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. And GATES: Yeah. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? I love you being black. They lived together. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. Many of us were troubled. The book tells stories about Gates's parents, his lifelong nickname, Skippy, and his brother, Rocky. In 2021, Gates received the MIPAD 100 Network's Most Influential People of African Descent Lifetime Achievement Award. At the age of 14, Gates suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint in his hip while playing touch football. GROSS: Terry Gross interviewed Henry Louis Gates last May when he was in Philadelphia to accept the WHYY Lifelong Learning Award. 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. 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. But then President Obama called you both together. On hand again is admixture analysistesting that probes a persons full nuclear DNA for genetic indicators said to be suggestive of ancestry; percentages of African, American Indian, European, or Asian descent are inferred from those informative markers. In 2009, when I did "Faces Of America," a retail value of full genomic sequencing was $300,000. GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. Yet no lens is provided through which to interpret this genealogical bombshell. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. You have to get permission. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. 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? GATES: Yeah. Gates claimed that his arrest was a sign of racism on the part of police. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. And I realized only recently that though I was raised to be a doctor, deep down, I really wanted to be a writer. Copyright 2019 NPR. GATES: Yeah, I loved books. So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. And she throws herself on the casket. February 12, 2010. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. 22,158 talking about this. And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. GATES: Don't you? More than anyone else, the historian is responsible for "entertaining the idea remotely" that Gates could become a writer. After that I would say I was a teacher. His mother. And she was a beautiful woman. In Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called the Cambridge Police Department "stupid" for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. So we knew he was Irish. So I know that moment of transcendence is real.". (January 21, 2015), Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. GROSS: And it's a way of outing people as not being who they think they are and not recognizing that we're all descended from so many different people. Because the series is so successful in demonstrating the intersections between world history and personal history, the lack of contextualization here is notable. People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. And he'd make a couple - a move. I can do it. GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. He has an estimated net worth of $1million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. The series combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and historical research in genetics to tell guests about the lives and histories of their ancestors. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., called the book "an attempt to size Lincoln up through the eyes of Black Americans who visited the 'people's house' that their people had built and in whose names they were determined to win the fight for freedom and citizenship." And my brother went off to dental school. His early life is described in his memoir that is entitled, Colored People (1994). So where does that come from? But mutations exist. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. We have the great privilege of having Professor Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard University, the Director of the W.B. All rights reserved. In the series, he discussed findings with guests about their complex ancestries. In 2010, Gates wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that discussed the role played by Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. They spoke in front of an audience last May when Gates received WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. 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. Hollywood Life The book tells of Gates's childhood growing up in the 1950s in a close-knit extended family and an equally close-knit small-town community. I think you know where I'm heading here. I only did black people. It's a gift - and for my mom. 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. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. That's the way it is. 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. But it is clear, in any case, that we fully inhabit a genealogical society"to use the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinellis phrase. His work has rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.[12]. The fifth season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. [1] He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. 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 Gates Daughters Elizabeth is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke in May 2010. 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. "Black people were so angry at me. And I gave it to her for birthday. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. On April 19, 1989, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. Henry Louis Gates's Extended Family. He was a graduate of Frederick Street High School and in 1998 received an honorary doctorate degree from Seton Hall University. 10. And you got this from the 1870 census - (reading) that Jane Gates, age 51, female, mulatto, laundress and nurse, owns real estate valued at $1,400; born in Maryland; cannot read or write. This is FRESH AIR. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. And the title is Race Is A Social Construction, But Mutations Are Real" (ph). GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. 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. And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. That's not the way it was. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. Gatess father, Henry Louis Gates, Sr., worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor; his mother, Pauline Coleman Gates, cleaned houses. 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. NPR's Michel Martin speaks with professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. about the forthcoming episode of Finding Your Roots which features actor Joe Manganiello discovering he is of African descent. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. Gates traced the practice of signifyin to Esu, the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, and to the figure of the signifying monkey, with which Esu is closely associated. In July 2022, Gates announced that he would serve as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, a new glossary of language that will contain popular phrases used by historical Black figures and modern-day Black Americans. "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. Will we reach consilience"William Whewells term for the combining of information from different domains toward the unity of knowledgebetween conventional and genetic genealogy (and, moreover, among the types of genetic analysis at play)? It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. I'm going to be black. From Blum, he says, he learned a lot about writing and history. Rosanne Cash became tearful after learning that her mom, Vivian Liberto Cash, had a Black great-great grandmother who was subjected to a life of slavery. Faces expands on those outings in topic and technique, branching out from the genealogies of prominent blacks to those of a multiracial, multiethnic group of notables, including the actors Eva Longoria and Meryl Streep, the writers Louise Erdrich and Malcolm Gladwell, the musician Yo-Yo Ma, the poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander, the comedian Stephen Colbert, and Gates himself. I go, goodbye. Brooke Williams. They had kids, and they're buried next to each other. That's how much the science of genetics has changed in terms of the retail market since 2009. