It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. 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. And tears just streamed down my face. GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. Time will tell. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. 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. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. Brooke Williams. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. And we have a wall of degrees at home. It's a gift - and for my mom. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. He has an estimated net worth of $1million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. It was a horrible, horrible thing. "[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. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, 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. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. In Root Worker, a short story by Edward P. Jones, a chronically ill African-American woman who migrated to Washington, D.C., from North Carolina returns to the South with her husband and daughter, a physician, in search of the cure that has eluded her for decades in the North. We fought to keep the pipeline of opportunity open, and, despite our ideological differences, we found a way to link arms against every form of bigotry.. Later, he acquired and authenticated the manuscript of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a novel from the same period that scholars believe may have been written as early as 1853. Jakes and Chris Tucker. 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. But mutations exist. After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. ". He draws on structuralism, post-structuralism, and semiotics to analyze texts and assess matters of identity politics. Still, as the sociologist Troy Duster wrote in The Chronicle Review (Deep Roots and Tangled Branches, February 3, 2006) regarding the use of this analysis in the first African American Lives, these tests rel[y] excessively on the idea of 100-percent purity, a condition that could never have existed in human populations. We learn, too, that Yo-Yo Ma is 100 percent Asian, that Streep is 100 percent European, and, in a nod to comedy and to how quickly ancestry can become racial classification, that Colbert is 100 percent white man! What is one to make of an admixture test that reveals no mixture at all? 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. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. That seems to be one of the programs aspirations. 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? Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 7. At the age of 14, Gates suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint in his hip while playing touch football. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. But I think that Donald Trump's rhetoric and some of his actions - for instance, after Charlottesville - encourage unfavorable race relations in the United States. They came in slave ships. After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. He's also written for Time magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. "[13] After his 2003 NEH lecture, Gates published in the same year a book entitled The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, about the early African-American poet. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr. And we'd have the chess board set up. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. 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. 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. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. In July 1976, Gates was promoted to the post of lecturer in Afro-American Studies, with the understanding that he would be promoted to assistant professor upon completion of his doctoral dissertation. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. Signifyin is the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative. But I also watched TV. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. After that I would say I was a teacher. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. So we knew he was Irish. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. A Stroke -- in Your Twenties? - CBS News By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Recipients Announced That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). In 2010, Gates wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that discussed the role played by Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. That's a long time when you're young. [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. 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. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. My great-great-grandfather's now been found. And when they analyzed my mitochondrial DNA, it went to England. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. 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. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. Finding Your Roots | Season 8 And I wanted to be from them. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . Henry Louis Gates, Sr. (1913 - 2010) - Genealogy - geni family tree More than anyone else, the historian is responsible for "entertaining the idea remotely" that Gates could become a writer. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube And then black people would tell each other - they would say, you know, be sure to watch "The Late Late Show" tonight because "Imitation Of Life," which is my favorite film - 1934, with Claudette Colbert. In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. 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. 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. "My father was so sad. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. Biology matters. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. And I was shocked by that. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. of Hutchins Center at @harvard. James . GROSS: Is that too personal? Thank God. That belief is shared by Native groups that similarly objected to the Human Genome Diversity Project, as described in the work of Jenny Reardon and Kimberly TallBear. It was just misdiagnosed. We might think of Faces of America, then, as an allegory of the simultaneous diversity of our experiences and the deep interpenetration of our histories. GROSS: Yeah. 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. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. 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. I only did black people. 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. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. He was 97, as you said. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. GATES: OK. And I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). But they came from someplace else. 35 (1): 212227. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. 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". And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. GATES: And think about it. Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. This is FRESH AIR. The fruits of the unearthed family treehistorical coherence; redemptive narratives of migration and assimilation; intergenerational social mobilityare unevenly dispersed. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." That's not the way it was. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. The book tells stories about Gates's parents, his lifelong nickname, Skippy, and his brother, Rocky. 2. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. 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? 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? And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. The show's third season was postponed after it was discovered that actor Ben Affleck had persuaded Gates to omit information about his slave-owning ancestors. 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. In 1980 Gates became codirector of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Yale. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. GATES: Yeah. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) - Instagram Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family - The Chronicle of Higher Education 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. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. February 12, 2010. GATES: The Gateses all looked - my father looked white. [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. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). 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. Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, announced a slate of futuristic new policies in a campaign video Friday. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. 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. 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). From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. Gates developed the notion of signifyin in Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self (1987) and The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988). It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born Sept. 16, 1950, in Keyser, W.Va. His father worked at the local paper mill during the day and as a janitor at a telephone company at night. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. 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. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. (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.) 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 . 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. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. It's a lot of data to process. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. 8. 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. So that was a steal. Both would be just as important. 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. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. They lived together. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. 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. . 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?
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