In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. Author Herb Boyd, who teaches African and African-American history at the College of New Rochelle and City College, CUNY, argued that despite the complicity of African monarchs in the Atlantic slave trade, the United States "was the greatest beneficiary, and thus should be the main compensator". 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. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. 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. 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. [33], Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. 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. In the second season of the program, Gates learned that he is part of a genetic subgroup that may be descended from or related to the fourth-century Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages. And I showed up from Yale, and he became my mentor. We'd spit in a test tube. GATES: But then they did another special test. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. Gates Devastated by Arrest, Says Daughter - CBS News 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 . 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. They were buried next to each other. That belief is shared by Native groups that similarly objected to the Human Genome Diversity Project, as described in the work of Jenny Reardon and Kimberly TallBear. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. He has affirmed the value of the Western tradition, but has envisioned a more inclusive canon of diverse works sharing common cultural connections: "Every Black American text must confess to a complex ancestry, one high and low (that is, literary and vernacular) but also one white and black there can be no doubt that white texts inform and influence black texts (and vice versa), so that a thoroughly integrated canon of American literature is not only politically sound, it is intellectually sound as well. 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. ". As Elizabeth Alexander comments in Faces about her own family history, We dont even know the half of it. That profound uncertainty makes it all the more troubling that Gladwell translates the peculiar institution into a personal burden. Gates argued that the pervasiveness and centrality of signifyin in African and African American literature and music means that all such expression is essentially a kind of dialogue with the literature and music of the past. You might have breast cancer. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician, who told Gates' mother that his problem was 'psychosomatic'. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And they stayed home, and they read. And another person to interpret my genetic data because it's 6 billion base pairs, right? DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. (Note: Clotel (1853) by William Wells Brown is recognized as the first novel published by an African-American author, but it was both written and published in London.) Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? 1. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago. That shocking news is relayed to Gladwell in an exchange pregnant with anxiety and uneasiness on the part of both men. GROSS: And it made me think about - because I was just reading this - it made me think about how a president can set the tone for the country on so many things, including, you know, racial issues, immigration. 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. [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. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. So I would say, you know, no, I don't think so. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. One of eight children born to Edward St. Lawrence Gates and Helen Gertrude Redman Gates, he was the youngest of seven sons. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. 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. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. It's a lot of data to process. [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. 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 last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. 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. "[7], Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. And that is a long time. The daughter of prominent black scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said her father's arrest last week at his Cambridge home has deeply saddened him. Isn't that a cool thing? GROSS: I saw his picture in the obituary. On the same night Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr . 10 Things You Didn't Know About Henry Louis Gates Jr. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. ", 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. And it's just crazy. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). Jakes and Chris Tucker. 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. They - but you're absolutely right. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. How 'Finding Your Roots' became a cultural phenomenon 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 he fought in - for the Continental Army. And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. 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. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. And when they analyzed my mitochondrial DNA, it went to England. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. And if you're Ashkenazi Jewish, you might have a higher risk for those kind of things or Tay-Sachs. GROSS: I've interviewed many people over the years. 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). I'm here to ask, on behalf of our production staff, if you will be a guest in next season GATES: Of "Finding Your Roots." 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. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. 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. GROSS: So given this kind of really rich mix that you've just described and all the surprises that you've just described, what does race mean to you? GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. Gates and daughter vie on the Vineyard - The Boston Globe We started to roll. GROSS: Was that reflected in the way you wanted to say goodbye to your father at the funeral? He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. 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. The program documents a 3,000-mile journey Gates took through Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Tanzania, with his then-wife, Sharon Adams, and daughters, Liza and Meggie Gates. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. And I was in the hospital for six weeks. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." "[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. In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Yeah. It feels heartbreaking, Rosanne Cash admitted through tears after finding out that an ancestor of her mother, Vivian Liberto Cash the first wife of singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, who both received threats from the KKK was enslaved. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. The "You. . What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? 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 GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? Sunday Notes - uristocrat.com Now think about that. Both would be just as important. That seems to be one of the programs aspirations. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. In addition to Rosanne, Vivian and Johnny welcomed three other daughters: Cindy, Kathy and Tara. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Britannica GATES: Right after the Beer Summit, it all went away. And then it was a property requirement. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). 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. The minister would call on her. A new season of Finding Your Roots premieres January 4, 2022! We delineate our individual and collective identities based upon inclusion in and exclusion from groups. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. By Alondra Nelson. His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). No one's ever asked me that, but the answer's yes because I studied with a person who has been on your show, Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, when I went to the University of Cambridge. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." The Surprise in Cory Booker's Family Tree - The Root 22,158 talking about this. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. Family tree of Henry Louis GATES - Geneastar Well, I'll tell you a funny story. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? summa cum laude in history from Yale University and his M.A. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. "[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. 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. 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. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". Yeah. 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. Contemporary Literature. In 2010, Gates wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that discussed the role played by Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. or subscribe. African-Americans all think that they're a descendant from a Native American. GROSS: OK. 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: Yeah, I was 15 years old. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). Does race exist? From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. GATES: No. 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. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. He introduced the notion ofsignifyinto represent Black literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. 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. Fifty or a hundred years from now, he explains, my hope for the present generation is that a future Du Bois will look back on our time and say that, in this era of fracture, we drew a line. Both conventional and genetic tracing yield unanticipated results in Faces of America. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. 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)? 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. 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. 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. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. And GATES: Yeah. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. 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. In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. 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. 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. "[14], As a mediator between those advocating separatism and those believing in a Western canon, Gates has been criticized by both. Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. And we'd have the chess board set up. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. 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. Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. Recently, he has enraged many of his colleagues in the African-American studies fieldespecially those campaigning for government reparations for slaveryby insistently reminding them, as he did in a New York Times op-ed last year, that the folks who captured and sold Blacks into slavery in the first place were also Africans, working for profit. 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. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. It's called the Beer Summit. GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. In the early 1980s Gates rediscovered the earliest novel by an African American, Harriet E. Wilsons Our Nig (1859), by proving that the work was in fact written by an African American woman and not, as had been widely assumed, by a white man from the North. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. 9. Sergeant Who Arrested Gates Tells His Story : NPR GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. And what's the real showstopper for me is the fact that my three sets of my fourth great grandparents lived 18 miles from where I was born. 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. 6. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. And tears just streamed down my face. Of course not. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. Rather, he works for greater recognition of Black works and their integration into a larger, pluralistic canon. 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: It's a horrible way to start, in a way. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. While assignment to the haplogroup L3x, for example, indicates an ancestor in what is now Ethiopia at least 50,000 years ago, this interesting detail does not fill in the contours of the family tree. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. In 2021, Gates was honored by PEN America with its Audible Literary Service Award. A Stroke -- in Your Twenties? - CBS News But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. And I loved the news. 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. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. We're all admixed. It comes from slavery. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. This is called an admixture test. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. 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). And I sat down. 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.