In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. They lived together. 22,158 talking about this. And I loved the news. 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. GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? He was a free negro, as we would have said then. [33], Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. Henry was born in Patterson Creek, W.Va., on June 8, 1913. The furor over the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. erupted again Thursday following sharp criticism of the Cambridge Police Department by President Obama. GATES: Right after the Beer Summit, it all went away. Many of us were troubled. GATES: Well, I was on "The View." Thank God. This is FRESH AIR. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago. 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). 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. 5. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. 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. This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. That's the way it is. And she throws herself on the casket. Faces expands on those outings in topic and technique, branching out from the genealogies of prominent blacks to those of a multiracial, multiethnic group of notables, including the actors Eva Longoria and Meryl Streep, the writers Louise Erdrich and Malcolm Gladwell, the musician Yo-Yo Ma, the poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander, the comedian Stephen Colbert, and Gates himself. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. 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. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good Black people. His name was John Redman. [32], The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about race relations and law enforcement throughout the United States. "Black people were so angry at me. At Yale University in 1973, he was one of 12 students selected as a Scholar of the House, a program that allows seniors to write a book or compose a symphony or follow a similar passion instead of taking classes. We'll hear more after a short break. [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. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. 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. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. And, although full genome sequencing is becoming more common and affordable, haplotype grouping relies upon the more narrow analysis of mtDNA and Y-DNA. They flew him in from San Francisco. 6. 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. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. "[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. And GATES: Yeah. 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. Gates was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, but the charges were dropped. [34] They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. 1. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? And I showed up from Yale, and he became my mentor. It was just misdiagnosed. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. 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. 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. 1. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. The series combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and historical research in genetics to tell guests about the lives and histories of their ancestors. 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. So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. 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. And before I started school - I started school when I was, well, 5, turning 6 - I would get dressed up, and I would go to church with my mom. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. Gates also notes that it is equally difficult to decide who should get such reparations and who should pay them, as slavery was legal under the laws of the colonies and the United States. They were buried next to each other. GATES: The Gateses all looked - my father looked white. GROSS: OK. His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. Following a two-year stay at Duke University, he was recruited to Harvard University in 1991. [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. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. Gates was an Anisfield-Wolf prize winner in 1989 for The Schomburg Library of Women Writers. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. And he'd make a couple - a move. The show's third season was postponed after it was discovered that actor Ben Affleck had persuaded Gates to omit information about his slave-owning ancestors. 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. He introduced the notion of signifyin to represent African and African American literary and musical history as a continuing reflection and reinterpretation of what has come before. 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. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. And we'd have the chess board set up. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. Was this an equal sexual relationship? And I think that that's sad. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). GROSS: OK. [18] To build Harvard's visual, documentary, and literary archives of African-American texts, Gates arranged for the purchase of The Image of the Black in Western Art, a collection assembled by Dominique de Mnil in Houston. I am descended from - on my father's side - from a white man who impregnated a black woman and, on my mother's side, from a white woman who was impregnated by a black man. In 2019, Gates received the Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award, 2019 for "The Annotated African American Folktales," which he edited with Maria Tatar. 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. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. GATES: Don't you? It's a gift - and for my mom. In a February episode of the PBS show, "Finding Your Roots," host and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Rosanne Cash with her DNA results and family genealogy. 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. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. In "Root Worker," a short . 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. We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. [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. Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. For $50,000, they sequenced my father, me and then 12 of the guests who were in "Faces Of America" - not a full genome but a dense genotyping. In 1973 he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where one of his tutors was the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 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. of Hutchins Center at @harvard. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. And I couldn't imagine what, but two sets of those fourth great-grandparents are from my mother's line. This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: Totally stunned. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. 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. 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 you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. . and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. 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. 266. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. Jakes and Chris Tucker. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). 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. 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. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. Du Bois Center there at Harvard, one of 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)? GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. Thank you so much for accepting this award. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. Terry. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. 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". That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. And they stayed home, and they read. 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. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. His mother cleaned houses. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. The work extended application of the concept of "signifyin'" to analysis of African-American works. 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. American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. It comes from slavery. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. 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. Hollywood Life And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. GATES: No. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. That seems to be one of the programs aspirations. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. "Signifyin'" refers to the significance of words that is based on context, and is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. But I also watched TV. 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. So we knew he was Irish. The fruits of the unearthed family treehistorical coherence; redemptive narratives of migration and assimilation; intergenerational social mobilityare unevenly dispersed. And if you're Ashkenazi Jewish, you might have a higher risk for those kind of things or Tay-Sachs. Over . GATES: Yeah. He loved the news. They came in slave ships. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. 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. 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. 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. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. Of course not. In the first series, Gates learned that he has 50% European ancestry[22] and 50% African ancestry. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. 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. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . JSTOR1208745. 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. The world just isn't like that. 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. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to associate professor in 1984. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. Or they stayed home, and they drew. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. GROSS: It's mind-boggling. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. In October 1975, he was hired by Charles Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. "My father was so sad. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out CBS 2.04M subscribers Subscribe 53K views 13 years ago Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. We're all admixed. 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. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. And you - the last scene is the funeral. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. February 12, 2010. Elizabeth Gates, the daughter of prominent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke just four months ago. Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. And another person to interpret my genetic data because it's 6 billion base pairs, right? DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. You know, no matter how different we appear phenotypically, under the skin we're 99.99 percent the same. 10. 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. In 2022, the Boston Public Library honored Gates with its Literary Lights Award. 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.