My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". 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 so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. 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. Gates serves as the chair for the Selection Committee for the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship Program that is sponsored by the Fletcher Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Fletcher Asset Management. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. Mixing cutting-edge DNA research and old-school genealogical sleuthing, FINDING YOUR ROOTS . ", The Letters page of The New York Times of April 25, 2010, featured criticism and examination of Gates's views in response to his op-ed. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. And remarkably, she's now able to. 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. Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. The new season of his TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now showing on PBS. [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. 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. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. 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. Since 1995, Gates has been the jury chair for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which honors written works that contribute to society's understanding of racism and the diversity of human culture. 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. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr. Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . And we have a wall of degrees at home. . Or they stayed home, and they drew. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. I go, goodbye. [8] The first African American to be awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Gates sailed on the Queen Elizabeth 2 for England, where he studied English literature at Clare College, Cambridge and earned his Ph.D. degree. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. 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? GATES: That's true. 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. 2. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He was 97, as you said. American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950), Critical studies and reviews of Gates' work. The "You. I mean, they know Donald Trump. So we knew he was Irish. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). I think you know where I'm heading here. And I hope they are. [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. 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. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. It comes from slavery. 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. Even if you were free and you were black GATES: In most states, you weren't allowed to vote. Gates was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- Would you do it? 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 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. We'd spit in a test tube. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. JSTOR1208745. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. 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. 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. And they would be published in the newspaper. 1. 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. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. OK. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. They were buried next to each other. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., called the book "an attempt to size Lincoln up through the eyes of Black Americans who visited the 'people's house' that their people had built and in whose names they were determined to win the fight for freedom and citizenship." Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? 22,158 talking about this. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. And I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." I regret we are out of time. What is race? 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. So what I did - my father and I agreed, for science, that we'd put our genomes in the public domain so that any scholar or student can study our genome. And we filmed the whole thing. GATES: No. 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. 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. It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. Joness tale offers some insight into the appeal of genealogy, another effort at reconnection with home and kin, and ballast against the tumult of modern living. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. Over . And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. [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]. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. His mother cleaned houses. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. Jakes and Chris Tucker. Moreover, these genetic techniques may be inconsistent with the aims of conventional genealogy. GROSS: Huge story. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. From the 1980s Gates edited a number of critical anthologies of African American literature, including Black Literature and Literary Theory (1984), Bearing Witness: Selections from African American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century (1991), and (with Nellie Y. McKay) The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997). 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). Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. My dad got into a public battle with the KKK and so I knew about that, and it was scary, Rosanne said during the PBS special. 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? Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. GATES: I said, thank God. 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. 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. [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. My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," 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? But on the other hand, Terry, there were a lot of people who never forgave the country for electing a black man to the White House. 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. 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 They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. 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. 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. 10. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. What do you think of that? 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. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. 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. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. He draws on structuralism, post-structuralism, and semiotics to analyze texts and assess matters of identity politics. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. I only did black people. GROSS: Was that reflected in the way you wanted to say goodbye to your father at the funeral? And tears just streamed down my face. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. 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. 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. The current PBS documentary miniseries Faces of America traces the family histories of 12 prominent people who, over the course of several hours and with the aid of conventional and genetic genealogy, come to fasten their varied tribulations and successes to the arc of ancestry. 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. After that, everything stopped. 3. 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. GROSS: So having done your, like, ancestry and everything, were you close to your parents? So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows They - but you're absolutely right. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. So that was a steal. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. 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. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician, who told Gates' mother that his problem was 'psychosomatic'. 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). Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. 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. 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. 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. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. Based on admixture testing, Longoria is told that she is 70 percent European, 27 percent Native American, and 3 percent African. And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. Both would be just as important. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. Catch #FindingYourRoots Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings). "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. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. 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". And I think that that's sad. 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. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. At the age of 14, Gates suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint in his hip while playing touch football. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. GATES: Yeah, yeah. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. James . Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. Brub, Michael (Spring 1994). It's a lot of data to process. The world just isn't like that. The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . Yet genealogy is, at the same time, put to the task of heightening awareness of human relatedness, be it experiential or biological. GROSS: OK. 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. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. And we'd have the chess board set up. 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. I love you. 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. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. GATES: Yeah, I loved books. I found the first edition when I was an adult. 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. So I know that moment of transcendence is real.". Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. . And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).