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. Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. Of course not. Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. Gates has joined the Sons of the American Revolution. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." 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. And remarkably, she's now able to. You were 9 years old when you found her picture. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 15:56. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. Race is a social construction. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. I love you. In front of all these people and all these viewers. And he mustered in in Winchester, Va., on Christmas Day, 1778, and was mustered down the Continental Army in April of 1784. 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? "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!" . DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. 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. Gates has such an eminent reputation", she said, "and so much gravitas. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. Thank God. 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. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). 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. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. And I have my mother's certificate from this vocational school where she learned to be a seamstress. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. And then black people would tell each other - they would say, you know, be sure to watch "The Late Late Show" tonight because "Imitation Of Life," which is my favorite film - 1934, with Claudette Colbert. Henry Louis - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? This is FRESH AIR. Thank God. They had two geneticists. Yeah. And it's just crazy. In an essay that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote in 2018 for the Encyclopdia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence, he identified voting as the most important form of resistance against hate. Later, he acquired and authenticated the manuscript of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a novel from the same period that scholars believe may have been written as early as 1853. The book tells stories about Gates's parents, his lifelong nickname, Skippy, and his brother, Rocky. Brooke Williams. My great-great-grandfather's now been found. Was Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian, Black? Roseanne Cash learned the One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. According to a police report, Gates refused to cooperate when he was later questioned in his home, which resulted in his arrest. 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. And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. In 2021, Gates received the PBS Beacon Award. And what's the real showstopper for me is the fact that my three sets of my fourth great grandparents lived 18 miles from where I was born. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. We'll hear more after a short break. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an American treasure. Coming up, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. But it's just not those two genetic lines. 3. "[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. 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. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. But we have a disproportionately higher risk of sickle cell. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. A Stroke -- in Your Twenties? - CBS News You might have breast cancer. Terry spoke to Henry Louis Gates in front of an audience last May when he was in Philadelphia to receive WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. "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 they would be published in the newspaper. 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. 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. We'd spit in a test tube. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. Thank you for being you. Director, Hutchins Center, African & African American Research, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. And I gave it to her for birthday. People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. [19], In 1995, Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. 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 grew up in neighboring Piedmont. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - The National Endowment for the Humanities [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. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. And then when we go - when you were buried, she would stand up. So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. 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?
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