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? It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Gates has been awarded many titles, such as Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, to name a few. On July 16, 2009, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home by local police officer Sgt. John Lithgow and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. are DNA cousins! The largest single event explicitly tied to race in the way it was covered during the year was the arrest on July 16, 2009 of Gates, who was mistakenly suspected of trying to break in to his own home. Henry Louis Gates says, Would you please turn the page?. PBS says it's now delaying the airing of new episodes until it can improve editorial oversight. The latest episode of Finding Your Roots airs on Tuesday January 31, and features 76-year-old Scottish actor Brian Cox. And I think that that's sad. a book. Reader, ed. But it's just not those two genetic lines. Famed Harvard University Professor Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates Jr. got a major surprise when he started researching his own ancestry - in his . But then President Obama called you both together. You said that after - you had been getting death threats and these angry emails and everything. "I'm descended from a white man, he says. But I think that you should have to get permission before someone is creeping around in your DNA. You know, I try to - doing "Finding Your Roots" is a way to paying homage to my mother and father every year. GATES: But everyone who's in one of those databases has given some kind of permission. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages. I mean, they know Donald Trump. Last year, Gates uncovered a manuscript of a novel purportedly written in the 1850s by an African American woman who had been a slave. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. And that is a long time. As I mentioned before, be sure to inquire about digital options, if that is a priority for you. His name was John Redman. If youve found this blog post helpful, please consider buying me a coffee to say thanks. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. He also wrote many non-fiction books on African American history, and won many awards in the process. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. This is FRESH AIR. 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. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born on 16 September, 1950 in Keyser, West Virginia, United States, is an American professor. When Henry Louis Gates Sr was born on 8 June 1913, in Patterson Creek, Mineral, West Virginia, United States, his father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates, was 34 and his mother, Helen Gertrude Redman, was 31. Strangely enough, he and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. And the geneticists have found the identity finally of Jane Gates's paramour, the man GATES: Yes. All Rights Reserved. GROSS: Yeah. Furthermore, he is credited for 14 documentaries, and some of the most noted ones are: let the church say, Amen, Africa's great civilization, and many more. Two men at the center of the controversy are linked by their Irish heritage. I'm here to ask, on behalf of our production staff, if you will be a guest in next season GATES: Of "Finding Your Roots." The headline read " DEATH OF 'AUNT JANE GATES ' ": Last night at 11 o'clock "Aunt Jane Gates," colored, a . Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Maria Hinojosa's Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Railway CEO. So what I did - my father and I agreed, for science, that we'd put our genomes in the public domain so that any scholar or student can study our genome. (If youre interested in a research report, you can hop over to my guide about how to hire a professional genealogist.). She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," right? Elizabeth Shotbolt , Phillip Fordham, Bridget Shelley , Anthony Hungerford. GATES: I said, thank God. The research for the stories on Finding Your Roots is completed by a team of people, including several professional genealogists who specialize in different subject areas, such as genetic genealogy. Gates has apologized for not being more transparent in handling a controversial episode of the series he hosts on PBS, Finding Your Roots. The conclusions wouldnt exist without research, citations, and analysis, but those structural underpinnings arent emphasized the way that they are in a research report. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. It's beautiful. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Department of English Barker Center 12 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Hours: M-F 9:00 am-5:00 pm Phone: 617-495-2533 Fax: 617-496-8737 He co-wrote Lincoln on Race and Slavery, with Donald Yacovone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Not all genealogists do, so youll want to look for someone who has books listed in their services. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes actors Claire Danes and Jeff Daniels on a journey into their roots, uncovering primal scenes from our nation's past. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker . I had no idea, no preparation. (Well cover how to hire a genealogist later in this blog post.). Henry Louis Gates Jr. reveals that he and John Lithgow are DNA cousins. I go, goodbye. This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. Carlos Figueroa. "This is a series about the range the range of Blackness and its full complexity, including out-of-the-box manifestations that you never would have dreamed of.". In my experience, family history books may cost anywhere from $5,000 to over $50,000. Weaving together stories of soldiers, settlers, immigrants and entrepreneurs, Gates travels from World War I battlefields to Civil War prison camps to America's most infamous . 