Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. This program examined the genealogy of 12 North Americans of diverse ancestry: Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdrich, Malcolm Gladwell, Eva Longoria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor of Jordan, Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep, and Kristi Yamaguchi. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. 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. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. In 2021, Gates became the seventh recipient of the, In 2021, Gates received the prestigious Gold Medal from. In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". The world just isn't like that. 4. They had two geneticists. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. That yearning manifests itself in many ways, from anomie to ethnic mutual-aid associations. GATES: He wasn't even out the door, and I moved into his bedroom. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. 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. Corrections? I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. He earned his B.A. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged Omissions? And I sat down. It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. You know, no matter how different we appear phenotypically, under the skin we're 99.99 percent the same. I love you. [36], In 1974, Gates learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. 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. 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. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. It's incredible. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). There we go. But mutations exist. 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. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. 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. 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. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. 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? You might have breast cancer. 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. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. He has an estimated net worth of $1million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. 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. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. The former vice president has become the Democratic front-runner with primary victories across the country. [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. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. 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". 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. But I also watched TV. Historical evidence suggests that intraracial slavery was uncommon, and that when it did occur, sometimes free men and women of color purchased enslaved relatives and friends to rescue them from the cruelty of the chattel system, if not the social death of slave status. It doesn't exist. So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. 10. Thank you. While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of Black literature and Black culture, he does not advocate a "separatist" Black canon. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. 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. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Gat. 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. 3. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. We'll hear more after a short break. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. ", The lesson of "Finding Your Roots" - we're all immigrants. Know Thyself, the final episode, which shares its title with the slogan of Knome Inc., focuses mostly on genetic genealogy. 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. Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). It comes from slavery. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? GATES: OK. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. GROSS: Yeah. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. They flew him in from San Francisco. 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. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. 1. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. And, although full genome sequencing is becoming more common and affordable, haplotype grouping relies upon the more narrow analysis of mtDNA and Y-DNA. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. They came in slave ships. 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. He introduced the notion ofsignifyinto represent Black literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. So I'm out there. Gates and daughter vie on the Vineyard. Time will tell. I mean, they know Donald Trump. Sgt. 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. I regret we are out of time. GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." 1. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. The series is the latest iteration of Gatess innovative, fascinating foray into the nexus of genealogy and genetic ancestry testing that began four years ago with African American Lives (and continued with African American Lives 2 and Oprahs Roots). GATES: But I have an announcement to make GATES: For you. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. And then when we go - when you were buried, she would stand up. Or they stayed home, and they drew. The fruits of the unearthed family treehistorical coherence; redemptive narratives of migration and assimilation; intergenerational social mobilityare unevenly dispersed. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. In 2019, Gates received the Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award, 2019 for "The Annotated African American Folktales," which he edited with Maria Tatar. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. 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. 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. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jr. (Design School Visiting Committee 1984-89) in honor of their daughters, Brooke Higgins Bing Williams, Harvard College 1988, and Eden Branford Bing Williams, Harvard . GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? And at this point, I'd run over to my mother and say, Mama, I'll never pass for white, Mama. On the same night Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr . 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. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. 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. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." GATES: Yeah. Jakes and Chris Tucker. 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. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. 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. Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. This is FRESH AIR. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. GATES: Well, the average African-American GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. GATES: For which she paid cash. In 1973, Gates became the first African-American to receive a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship to study at Cambridge. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. However, in the 60s amid the Civil Rights Movement, Vivian had been the target of attention from white supremacists since they believed she looked Black. Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . They were buried next to each other. So that was a steal. I hope you never come back, you know? Contemporary Literature. As of February 2022, Gates, 71, serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and as the Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: Totally stunned. Of course not. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." I'm going to be black. And I'm wondering if being laid up from an injury for a while affected your desire to - and your time to immerse yourself in books. And she throws herself on the casket. And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise, "Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Biography, Books, & Facts", "African American Lives The Past Is Another Country 2 4of4 YouTube", "Finding Your Roots: Decoding Our Past Through DNA", "The biggest brother: interview with Henry Louis Gates, black America's foremost intellectual", "Yale Afro-Am Chair Resigns After Remarks of Yale Pres", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. to continue at Harvard", "Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade", Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, "Henry Louis Gates Jr. announced as editor-in-chief of the new Oxford Dictionary of African American English", "What It Means to Be Black in Latin America", "Ben Affleck's slave-owning ancestor 'censored' from genealogy show", "Ben Affleck Demanded PBS Suppress His Slave-Owning Ancestry", "Citing Ben Affleck's 'Improper Influence,' PBS Suspends 'Finding Your Roots', "PBS' 'Finding Your Roots' returning in January after Ben Affleck controversy", "West Virginia Weslesyan College biography", "Black Studies' New Star: Henry Louis Gates Jr", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. On 'The Black Church' and His Own Bargain with Jesus", "MacArthur Fellos Program: Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Literary Critic | Class of June 1981", "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement", "Mister Jefferson and The Trials of Phillis Wheatley,", "2015 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award Winners Announced", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. Receives duPont Award for The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross", "Read Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Acceptance Speech for the duPont Award", "Chicago Tribune Announces 2019 Literary and Heartland Award Winners", "Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Named Don M. Randel Award Recipient | News | The Harvard Crimson", "Encarta Africana, the First Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Black History and Culture, Launches Today", Bibliography of Gates's publications and responses to it, African American National Biography Project, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_Louis_Gates_Jr.&oldid=1142289654, African-American history of West Virginia, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows, Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Television personalities from West Virginia, African-American television personalities, Members of the American Philosophical Society, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2009, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Gates has received numerous honorary degrees, including a. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. James . But I think that one of the mottos of finding your roots is that there is no such thing as racial purity, that these people who have fantasies, these white supremacists, of this Aryan brotherhood, you know, this Aryan heritage that is pure and unsullied and untainted, that they're living in a dream world. 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. As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. 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. GROSS: Yeah. I was more of a bookworm. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. In 2021, Gates was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and elected to the Johnsonsians (Society). "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. I can do it. 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. 266. 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. This is FRESH AIR. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. GATES: The Gateses all looked - my father looked white. GATES: Yeah, yeah. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. This is FRESH AIR. He argues, "It can't be real as a subject if you have to look like the subject to be an expert in the subject,"[13] adding, "It's as ridiculous as if someone said I couldn't appreciate Shakespeare because I'm not Anglo-Saxon. A new season of Finding Your Roots premieres January 4, 2022! of Hutchins Center at @harvard. 8. Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. What percent would be from Europe? GROSS: OK. 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. Discomfort is also experienced by the viewer. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. That's the way it is. And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. Biology matters. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. 35 (1): 212227. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. Cambridge police officers were dispatched. And remarkably, she's now able to. This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. The first time we met was when I interviewed him for "The Reflection Effect," an essay I wrote for O, the Oprah Magazine about the power of nostalgia to drive happiness and build resilience after loss. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. All rights reserved. And a doctor from the Philippines taught me to play chess at West Virginia University Medical Center in Morgantown, W.Va. And he'd come around in rounds. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. 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. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. GATES: Yeah. And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. 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. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." And tears just streamed down my face. 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. or subscribe. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. In 1984, Gates was recruited by Cornell University with an offer of tenure; Gates asked Yale whether the university would match Cornell's offer, but they declined. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. ", 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. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. 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. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. [25][26][27] Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.[28]. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). GROSS: Huge story. )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. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. Or they stayed home, and they listened to or played music. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. 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. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. [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.
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