y-DNA. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. Then he'd come back. While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). A Letter from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to his daughters Maggie and Lisa I enjoy the unselfconscious moments of a shared cultural intimacy, whatever form they take, when no one else is watching, when no white people are around. My great-great-grandfather's now been found. And he fought in - for the Continental Army. 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". And my mother used to write the eulogies, the obituaries for all the black people in the Potomac Valley, where I grew up. And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. 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. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. 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. He has insisted that Black literature must be evaluated by the aesthetic criteria of its culture of origin, not criteria imported from Western or European cultural traditions that express a "tone deafness to the Black cultural voice" and result in "intellectual racism". Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. But then President Obama called you both together. We'd spit in a test tube. Updates? So you GATES: Because of this white man. 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. )supply information about human population groups dating as far back as 150,000 years, the time horizon of admixture testing is the past 500 years. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. 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. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? 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. 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. It's - remember, it's - my father dragged my brother and me upstairs in his parents' home and made us wait why he'd look through half a dozen of his father's scrapbooks, about which we knew nothing - complete mystery, a secret to us - looking for that obituary. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? 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. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. As a literary historian committed to the preservation and study of historical texts, Gates has been integral to the Black Periodical Literature Project, a digital archive of Black newspapers and magazines created with financial assistance from the National Endowment for the Humanities. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. 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? And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. The series combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and historical research in genetics to tell guests about the lives and histories of their ancestors. 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. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. This is FRESH AIR. 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). 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 . 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. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. 6. 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. Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows And remarkably, she's now able to. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. 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. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 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. 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. Tune in for all-new episodes as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores fascinating ancestries and family mysteries for an array of . Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. 9. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. And my brother went off to dental school. 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. 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. "Signifyin'" refers to the significance of words that is based on context, and is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. In 2021, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. On hand again is admixture analysistesting that probes a persons full nuclear DNA for genetic indicators said to be suggestive of ancestry; percentages of African, American Indian, European, or Asian descent are inferred from those informative markers. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. In 2021, Gates was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and elected to the Johnsonsians (Society). Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. 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. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. They had two geneticists. 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. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. And it's for my father. Copyright 2019 NPR. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. 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. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. 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. He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. GROSS: But you also wanted to know who were your African ancestors. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. [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.
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