henry louis gates jr daughters

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. [33], Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. You might have breast cancer. "Black people were so angry at me. GROSS: Yeah. And that night - and then daddy showed my brother and me, Dr. Paul Gates now, chief of dentistry at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital GATES: Well, it's the spirit of my mother. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. The former vice president has become the Democratic front-runner with primary victories across the country. GATES: OK. And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. GROSS: Whoa. My great-great-grandfather's now been found. 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. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Gates wrote, executive-produced, and hosted the series, which earned the 2013 Peabody Award and a NAACP Image Award. 5. "My father was so sad. From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. 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. 266. 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: While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of Black literature and Black culture, he does not advocate a "separatist" Black canon. If that date is correct, it would have precedence as the first-known novel written in the United States by an African American. GATES: I said, thank God. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. And I have my mother's certificate from this vocational school where she learned to be a seamstress. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. 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 . I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an American treasure. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. GATES: Yeah, yeah. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. ". GATES: And then when they did my admixture, I'm 50 percent sub-Saharan African and 50 percent European and virtually no Native American ancestry, which really pisses my family off. GROSS: Totally stunned. It's incredible. In "Root Worker," a short . Barack Obama. 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. [citation needed] Gates has been criticized by John Henrik Clarke, Molefi Kete Asante, and the controversial Maulana Karenga, each of whom has been questioned by others in academia.[15][16][17]. And they have a horse-drawn carriage. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. "[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. He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. The world just isn't like that. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. 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: So having done your, like, ancestry and everything, were you close to your parents? 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. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. That's the way it is. In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. [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. GROSS: I saw his picture in the obituary. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. I love you being black. 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. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. His mother. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. 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). And consequently, you are now a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. Even if you were free and you were black GATES: In most states, you weren't allowed to vote. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . GROSS: OK, for two weeks. We'll hear more after a short break. 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. GROSS: I've interviewed many people over the years. 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. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. 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. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. African-American - I love to joke about this. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. Thank God. And she throws herself on the casket. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. And I wanted to be from them. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. doi:10.2307/1208745. Race is a social construction. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. 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 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. Hollywood Life, Latest Hollywood Celebrity & Entertainment News. When the physical damage finally healed, his right leg was two inches shorter than his left. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. 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). But then President Obama called you both together. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. In the first series, Gates learned that he has 50% European ancestry[22] and 50% African ancestry. It comes from slavery. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. In 2020, Gates received the 400 Years of African American History Commission's Distinguished 400Award. We're all admixed. 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. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. I can do it. 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. Gates hosted Faces of America, a four-part series presented by PBS in 2010. GATES: But then they did another special test. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 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. Accuracy and availability may vary. I hope you never come back, you know? [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. GROSS: OK. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. GATES: And think about it. 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. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. 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. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. Omissions? GROSS: You had family that passed for white. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. Gates was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped. This is FRESH AIR. . GROSS: But it's making me think of how much death figured into your formative thoughts - the death of your grandfather, which led you to see the picture of your great-great-grandmother, everybody's deaths through your mother memorialized in those obituaries. It's called the Beer Summit. "[14], As a mediator between those advocating separatism and those believing in a Western canon, Gates has been criticized by both. You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. 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. And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. 1. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged Would you do it? In 2019, Gates received the Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award, 2019 for "The Annotated African American Folktales," which he edited with Maria Tatar. 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. This is FRESH AIR. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. African-Americans all think that they're a descendant from a Native American. GATES: But I have an announcement to make GATES: For you. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? Over . That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. 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. And then it was a property requirement. On the same night Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr . This is FRESH AIR. Was this an equal sexual relationship? Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. 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. As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. And she was a beautiful woman. Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. 3. 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? 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. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. Based on admixture testing, Longoria is told that she is 70 percent European, 27 percent Native American, and 3 percent African. 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. 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: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. You have to get permission. GROSS: Huge story. And I sat down. Does race exist? And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. 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. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the. And you got this from the 1870 census - (reading) that Jane Gates, age 51, female, mulatto, laundress and nurse, owns real estate valued at $1,400; born in Maryland; cannot read or write. 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. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. 2. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. He introduced the notion ofsignifyinto represent Black literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. 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. GROSS: And it's a way of outing people as not being who they think they are and not recognizing that we're all descended from so many different 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. Discomfort is also experienced by the viewer. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. 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? [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. 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 she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. 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. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? He argued that the material, which the government charged was profane, had important roots in African-American Vernacular English, games, and literary traditions, and should be protected. But the ancestry is being investigated against the will of the people being outed. You said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. Corrections? Gat. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. 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. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. I love you. I found the first edition when I was an adult. So that was a steal. 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. 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 learned a lot about the medium. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. At the age of 14, Gates suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint in his hip while playing touch football. 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. Gates was the host and co-producer of African American Lives (2006) and African American Lives 2 (2008) in which the lineage of more than a dozen notable African Americans was traced using genealogical and historical resources, as well as genealogical DNA testing. And my brother went off to dental school. 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. His mother cleaned houses. What do you think of that? In 2021, Gates was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and elected to the Johnsonsians (Society). And he mustered in in Winchester, Va., on Christmas Day, 1778, and was mustered down the Continental Army in April of 1784. 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. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. 6. 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. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. 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.

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