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. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. 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. It's beautiful. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. He applied the notion to the interpretation of slave narratives and showed how it informs the works of Phillis Wheatley, Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, the early African American writers of periodical fiction, Ralph Ellison, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, and Soyinka. Speaks onstage during the 'Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise' panel discussion at the PBS portion of the 2016. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." Gates currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. If the findings of conventional genealogical research produce fireworks, the results of the DNA analysis generate shock and awe. And I was in the hospital for six weeks. My dad got into a public battle with the KKK and so I knew about that, and it was scary, Rosanne said during the PBS special. 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. Gates was an Anisfield-Wolf prize winner in 1989 for The Schomburg Library of Women Writers. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. 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. African-American - I love to joke about this. 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. I killed my mama. 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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. or subscribe. Soyinka persuaded Gates to study literature instead of history; he also taught him much about the culture of the Yoruba, one of the largest Nigerian ethnic groups. "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. And I loved the news. Gates argued that the pervasiveness and centrality of signifyin in African and African American literature and music means that all such expression is essentially a kind of dialogue with the literature and music of the past. In 2021, Gates became the seventh recipient of the, In 2021, Gates received the prestigious Gold Medal from. The event led to public criticism of the Cambridge police department by U.S. Pres. In Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992) and elsewhere, Gates argued for the inclusion of African American literature in the Western canon. 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. Know Thyself, the final episode, which shares its title with the slogan of Knome Inc., focuses mostly on genetic genealogy. That belief is shared by Native groups that similarly objected to the Human Genome Diversity Project, as described in the work of Jenny Reardon and Kimberly TallBear. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. It was just misdiagnosed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an American treasure. 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. 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. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots Posts Reels Videos Tagged 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. But when I started the series, it wasn't called "Finding Your Roots." So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. His name was John Redman. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise, "Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Biography, Books, & Facts", "African American Lives The Past Is Another Country 2 4of4 YouTube", "Finding Your Roots: Decoding Our Past Through DNA", "The biggest brother: interview with Henry Louis Gates, black America's foremost intellectual", "Yale Afro-Am Chair Resigns After Remarks of Yale Pres", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. to continue at Harvard", "Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade", Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, "Henry Louis Gates Jr. announced as editor-in-chief of the new Oxford Dictionary of African American English", "What It Means to Be Black in Latin America", "Ben Affleck's slave-owning ancestor 'censored' from genealogy show", "Ben Affleck Demanded PBS Suppress His Slave-Owning Ancestry", "Citing Ben Affleck's 'Improper Influence,' PBS Suspends 'Finding Your Roots', "PBS' 'Finding Your Roots' returning in January after Ben Affleck controversy", "West Virginia Weslesyan College biography", "Black Studies' New Star: Henry Louis Gates Jr", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. On 'The Black Church' and His Own Bargain with Jesus", "MacArthur Fellos Program: Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Literary Critic | Class of June 1981", "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement", "Mister Jefferson and The Trials of Phillis Wheatley,", "2015 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award Winners Announced", "Henry Louis Gates Jr. Receives duPont Award for The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross", "Read Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Acceptance Speech for the duPont Award", "Chicago Tribune Announces 2019 Literary and Heartland Award Winners", "Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Named Don M. Randel Award Recipient | News | The Harvard Crimson", "Encarta Africana, the First Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Black History and Culture, Launches Today", Bibliography of Gates's publications and responses to it, African American National Biography Project, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_Louis_Gates_Jr.&oldid=1142289654, African-American history of West Virginia, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows, Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Television personalities from West Virginia, African-American television personalities, Members of the American Philosophical Society, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2009, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Gates has received numerous honorary degrees, including a. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. Does race exist? What do you think of that? It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. "Up until that recent piece, people would have thought of him as someone who took a cautious and nuanced approach to questions like reparations. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest. And we have a wall of degrees at home. Over . And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. 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. On other occasions, though it was rare, blacks did enslave other blacks for their labor. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. 5. I was more of a bookworm. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. Thank you for being you. 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). And they fought in the Revolutionary War. 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. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. GATES: Yeah. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. The Bondwoman's Narrative was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller. Catch #FindingYourRoots Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS (check local listings). And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. Brooke Williams. 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). GROSS: OK. On your mother's side, you found out that you had three men in the family who were freed slaves - freed before 1776.
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