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. It was astonishing. It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. In some states - like, New York would let them vote sometimes, and then take it away. As soon as the Civil War ended, they became common law husband and wife GATES: Which was illegal in Mississippi. 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. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. 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. Such information forces you to contemplate your own history, he observes. 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. 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. [23] He had known of some European ancestry, but was surprised to learn the high proportion; he also learned that he was descended from John Redman, a mulatto veteran in New England of the American Revolutionary War. 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. Malcolm Gladwell hears some shocking news in Gates's latest PBS show. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. 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 then you see this white girl next to Claudette Colbert. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. The latter, tracing the ancestral history of contemporary figures, was especially popular. 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. 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? You might have breast cancer. This is FRESH AIR. 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. 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. Hollywood Life, Latest Hollywood Celebrity & Entertainment News. In 2020, Gates earned a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work Nonfiction for his book. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. When the physical damage finally healed, his right leg was two inches shorter than his left. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. GROSS: OK. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. And when they analyzed my mitochondrial DNA, it went to England. 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. "Beneath the return to the valley of the culture wars". GROSS: Is that too personal? My great-great-grandfather's now been found. He argued that the material, which the government charged was profane, had important roots in African-American Vernacular English, games, and literary traditions, and should be protected. And I loved the news. Or they stayed home, and they drew. One wishes that Gates, an inimitable literary scholar well before he became a pathbreaking Renaissance man, might have alluded to another of Edward P. Joness works, The Known World, a historical novel exploring life in an antebellum community in which both blacks and whites hold black slaves, by way of even partial explanation. And it's for my father. So I just wrote an essay that was published by Yale University Press about race. And he, and you, the officer and Joe Biden sat down, had a beer or two. I found the first edition when I was an adult. What percent would be Native American? August 22, 2013, 12:00 a.m. Wants W. E. B. DuBois, Wole Soyinka and Phyllis Wheatley on the Nation's Reading Lists, As Well As Western Classics like Milton and Shakespeare". And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. In 2020, Gates was honored with the Louis Stokes Community VisionaryAward. The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. [4] He also learned that he has 50% European ancestry, including Irish forebears; he was surprised his European ancestry turned out to be so substantial. GATES: Yeah, yeah. The world just isn't like that. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. As a result of the injury, Gates walks with a cane and his right leg is more than 2 inches shorter than his left. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. But I think that Donald Trump's rhetoric and some of his actions - for instance, after Charlottesville - encourage unfavorable race relations in the United States. So that was a steal. They were buried next to each other. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Before the PBS episode, the world only knew that Vivian was reported to be of Sicilian heritage on her dads side, and German/Irish on her mothers side. 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: 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? Corrections? Well, I'll tell you a funny story. Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: Because you've talked to everybody about their genealogy, I want to talk with you about yours and what you've learned about yourself and the larger meaning of what you've learned about yourself. Brub, Michael (Spring 1994). While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. 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. For example, while haplogroupssets of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are gene-sequence variants that are inherited together and categorized by letter and number (A, L3D, R, U5b, etc. Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. And the DNA tests we were doing at that time - when they analyzed my Y DNA, it went to Ireland. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. 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. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. 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. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- 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. 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. My mother was a seamstress, as you know. In 2020, Gates was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University. Sgt. Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. It's incredible. This ancestor was Vivians maternal great-great grandmother, a Black woman named Sarah Shields, whom Rosanne learned about for the first time ever during an episode of the PBS show Finding Your Rootsthat aired in Feb. 2021. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. GATES: OK. And we'd have the chess board set up. The former vice president has become the Democratic front-runner with primary victories across the country. I killed my mama. Surely, most people of African descent do not expect to find a black slave owner in their family tree. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: Yeah. 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? Terry. Even with the aid of cutting-edge 21st-century genealogydigitized archival records and genetic analysiswe may never know the ins and outs of how Gladwells fifth-great-grandmother came to be a slaveholder. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. And I couldn't imagine what, but two sets of those fourth great-grandparents are from my mother's line. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. Professor Gates is the host of the documentary " Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. "My father was so sad. GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. He draws on structuralism, post-structuralism, and semiotics to analyze texts and assess matters of identity politics.