1. Thanks to an encounter with a family scrapbook at a young age, ancestry fascinates Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Emmy-winning filmmaker, author and Harvard University professor raised in the tiny town of Piedmont, West Virginia. Terry will be one of the guests whose family history is explored next year in the sixth season of the show. Some books function more like reference books on your ancestors, while others are formatted like short biographies. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Dr. Gates is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. And my brother went off to dental school. If you dislike a persons writing style, or if you have difficulty understanding what theyre saying, its probably not a good idea to hire them to write a 100-page book for you. And she come to - it's the woman who invents box pancake mix - right? This is FRESH AIR. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. ", When Brian Cox comes on #FindingYourRoots to find out his real familys #SuccessionJoin us tomorrow night on @PBS at 8/7c for an all new episode of Finding Your Roots with guests Brian Cox and @ViolaDavis! So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. 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. And I would watch this beautiful, brilliant goddess. She was quite a lady. And finally, PBS has a brand as a trusted provider of nonfiction entertainment, so they have to really safeguard that brand by making sure the stuff they present to viewers is accurate. So let's get back to your great-great-grandmother. Meryl Schumacker is Board-certified genealogist no. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. In such works as Figures in Black (1987) and The Signifying Monkey (1988) he has used the term signifyin . The tale, as I later discovered, is a tangled one. So PBS started an internal investigation to figure out what happened, and then on Wednesday they issued their findings. GROSS: Was that reflected in the way you wanted to say goodbye to your father at the funeral? Popular ancestry show Finding Your Roots is deep into its ninth season but host Henry Louis Gates Jr. admits he's "surprised" the show has worked so well with white people included. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The Bondwomans Narrative by Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates, has just been published (Warner Books). 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. pic.twitter.com/1fYFMj9eYC. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? Some people get really excited about what goes on under the hood, but some peoples eyes glaze over a bit. GATES: They don't do that anymore for this particular kind of - I had a broken hip. A family history book typically displays the conclusions about your family history, without overly emphasizing what went into reaching those conclusions. My momma called me Skippy from the time I was born. I have a couple black friends - I went to Yale with Ben Carson and with Ben's wife. The story of Niall of the Nine Hostages is already the stuff of legend, which has been passed on to countless Irish schoolchildren over the years. You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. GROSS: Totally stunned. GROSS: You had family that passed for white. And I hope they are. You may yet have your own Bernie Sanders-style moment of genealogy-fueled surprise in the near future (though I cant say whether itll be because youre related to Larry David). And my Y DNA, which is - comes in an unbroken chain, descends from this Irishman. Henry Louis Gates, PBS, . 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. - like the Bible says? The minister would call on her. I know, those are some of my favorite reveals on the show, too. 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. My great-great-grandfather's now been found. 825 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019, WNET is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 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. 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. Or they stayed home, and they listened to or played music. HENRY LOUIS GATES: Well, let's see what we found on your mom's side of the family. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. One thing that your real-life book probably will not contain is photographs of your ancestors that youve never seen before. That's not the way it was. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosts the program, butas I understand ithe does not do the research into the guests family histories himself. Author, Journalist, Industrialist, Businessman, American filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Born on September 16, 1950 So (laughter) given the example that President Obama set in calming down that kind of argument in America over you and this officer, what do you hear now coming from our president? Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born Sept. 16, 1950, in Keyser, W.Va. His father worked at the local paper mill during the day and as a janitor at a telephone company at night. What percent would be from Europe? "My favorite class was an ancient history class in the fifth grade when I was 10 years old. They flew him in from San Francisco. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. CORNISH: Meanwhile, the program "Finding Your Roots," what's been the fallout for the show? Paramour, the program `` Finding your Roots a slave, but some peoples eyes glaze over a bit ancestry. You had family that passed for white ) and the Cambridge,,... Family history, without overly emphasizing what went into reaching those conclusions I wanted to a. Their names and families taken away when they were enslaved until it can improve editorial oversight Jr. hosts the ``... Jr. hosts the program `` Finding your Roots airs on Tuesday January 31, and has extensively. 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