Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. She said her father may have been "one of the last black men on earth who actually believed in the justice system.". [22] 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. Former executive Tim Kendall told U.S. lawmakers that Facebook is "fundamentally addictive... causing all kinds of mental health issues, and I think it's eroding aspects of society.". Rescuers gave the little survivor a fitting name: Trooper. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ... Gates tells his daughters he chose this title because African Americans were referred to as “colored people” in the 1950s. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an American treasure. Correspondent Luke Burbank talks with Belushi about pursuing his agricultural passion on his Oregon cannabis farm, and about the western wildfires that came close to burning it to the ground. Florida's Amendment 4 restored voting rights to as many as 1.4 million felons who had completed their sentences, but then things got complicated. A lot had gone wrong in the early years of Afro-American studies. And as a stringer for Time, he was going to Paris to see James Baldwin and Josephine Baker, and Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver. Gates soon discovered there was no hope, at Cornell, of building the kind of department he wanted. As a scholar, though, he was into more serious things. Gates was devastated and resigned immediately, his dream apparently shattered. “It was meant to be an insult. James Crowley, walked into his home without permission and arrested him as the professor followed him to the porch, after repeatedly demanding the sergeant's name and badge number. Come back in a week.” During that period, Soyinka was holed up day and night writing the play Death and the King’s Horseman, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1986. Police arrested Gates on July 16 on charges of disorderly conduct after a confrontation with an officer at his home in Cambridge, Mass. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a black mouth or a white mouth. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for black Americans. The purchase typified Gates’s sensibility. “You figure when white people do that they’re talking about a black person but are too polite to say it,” Gates says. "That kind of thing just doesn't happen," Miller said.

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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", The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, Potomac State College of West Virginia University. The news came after a close White House aide had tested positive for the virus. Gates tells his daughters he chose this title because African Americans were referred to as “colored people” in the 1950s. One of his favorite Amos and Andy episodes is “The Punjab of Java Pour,” in which Andy dresses up as a turbaned Oriental potentate with Kingfish as his servant, so they can enjoy a vacation at a luxury hotel for free.

In 1995 Gates presented a program in the BBC series Great Railway Journeys (produced in association with PBS). From "Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Head Negro In Charge." After living together for seven years, they viewed the actual wedding as only a formality. Meeting Appiah, Gates says, “It was love at first sight. 9. A professor has stood the test of time by still teaching the ancient classics, only now he's using 21st century technology to do it. 6.

And of course, to learn about Gates’s journey from West Virginia to Harvard, you must read the engaging, compelling, lively Colored People. This term is now considered outdated and, by some, offensive. He earned his B.A. What happens if the president doesn't accept the election results? Profiling Charge In Black Scholar's Arrest, First published on July 23, 2009 / 7:43 AM. The first time we met was when I interviewed him for “The Reflection Effect,” an essay I wrote for O, the Oprah Magazine about the power of nostalgia to drive happiness and build resilience after loss. When the physical damage finally healed, his right leg was two inches shorter than his left. Cambridge is a long way from Piedmont, but Gates traces the journey in his 1994 memoir, Colored People.

[3] He has also learned that he has 50% European ancestry, including Irish forebears; he was surprised his European ancestry turned out to be so substantial. “Charles had vision. He still boasted a strong relationship with Wole Soyinka from his Cambridge days, and Anthony Appiah was joining him to teach at Yale. If you're a human and see this, please ignore it. In 1946, when the trailblazing Jackie Robinson hit his first homer for a Dodgers farm team in an otherwise all-White league, one player, George “Shotgun” Shuba, shook his hand – an act that was by turns normal and groundbreaking.

Gates says John Morton Blum, a professor in Yale's history department, was his mentor. He is on the boards of many notable institutions, including the, In 2010, Gates became the first African American to have his, In December 2014, Gates was announced as one of 14 recipients of a 2015, Cameo as a digital presentation of a fictional version of himself as, This page was last edited on 26 September 2020, at 11:20. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012 Gates has been host of the television series Finding Your Roots on PBS. The three men formed an unusual trio.

The show features genealogical research about well-known Americans, including prominent African Americans such as John Lewis, Cory Booker, and Sean Combs and celebrities of other races such as Stephen King, Sandra Cisneros, and Maya Lin. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Learn more >>, President Obama's comments on Gates's arrest, California Do Not Sell My Personal Information Request. He sought the advice of Charles T. Davis, the chairman of Yale’s Afro-American studies program, who agreed to oversee his Cambridge dissertation and put him back on track as a scholar. How did Gates come out of a small West Virginia town and ultimately land in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a leading professor at Harvard University? Still, it was important. I was so nervous, and he was very sweet about it.”. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an American treasure. 7. I don’t care what people say.” Their world, he adds, was “all colored, just like ours.” Except, he noted, that it had colored judges, doctors, and lawyers, who, of course, didn’t exist in Piedmont. The Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, draped over nearly one million acres of wilderness areas and the Sawtooth National Forest, is a major draw for amateur astrophotographers capturing the heavens.

Battleground Tracker: Biden gains edge in Arizona, leads big in Minnesota, With more mail-in ballots, officials urge patience on election night, Americans and the right to vote: Why it's not easy for everyone, Why some mail-in ballots are rejected and how to make sure your vote counts. Before meeting Soyinka, Gates, hoping to impress him, had frantically boned up on African philosophy and literature by reading a book by Jahn Heinz Jahn called Muntu, which tried, in Gates’s estimation, to reduce 2,000 African cultures to five recurring principles. We had to deal with it. The former vice president has become the Democratic front-runner with primary victories across the country.

"He said, 'You're getting paid what you deserve, and what you're worth.'". He was homesick at first, and desperate for any sign of familiarity. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. 1. His writing includes pieces in The New York Times that defend rap music, and an article in Sports Illustrated that criticizes black youth culture for glorifying basketball over education. In 2006, Gates wrote and produced the PBS documentary "African American Lives," the first documentary series to use genealogy and genetic science to provide an understanding of African-American history. 1.