Gat. It's incredible. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic Credit: Getty What is Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s net worth? In 1989, Gates won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for editing the 30 volumes of "The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers". 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. 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. Clarke, Breena, and Susan Tifft, "A 'Race Man' Argues for a Broader Curriculum: Henry Louis Gates Jr. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities in 1991. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. 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. Or they stayed home, and they drew. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. 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? Brub, Michael (Spring 1994). www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged And we filmed the whole thing. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. But on the other hand, Terry, there were a lot of people who never forgave the country for electing a black man to the White House. 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. In 1973, Gates became the first African-American to receive a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship to study at Cambridge. 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. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Today's most compelling personalities discover the surprising stories in their own family trees. And I wanted to be from them. GATES: But then they did another special test. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Would you do it? [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. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. 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. I can do it. 7. I love you being black. 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. 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). GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." ". In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. It was a horrible, horrible thing. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. 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. I hope you never come back, you know? 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. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . [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. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. 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. They came in slave ships. 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". He has an estimated net worth of $1million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. 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. 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. GROSS: Have you been medically DNA tested? I found the first edition when I was an adult. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. He is on the boards of many notable institutions, including the, In 2010, Gates became the first African American to have his, In December 2014, Gates was announced as one of 14 recipients of a 2015. 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. 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. of Hutchins Center at @harvard. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is an American literary critic and scholar who is known for his pioneering theories of African literatures and African American literature. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. And another person to interpret my genetic data because it's 6 billion base pairs, right? 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. The world just isn't like that. I think you know where I'm heading here. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and professor at Harvard University, the seriess subtitles"The Promise of America, Making America, Becoming American, and Know Thyself"suggest assimilation, a melting pot rather than a tossed salad notion of the United States. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. 10. I only did black people. We delineate our individual and collective identities based upon inclusion in and exclusion from groups. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. But I saw that photograph and read her obituary on the day that we buried my father's father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. GATES: Yeah. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). GATES: That's true. And we have a wall of degrees at home. How 'Finding Your Roots' became a cultural phenomenon 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. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. Gates's critically acclaimed six-part PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, traced 500 years of African-American history to the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. Yeah. (Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s Britannica essay on Monuments of Hope.). GATES: I said, thank God. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. 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 at this point, I'd run over to my mother and say, Mama, I'll never pass for white, Mama. By Alondra Nelson. If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com. He draws on structuralism, post-structuralism, and semiotics to analyze texts and assess matters of identity politics. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. On DNA Testing And Finding His Own 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. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. 8. 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. 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. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. Stay informed daily on the latest news and advice on COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report. He was 97, as you said. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. 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. And it's just crazy. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? Thank you so much for accepting this award. GROSS: But you also wanted to know who were your African ancestors. 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. Biology matters. 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. In 2021, Gates was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and elected to the Johnsonsians (Society). Corrections? So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. The fruits of the unearthed family treehistorical coherence; redemptive narratives of migration and assimilation; intergenerational social mobilityare unevenly dispersed. [11] Additionally, he is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. [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. They were buried next to each other. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. GROSS: Huge story. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. 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. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Henry Louis Gates Bio, Wiki, Age, Wife, Finding Your Roots, and Net Worth And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. 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. 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. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. They lived together. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores 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. 4. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. And if you're Ashkenazi Jewish, you might have a higher risk for those kind of things or Tay-Sachs. February 12, 2010. doi:10.2307/1208745. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. 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. GATES: No. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. 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? And I learned a lot about the medium. 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. 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. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. And I think that that's sad. 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. Still, as the sociologist Troy Duster wrote in The Chronicle Review (Deep Roots and Tangled Branches, February 3, 2006) regarding the use of this analysis in the first African American Lives, these tests rel[y] excessively on the idea of 100-percent purity, a condition that could never have existed in human populations. We learn, too, that Yo-Yo Ma is 100 percent Asian, that Streep is 100 percent European, and, in a nod to comedy and to how quickly ancestry can become racial classification, that Colbert is 100 percent white man! What is one to make of an admixture test that reveals no mixture at all? Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: "Colored People" The forms of genealogical tracing that star in Faces function doubly: both splitting and lumping. It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) - Instagram And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? Advertisement 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. It's a lot of data to process. 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. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. But then President Obama called you both together. You have to get permission. Gates hosted Faces of America, a four-part series presented by PBS in 2010. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube 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. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. And he fought in - for the Continental Army. That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. 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. He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. GROSS: Totally stunned. However, in the 60s amid the Civil Rights Movement, Vivian had been the target of attention from white supremacists since they believed she looked Black. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. Mixing cutting-edge DNA research and old-school genealogical sleuthing, FINDING YOUR ROOTS . It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. So I would say, you know, no, I don't think so. And it's for my father. You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". Was Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian, Black? Roseanne Cash learned the ", 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. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. But I also watched TV. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Yet genealogy is, at the same time, put to the task of heightening awareness of human relatedness, be it experiential or biological. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. 6. Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. 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. 10 Things You Didn't Know About Henry Louis Gates Jr. 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. And when I was a young teenager, early adolescence, my father and I connected through the news. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. 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. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. 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. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. 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. His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. Yet no lens is provided through which to interpret this genealogical bombshell. Gates's web series, "Black History in Two Minutes (Or So)", which he executive produces with Robert F. Smith and Dyllan McGee, earned five Webby Awards, including for Best Podcast: Documentary and Best Video Series: Education & Discovery (2020), Best Podcast: Documentary and Best Social Video: Discovery & Education (2021) and Best Social Video: Discovery & Education (2022). The latter, tracing the ancestral history of contemporary figures, was especially popular. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Britannica Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. Gates has joined the Sons of the American Revolution. 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. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. Signifyin is the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? GROSS: I saw his picture in the obituary. Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And that is a long time. 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. 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. Terry. 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. 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". DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. As a Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. Accuracy and availability may vary. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. In 2010, Gates wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that discussed the role played by Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. 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." We'll hear more after a short break. The first time we met was when I interviewed him for "The Reflection Effect," an essay I wrote for O, the Oprah Magazine about the power of nostalgia to drive happiness and build resilience after loss. It's beautiful. But we can expect some acknowledgment and interpretation of technologys limits. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Louis-Gates-Jr. African American Registry - Biography of Herny Louis Gates, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. It comes from slavery. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. Jakes and Chris Tucker. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA?