Logan Costello Supernanny Now, Articles H

And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. All rights reserved. And you - the last scene is the funeral. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. 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. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. 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. Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, announced a slate of futuristic new policies in a campaign video Friday. 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. 9. In 1992, he received a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times. Yeah. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. Copyright 2019 NPR. The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, 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. Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. DNA-derived genealogical information may also collide with other ways of rendering kinship and relation. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family - The Chronicle of Higher Education When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. We have the great privilege of having Professor Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard University, the Director of the W.B. 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. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. Henry Louis Gates Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. How 'Finding Your Roots' became a cultural phenomenon This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. But they came from someplace else. So you GATES: Because of this white man. Mixing cutting-edge DNA research and old-school genealogical sleuthing, FINDING YOUR ROOTS . GROSS: I saw his picture in the obituary. 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. In an article for Newsweek, journalist Lisa Miller reported on the reaction to Gates' article: The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable. 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. We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. Vivian filed for divorce in 1967, and Johnny went on to marry singer June Carter Cash. I regret we are out of time. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Cambridge MA - Facebook Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. Gates was born in Keyser, West Virginia,[2] to Pauline Augusta (Coleman) Gates (19161987) and Henry Louis Gates Sr. (c. 19132010). I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. It comes from slavery. Over . Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. GROSS: So having done your, like, ancestry and everything, were you close to your parents? Know Thyself, the final episode, which shares its title with the slogan of Knome Inc., focuses mostly on genetic genealogy. As editor-in-chief of the online magazine the Root, Gates has a background in journalism. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) - Instagram And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. Barack Obama. 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. And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. That's not the way it was. So I'm out there. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. Henry Louis Gates reveals celebrities' family history in 'Finding Your 3. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. Does race exist? GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. 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. It's called the Beer Summit. He learned the truth when he appeared on an episode of the new PBS series Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, with his fair skin and blue eyes, had long . The recipient of fifty-six honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a . 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 claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. JSTOR1208745. 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. You said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. [11] Additionally, he is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. Gat. Joe Biden launched his presidential bid in April with a bold . They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. African-Americans all think that they're a descendant from a Native American. And remarkably, she's now able to. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. Henry Louis - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard Was Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian, Black? Roseanne Cash learned the 4. My Daddy, the Jailbird - The Daily Beast And we filmed the whole thing. We cant hold a documentary for a general audience responsible for not presenting a complex metanarrative on the philosophy of genetic science. 7. (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.) GATES: The Gateses all looked - my father looked white. Ostensibly one familys illness narrative, the story is also an allegory about how the experience of migrationwhether forced through slavery, pogroms, or economic vulnerability, or motivated by hope for a better futuremay generate a latent or conscious yen for community. Is this instance of intraracial slavery an anomaly? I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And another person to interpret my genetic data because it's 6 billion base pairs, right? He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. ". 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. President Barack Obama, a friend of Gates, said that the Cambridge Police Department had acted "stupidly" in the arrest. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. Brooke Williams. I mean, they know Donald Trump. [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 they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. And they stayed home, and they read. 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. They - but you're absolutely right. 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: Don't you? GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. 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. Catch #FindingYourRoots Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings). Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. GROSS: So when you had your DNA done, did you have a wish for a certain area of Africa or a certain group of African people who you wanted to be your ancestors? This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. 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 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. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. Joness tale offers some insight into the appeal of genealogy, another effort at reconnection with home and kin, and ballast against the tumult of modern living. ", 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. Because of the injury, Gates now uses a cane when he walks.[6][7]. A Letter from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to his daughters Maggie and Lisa I enjoy the unselfconscious moments of a shared cultural intimacy, whatever form they take, when no one else is watching, when no white people are around. 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. In "Root Worker," a short . He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. doi:10.2307/1208745. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores Du Bois Center there at Harvard, one of 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. In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. They had two geneticists. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). [3], Gates learned through research that his family is descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. GROSS: But you also wanted to know who were your African ancestors. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". "We deconstruct ethnic identities to show that when the lights came down, everyone was sleeping with everyone else -- that's the way human history goes!" . - like the Bible says? GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Of course not. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. 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. And we have a wall of degrees at home. And your father was a tailor, which is why we GATES: And my mother went to Atlantic City. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? Gates graduated as valedictorian of his high school class in 1968 and attended a local junior college before enrolling at Yale University, where he received a bachelors degree in history in 1973. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. 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. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions.