The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. 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. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. 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. Know Thyself, the final episode, which shares its title with the slogan of Knome Inc., focuses mostly on genetic genealogy. And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? GROSS: Yeah. 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. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. Gates and daughter vie on the Vineyard. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. That yearning manifests itself in many ways, from anomie to ethnic mutual-aid associations. From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. 10 Things You Didn't Know About 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 . And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? It's incredible. And she burst into tears because she used to read me that book all the time. This is FRESH AIR. Rosanne Cash became tearful after learning that her mom, Vivian Liberto Cash, had a Black great-great grandmother who was subjected to a life of slavery. What percent would be Native American? He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. Jakes and Chris Tucker. - like the Bible says? . GROSS: OK. 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). In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. I was more of a bookworm. 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. And I have my mother's certificate from this vocational school where she learned to be a seamstress. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. GATES: So if you were a Martian and came down to look at my DNA results, you'd think I was a white boy, you know? As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. And I make it every week over and over with "Finding Your Roots.". GATES: Don't you? He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. 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". GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. I go, goodbye. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged 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. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. Crockett Jr., Stephen A. What is race? 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". Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. We defended the right of every American to vote. 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. 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. 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? And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. In 2021, Gates became the seventh recipient of the, In 2021, Gates received the prestigious Gold Medal from. GATES: Yeah. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. One wishes that Gates, an inimitable literary scholar well before he became a pathbreaking Renaissance man, might have alluded to another of Edward P. Joness works, The Known World, a historical novel exploring life in an antebellum community in which both blacks and whites hold black slaves, by way of even partial explanation. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In the show, notable guests discover their family roots based on genealogical research and DNA results. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. GATES: And think about it. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. 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. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. Catch #FindingYourRoots Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings). 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. 8. Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. This is called an admixture test. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. 10. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. I mean, they know Donald Trump. 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. And it's just crazy. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, announced a slate of futuristic new policies in a campaign video Friday. PDF University of Washington School of Law Thank God. 7. It's a lot of data to process. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. Biology matters. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. or subscribe. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. Season 8. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." 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". 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. [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. The minister would call on her. And then when we go - when you were buried, she would stand up. And they have a horse-drawn carriage. 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". Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. 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. 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. And tears just streamed down my face. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. 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. GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. In 2020, Gates received the Muhammad Ali Voice of HumanityAward. GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. [23] He had known of some European ancestry, but was surprised to learn the high proportion; he also learned that he was descended from John Redman, a mulatto veteran in New England of the American Revolutionary War. My mother was a seamstress, as you know. So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. You might have breast cancer. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. Race is a social construction. Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Wikipedia And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. Henry Louis Gates Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images In 2009, when I did "Faces Of America," a retail value of full genomic sequencing was $300,000. Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. So you're saying I should have been an undertaker. Gates was born in Keyser, West Virginia,[2] to Pauline Augusta (Coleman) Gates (19161987) and Henry Louis Gates Sr. (c. 19132010). In the first series, Gates learned that he has 50% European ancestry[22] and 50% African ancestry. Tune in for all-new episodes as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores fascinating ancestries and family mysteries for an array of . And we filmed the whole thing. Sunday Notes - uristocrat.com 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. 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 Thank you for being you. 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. My Daddy, the Jailbird - The Daily Beast In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. That's a long time when you're young. 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 authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. How 'Finding Your Roots' became a cultural phenomenon Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. The two series demonstrated the many strands of ancestry, cultural heritage, and history among African Americans. That's the way it is. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the. The Surprise in Cory Booker's Family Tree - The Root So we knew he was Irish. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. GROSS: Is that too personal? It was a horrible, horrible thing. Hollywood Life, Latest Hollywood Celebrity & Entertainment News. And that is a long time. Over . There we go. 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. After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. And I wanted to be from them. 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: GATES: He wasn't even out the door, and I moved into his bedroom. After a month at Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. So reading this - that she's a mulatto; she'd been a slave - the first question that comes to my mind - and I don't know if it was the first question that came to yours - was, was she raped by the man who owned her? Isn't that a cool thing? GATES: I said, thank God. The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. "[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. His mother cleaned houses. GATES: That's true. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores [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. And she was a beautiful woman. 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). GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." (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.) The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? And I was shocked by that. Yet no lens is provided through which to interpret this genealogical bombshell. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. 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." So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? 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. Yeah. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. They lived together. GATES: OK. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. It's the damnedest thing I ever heard. Would you do it? Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. 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. In 1973, Gates became the first African-American to receive a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship to study at Cambridge. [10] At Harvard, Gates teaches undergraduate and graduate courses as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, an endowed chair he was appointed to in 2006, and as a professor of English. A Stroke -- in Your Twenties? - CBS News 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. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. But I think that you should have to get permission before someone is creeping around in your DNA. 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. But then President Obama called you both together. 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. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. And consequently, you are now a member of the Sons of the American Revolution. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. They had two geneticists. He earned his B.A. The latter, tracing the ancestral history of contemporary figures, was especially popular. And remarkably, she's now able to. Finding Your Roots | Season 8 DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. GROSS: There's some people who are trying to use genealogy to out people who are white supremacists and say, oh, you think you're so pure white, that that's such a big deal? So where does that come from? "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). It's beautiful. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. And the average African-American has less than 1 percent Native American ancestry, but they have 24 percent European ancestry. 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. Gates was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of Black literature and Black culture, he does not advocate a "separatist" Black canon. GROSS: But you also wanted to know who were your African ancestors. Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. summa cum laude in history from Yale University and his M.A. In 2021, the National World War Two Museum recognized Gates with its American Spirit Award. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. 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. As a literary historian committed to the preservation and study of historical texts, Gates has been integral to the Black Periodical Literature Project, a digital archive of Black newspapers and magazines created with financial assistance from the National Endowment for the Humanities. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. GATES: No. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube He applied the notion to the interpretation of slave narratives and showed how it informs the works of Phillis Wheatley, Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, the early African American writers of periodical fiction, Ralph Ellison, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, and Soyinka. . Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And I learned a lot about the medium. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. 1. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic Credit: Getty What is Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s net worth? 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. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: Yeah. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. We're listening to the interview Terry recorded with Harvard historian, author and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates before an audience at WHYY in Philadelphia last May.