Thank God. "Finding Your Roots" has become a phenomenon -- and it all began with host Henry Louis Gates Jr. receiving a piece of angry fan mail. You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. Coproduced, hosted, and written by Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W.E.B. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. (Rockefeller lost in 1972 but later served two terms as governor.). GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. 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. [20], In September 1995, Gates narrated a five-part abridgement (by Margaret Busby) of his memoir Colored People on BBC Radio 4.[21]. I regret we are out of time. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. He notably explored genealogy as host of the series African American Lives (200608), Faces of America (2010), and Finding Your Roots (2012 ). The Native American writer Erdrich refuses to assent to genetic ancestry testing, because she understands her DNA to belong to her community. 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. Yet genealogy is, at the same time, put to the task of heightening awareness of human relatedness, be it experiential or biological. 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 Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. And we filmed the whole thing. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. Biology matters. They flew him in from San Francisco. 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. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- And they fought in the Revolutionary War. 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. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. The world just isn't like that. Remember all the talk about post-racialism that GATES: We thought when Obama - we had turned a corner, and we could, you know, beat our - the plowshares into pruning hooks - right? Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. "[14], As a mediator between those advocating separatism and those believing in a Western canon, Gates has been criticized by both. He reported:[37], "I had this spiritual event where it was like the top of my head opened up. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. The arrest attracted national attention after U.S. President Barack Obama controversially declared that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" in arresting the 59-year-old Gates. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. 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. They were buried next to each other. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. Crockett Jr., Stephen A. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. And we'd have the chess board set up. What do you think of that? And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. What does Henry Louis Gates, Jr., see as the most important form of resistance against hate? Du Bois Center there at Harvard, one of They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. . And we have a wall of degrees at home. In "Root Worker," a short . These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. And they stayed home, and they read. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. 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? GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. 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. 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. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. I go, goodbye. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. But it's just not those two genetic lines. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. 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). In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. Thank you so much for accepting this award. And my mother used to write the eulogies, the obituaries for all the black people in the Potomac Valley, where I grew up. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels . Gates wrote a book about Jay Rockefeller's campaign to be governor of West Virginia. This is FRESH AIR. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. And so then they came in - this is a big deal back in 2008. GATES: Yeah. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest continues to cause controversy after President Obama criticized police action, Michelle Gielan reports. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. And remarkably, she's now able to. 1. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. Tune in for all-new episodes as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores fascinating ancestries and family mysteries for an array of . Race is a social construction. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. 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. 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. 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. Root seeking, on the one hand, produces idiosyncratic narratives. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. In 2010, Gates wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that discussed the role played by Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. I only did black people. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. I love you being black. We might think of Faces of America, then, as an allegory of the simultaneous diversity of our experiences and the deep interpenetration of our histories. 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. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published. "Black people were so angry at me. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. Obama then held a much-publicized meeting with Gates and James Crowley, the officer who had arrested Gates, which became informally known as the beer summit because Obama invited the two for beers in the White House Rose Garden. 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.