Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. It's - remember, it's - my father dragged my brother and me upstairs in his parents' home and made us wait why he'd look through half a dozen of his father's scrapbooks, about which we knew nothing - complete mystery, a secret to us - looking for that obituary. In front of all these people and all these viewers. And it's just crazy. It comes from slavery. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. 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. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. 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. 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. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. And I couldn't imagine what, but two sets of those fourth great-grandparents are from my mother's line. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. My great-great-grandfather's now been found. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. In 2021, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania honored Gates with itsFoundersAward. 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: Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge - Boston Magazine It's a lot of data to process. [1] He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. "We deconstruct ethnic identities to show that when the lights came down, everyone was sleeping with everyone else -- that's the way human history goes!" . In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. 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. GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. Brub, Michael (Spring 1994). 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). Read about President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. But it's just not those two genetic lines. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. Yeah. And then you see this white girl next to Claudette Colbert. 1. So I'm out there. We delineate our individual and collective identities based upon inclusion in and exclusion from groups. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. We'll hear more after a short break. 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. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. 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. You might have breast cancer. 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. 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". 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. [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. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. I mean, they know Donald Trump. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. So you're saying I should have been an undertaker. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. 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. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. 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. 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". 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. Alondra Nelson is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she also holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. And I sat down. 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 Coproduced, hosted, and written by Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W.E.B. GATES: Yeah. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. And she throws herself on the casket. He received the 2008 Ralph Lowell Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the highest honor in the field of public television. And that is a long time. I only did black people. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. African-American - I love to joke about this. 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. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. In 1980 Gates became codirector of the Black Periodical Literature Project at Yale. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. It's called the Beer Summit. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. Biology matters. How 'Finding Your Roots' became a cultural phenomenon So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. 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. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: Yeah. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. The "You. Graduated from Piedmont High School in 1968, Gates attended Potomac State College of West Virginia University before transferring to Yale University, from which, in 1973, he earned a bachelor of arts degree in history, summa cum laude, and he gained membership in Phi Beta Kappa. His mother. Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr. 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Recipients Announced And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. Family tree of Henry Louis GATES - Geneastar What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. 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. We have the great privilege of having Professor Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard University, the Director of the W.B. He wrote his first column (about Little League games) at age 12 for the Piedmont Herald in West Virginia and continued to write for his high school and college newspapers. 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. 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. But I also watched TV. I hope you never come back, you know? And they stayed home, and they read. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." GATES: Yeah, yeah. As Faces of America concludes, the connections among several of the participants are revealed using a technique developed by Altschuler and his colleague Mark Daly that is similar to 23andMes Relative Finder. These DNA cousins share several million of the three billion base pairs, suggesting a common ancestor a few or tens of generations in the past. 5. I think you know where I'm heading here. 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. 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. 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. It's a gift - and for my mom. So we knew he was Irish. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. That's not the way it was. What percent would be from Europe? In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. "[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. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. I regret we are out of time. This is FRESH AIR. 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. 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. We'd spit in a test tube. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. Yet genealogy is, at the same time, put to the task of heightening awareness of human relatedness, be it experiential or biological. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. 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. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. The Surprise in Cory Booker's Family Tree - The Root Race is a social construction. The minister would call on her. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. What is race? And I gave it to her for birthday. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. - like the Bible says? 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. 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. Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. When asked by National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Bruce Cole to describe his work, Gates responded: "I would say I'm a literary critic. African-Americans all think that they're a descendant from a Native American. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, And tears just streamed down my face. GATES: admixture, I'm 50 percent sub-Saharan African and 50 percent European and virtually no Native American ancestry, which really pisses my family off. GATES: Yeah. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. [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. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. They had two geneticists. 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. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. So I want to read something that you wrote about her. It was astonishing. A Stroke -- in Your Twenties? - CBS News Henry Louis Gates Bio, Wiki, Age, Wife, Finding Your Roots, and Net Worth 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. Both would be just as important. A white doctor misdiagnosed the injury as psychosomatic after Gates told him he wanted to become a doctor, Gates wrote in a New York Times article, "About Men: A Giant Step," in 1990. 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. And we'd have the chess board set up. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. 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)? And then it was a property requirement. Henry Louis Gates' Daughter: "Now It's An Issue Of Race - YouTube GROSS: Totally stunned. Was Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian, Black? Roseanne Cash learned the And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. Gates Devastated by Arrest, Says Daughter - CBS News It's beautiful. They were buried next to each other. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. Corrections? It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. "My father was so sad. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. He was 97, as you said. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. 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.