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And they would be published in the newspaper. And it's just crazy. In Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992) and elsewhere, Gates argued for the inclusion of African American literature in the Western canon. 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. GROSS: OK. In 1973, Gates became the first African-American to receive a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship to study at Cambridge. Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? They lived together. What is race? Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. 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. 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? The womans suffering is assuaged at long last when she revisits the land and people that indelibly shaped her, including a local herbal healer. The world just isn't like that. 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. 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. So I want to read something that you wrote about her. GATES: Yeah. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. GATES: Don't you? Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. Time will tell. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950), Critical studies and reviews of Gates' work. So where does that come from? I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. And then it was a property requirement. So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. Season 8. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. 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. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. And tears just streamed down my face. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. In 2019, Gates received the Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award, 2019 for "The Annotated African American Folktales," which he edited with Maria Tatar. [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. In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. 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 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. Gates's prominence led to his being called as a witness on behalf of the controversial Florida rap group 2 Live Crew in an obscenity case. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. He notably explored genealogy as host of the series African American Lives (200608), Faces of America (2010), and Finding Your Roots (2012 ). 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. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. So I would say, you know, no, I don't think so. They came in slave ships. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. His writing includes pieces in The New York Times that defend rap music and an article in Sports Illustrated that criticizes Black youth culture for glorifying basketball over education. 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? After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. This is called an admixture test. And he'd make a couple - a move. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. Updates? Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. 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. GATES: I said, thank God. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. . It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. GROSS: It's mind-boggling. [7] In his major scholarly work, The Signifying Monkey, a 1989 American Book Award winner, Gates expressed what might constitute an African-American cultural aesthetic. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. 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. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. 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. GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. I am descended from - on my father's side - from a white man who impregnated a black woman and, on my mother's side, from a white woman who was impregnated by a black man. 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. 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 is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." GROSS: You had family that passed for white. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Thank you. So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. But mutations exist. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. 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). We'll hear more after a short break. 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. 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. I found the first edition when I was an adult. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. 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. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. Crockett Jr., Stephen A. The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. 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. [36], In 1974, Gates learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. And she throws herself on the casket. Biology matters. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. But I also watched TV. 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. 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. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. "Black people were so angry at me. Gates traced the practice of signifyin to Esu, the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, and to the figure of the signifying monkey, with which Esu is closely associated. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I regret we are out of time. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. Now think about that. GATES: Well, the average African-American GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. 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. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). As I have written elsewhere, this new kinship category, DNA cousins, or what Gates calls autosomal cousins, suggests that flexible kinship is being made on the new (or is it the rather old) terrain of biology. He's also written for Time magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. It's incredible. 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? And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. 2. It's beautiful. And he fought in - for the Continental Army. 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. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. What do you think of that? It was astonishing. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. You were 9 years old when you found her picture. 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. In front of all these people and all these viewers. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. 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. Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. In 2021, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. 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. Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. Terry. So I know that moment of transcendence is real.". So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? GROSS: Huge story. In 2021, Gates became the seventh recipient of the, In 2021, Gates received the prestigious Gold Medal from. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . 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. Hollywood Life, Latest Hollywood Celebrity & Entertainment News. Race is a social construction. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. At one point, Johnny even told the KKK in a statement that Vivian was white. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." 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. 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. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. And GATES: Yeah. DNA-derived genealogical information may also collide with other ways of rendering kinship and relation. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. African-Americans all think that they're a descendant from a Native American. Each of the genetic analyses used in Facesadmixture analysis, haplotype grouping, and relative mappingincorporate underlying assumptions and algorithms that may be incompatible with the other techniques. 6. 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. We started to roll. GROSS: But you also wanted to know who were your African ancestors. 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). [25][26][27] Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.[28]. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. Yeah. 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 was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped. 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. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. He was there in exile because he had been in prison and to be offering civil war for 27 months and was given a fellowship at the University of Cambridge. 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. Or they stayed home, and they drew. And she was a beautiful woman. Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. African-American - I love to joke about this. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. 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". 9. 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. And I gave it to her for birthday. Will we reach consilience"William Whewells term for the combining of information from different domains toward the unity of knowledgebetween conventional and genetic genealogy (and, moreover, among the types of genetic analysis at play)? In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. 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. As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. Many of us were troubled. 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. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. After receiving two fellowships in 1970, he took a leave of absence from Yale to visit Africa, working as an anesthetist in a hospital in Tanzania and then traveling through other African nations. Signifyin is the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative. And remarkably, she's now able to. And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. After that I would say I was a teacher. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. Read about President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. ", 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. 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. You said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. I love you. 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. [18] To build Harvard's visual, documentary, and literary archives of African-American texts, Gates arranged for the purchase of The Image of the Black in Western Art, a collection assembled by Dominique de Mnil in Houston. Hollywood Life A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. 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. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later.