Theyve Had an Inappropriate Relationship For Months, How Black Creators Can Expand Their Network with LinkedIn. And I was exhilarated. 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. And I don't think that he understands how much power that - to heal, to bind that the Oval Office metaphorically has. And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. And it's for my father. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. 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? So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. 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. Transcript: Q&A with Henry Louis Gates Jr. January 16, 2009 Greg Hicks: Everyone welcome, this is a very special moment for us and we really want this to be just as informal as possible. Henry Louis Gates reveals celebrities' family history in 'Finding Your 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. As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has concentrated on building academic institutions to study Black culture. In some instances, we are left wanting to know much more. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. 10 Things You Didn't Know About Henry Louis Gates Jr. Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. And then it was a property requirement. We defended the right of every American to vote. Johnny Cash's Daughter Reacts To Mom's Black Ancestry On TV - Hollywood GATES: That's true. The surprising reveals, coupled with the celebrities raw reactions to the information conveyed by the host, deliver moments of high drama and genuine emotion. GROSS: OK. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. They flew him in from San Francisco. He also learned that one of his African ancestors includes a Yoruba man who was trafficked to America from Ouidah in present-day Republic of Benin. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. "[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. Trump, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, announced a slate of futuristic new policies in a campaign video Friday. GATES: Yeah, I loved books. GATES: Right after the Beer Summit, it all went away. javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net. And I sat down. We're all admixed. 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. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. At Yale University in 1973, he was one of 12 students selected as a Scholar of the House, a program that allows seniors to write a book or compose a symphony or follow a similar passion instead of taking classes. GROSS: I've interviewed many people over the years. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. And then you see this white girl next to Claudette Colbert. GROSS: And I read you talking about this. GROSS: (Laughter) So I want to change the subject a little bit. ", The lesson of "Finding Your Roots" - we're all immigrants. And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Episode 1409A -- Pictured in this screengrab: Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. During an interview on February 22, 2021 -- My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. GATES: OK. Black people came here - not willingly, of course. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. 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. However, in the 60s amid the Civil Rights Movement, Vivian had been the target of attention from white supremacists since they believed she looked Black. Author Herb Boyd, who teaches African and African-American history at the College of New Rochelle and City College, CUNY, argued that despite the complicity of African monarchs in the Atlantic slave trade, the United States "was the greatest beneficiary, and thus should be the main compensator". GROSS: OK. In a February episode of the PBS show, "Finding Your Roots," host and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Rosanne Cash with her DNA results and family genealogy. Advertisement Daughter Elizabeth Gates interviews her dad about . Or even to the slave narrative of Venture Smith, in which blacks are purchased by other blacks for both slavery and freedom. People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. 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. And you don't have a Y DNA, so that's why you're a woman. Henry Louis Gates Bio, Wiki, Age, Wife, Finding Your Roots, and Net Worth GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. Finding Your Roots | Season 8 Other works by Gates included Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties (1994), Colored People: A Memoir (1994), The Future of the Race (1996; with Cornel West), Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (1997), The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: Americas First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (2003), America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans (2004), In Search of Our Roots (2009), and Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019). I only did black people. Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge - Boston Magazine So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? And I was just overwhelmed with emotion. At the time, only Vivians European background had been known, and this discovery in her ancestryresurfaced thanks to a profile on Johnnys first wife in The Washington Poston May 16. "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!" . I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a Black mouth or a white mouth. 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. I can do it. As I have written elsewhere, this new kinship category, DNA cousins, or what Gates calls autosomal cousins, suggests that flexible kinship is being made on the new (or is it the rather old) terrain of biology. And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. He has learned that he is also connected to the multiracial West Virginia community of Chestnut Ridge people. (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). Finding Your Roots | About Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Opinion | The 'Lost Cause' That Built Jim Crow - The New York Times Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. GATES: Yeah. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song was published in 2021. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed. He's received 50 honorary degrees from such institutions as Harvard University and Williams College. [9] Gates accepted the offer by Cornell in 1985 and taught there until 1989. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. You might have breast cancer. We're listening to the interview Terry recorded with Harvard historian, author and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates before an audience at WHYY in Philadelphia last May. 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)? Like Joe Louis's fights, which my father still talks about as part of the fixed repertoire of stories that texture our lives. 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. GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. 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.

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