NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. 35 (1): 212227. You know, no matter how different we appear phenotypically, under the skin we're 99.99 percent the same. And I hope they are. Amid discussion of Malcolm Gladwells roots, Gates discloses that the best-selling authors Jamaican maternal ancestor, a free woman of color, owned slaves of African descent. 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. 1. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. So we knew he was Irish. This is FRESH AIR. 2. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? 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. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. 7. In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. 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). DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. 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. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. 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? 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 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. 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 . And they have a horse-drawn carriage. 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.. I only did black people. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. 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. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. 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. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. [29] His op-ed begins and ends with the observation that it is very difficult to decide whether or not to give reparations to the descendants of American slaves, whether they should receive compensation for the unpaid labor of their ancestors, and their lack of rights. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. - like the Bible says? 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. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. Thank God. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. The work extended application of the concept of "signifyin'" to analysis of African-American works. [36], In 1974, Gates learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. By Alondra Nelson. The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. 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. 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. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. I killed my mama. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. 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. 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. Testing showed he had ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Ireland and England. 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. 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. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. [11] Additionally, he is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. After turning that corner, Sharon gave birth to Maggie, their first daughter, in July 1980, and Liza was born 18 months later. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. 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. And I think that that's sad. Henrys research also led him to discover a census from 1870, which revealed that Rosannes great-great grandfather a man named Lafayette Robsinson was mixed-race. Upon learning this, Rosanne recalled the long-running rumors of her mothers background and said, So, it was, at least, a small part true., Related: and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. 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)? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In 2010, Gates wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that discussed the role played by Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? It's a gift - and for my mom. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). 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). So you're saying I should have been an undertaker. Terry spoke to Henry Louis Gates in front of an audience last May when he was in Philadelphia to receive WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. Discomfort is also experienced by the viewer. 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. And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. Read about President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. And we have a wall of degrees at home. 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 . He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com. But I think that you should have to get permission before someone is creeping around in your DNA. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. GROSS: Yeah. Biology matters. When my daughters were born, I had them tested for sickle cell because - black people are not the only people in the world that have sickle cell. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. In an essay that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote in 2018 for the Encyclopdia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence, he identified voting as the most important form of resistance against hate. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. 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. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. We'll hear more after a short break. GATES: Yeah. The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network. 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. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. 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. 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.. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. 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. Does race exist? So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. And we'd have the chess board set up. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities in 1991. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). At the time, only Vivians European background had been known, and this discovery in her ancestryresurfaced thanks to a profile on Johnnys first wife in The Washington Poston May 16. GATES: Don't you? Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. And that is a long time. GROSS: Whoa. In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. And consequently, you are now a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. The fruits of the unearthed family treehistorical coherence; redemptive narratives of migration and assimilation; intergenerational social mobilityare unevenly dispersed. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." And my brother went off to dental school. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. 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 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. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." GATES: And think about it. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights.

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