Other TV credits included the documentary miniseries Wonders of the African World (1999), Black in Latin America (2011), The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), and Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (2019). Advertisement His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. And he mustered in in Winchester, Va., on Christmas Day, 1778, and was mustered down the Continental Army in April of 1784. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. And you - the last scene is the funeral. 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. I told them that I did not want to know if I had any of the sort of - I don't know - the slam-dunk genes for Alzheimer's disease. And we filmed the whole thing. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. While at Yale, Gates mentored Jodie Foster, who majored in African-American Literature there and wrote her thesis on author Toni Morrison. It was Gates vs. Gates on Martha's Vineyard this week. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. February 12, 2010. The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. Graduated from Piedmont High School in 1968, Gates attended Potomac State College of West Virginia University before transferring to Yale University, from which, in 1973, he earned a bachelor of arts degree in history, summa cum laude, and he gained membership in Phi Beta Kappa. And he'd make a couple - a move. 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. In 1974, Carol Stacks important ethnography All Our Kin (Harper & Row) suggested the plasticity of the designation cousin well beyond consanguinity. Season 8. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. He looked white. Gates has joined the Sons of the American Revolution. And we have a wall of degrees at home. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Jr. (Design School Visiting Committee 1984-89) in honor of their daughters, Brooke Higgins Bing Williams, Harvard College 1988, and Eden Branford Bing Williams, Harvard . OK. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Gates was also involved with various television documentaries that were aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Many of us were troubled. When I did Morgan Freeman's family tree, it was obvious through his DNA that he was descended from a white man who was an overseer on a plantation in Mississippi. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. GROSS: Huge story. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." 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. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. Ozzy & Sharon Osbournes Grandkids: Meet Their Grandchildren, Click to Subscribe to Get Our Free HollywoodLife Daily Newsletter, Rosanne Cash: 5 Things To Know About Johnnys Daughter Whos Speaking Out About His June Carter Affair, 'Finding Your Roots' Preview: Jeff Goldblum Reveals How His Mom Helped Him Fight A Bully, Ozzy & Sharon Osbournes Grandkids: Meet Their Grandchildren, Beautiful Nature-Inspired Baby Names Used By Celebrity Parents, Did Vanderpump Rules Tom Cheated on Ariana With Raquel? He notably explored genealogy as host of the series African American Lives (200608), Faces of America (2010), and Finding Your Roots (2012 ). And she throws herself on the casket. He loved the news. And, although full genome sequencing is becoming more common and affordable, haplotype grouping relies upon the more narrow analysis of mtDNA and Y-DNA. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. The minister would call on her. These American faces, we learn, are the descendants of colonialists, aboriginals, overseers, bondspeople, interned citizens, and religious pilgrims. 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. And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. Terry. You said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (@henrylouisgates) Instagram photos and videos henrylouisgates Verified Follow 519 posts 129K followers 173 following Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Dir. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. Alondra Nelson is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she also holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. 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. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. 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. It doesn't exist. Finding Your Roots | Season 8 Gates' Daughter Speaks Out - YouTube And at this point, I'd run over to my mother and say, Mama, I'll never pass for white, Mama. But mutations exist. 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". But the ancestry is being investigated against the will of the people being outed. or subscribe. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. And so then they came in - this is a big deal back in 2008. And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. 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. 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. 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 Jr.: Head Negro In Charge. He earned his B.A. And I was exhilarated. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. And there were a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump as a repudiation vote. Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. After that I would say I was a teacher. I hope you never come back, you know? GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? In Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992) and elsewhere, Gates argued for the inclusion of African American literature in the Western canon. We defended the right of every American to vote. Now think about that. 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. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. [35] As of 2021, Gates is married to historian Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset. 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. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. 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. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." Fifty or a hundred years from now, he explains, my hope for the present generation is that a future Du Bois will look back on our time and say that, in this era of fracture, we drew a line. "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. In 1973, Gates became the first African-American to receive a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship to study at Cambridge. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - The National Endowment for the Humanities The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes.