GROSS: You had family that passed for white. And he fought in - for the Continental Army. The supposedly fearless leader battled the English, the Scots, the French and even the Romans, and struck fear into the heart of his enemies. GATES: I did an episode with Oprah and Quincy Jones and Bishop T.D. Thank God. But then President Obama called you both together. Guests from all ethnic backgrounds are welcomed as Gates Jr. investigates the lineage of his celebrity guests. "When I was filming Oprah, I realized that I had misunderstood the narrative arc of the shoot. And the reason I wanted to be a writer is that my mother wrote so beautifully and read so beautifully. Brian Cox's family history in Scotland is investigated by host Henry Louis Gates Jr. on a Season 9 episode of "Finding Your Roots. - like the Bible says? We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. A plaque was unveiled in Cambridge in honour of Crummell and two other black pioneers: Gloria Carpenter . The new season of Gates' TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now running on PBS. To be clear, I don't work for Finding Your Roots; I'm just a professional genealogist who knows people who have worked on the show and I was present for the filming of an episode. Listen to National Gallery of Art panel discussions featuring Image of the Black series editors David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as well as HUP editor Sharmila Sen: Part I | Part II | Part III; In conjunction with Harvard's Du Bois Institute, The Root hosted an "Image of the Week" series featuring art from the Image of the Black archive. Barack Obama understood that and, I think, certainly helped our nation to heal. Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise: From Black Power to the White House explores the last half-century of the African American experience. They should also be a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). Things change. You can find your local PBS station here. More research time equals more discoveries, enabling the researchers to uncover those mind-blowing records fit for television. That's a long time when you're young. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. The good news is that several of the genealogists who have worked on Finding Your Roots, as well as other shows like Who Do You Think You Are?, are available for hire. - Part 01 HD Watch. After a break, he'll talk about his childhood and about how DNA evidence demonstrates there's no such thing as racial purity. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. In his 2016 book, Finding Your Roots, Season 2: The Official Companion to the PBS Series, and in an article at The Huffington Post, Henry wrote that his 23andme DNA test results state his genetic ancestry to be: *50.1% European. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. In a commentary in the New York Times, prominent historian, educator Henry Louis Gates cited the work of historian Carter Woodson, pioneer in 1926 of what has become Black History Month. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. This is FRESH AIR. We'd spit in a test tube. They begin their conversation by discussing how Henry's upbringing and the . Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. GROSS: So you assume it was not a consensual relationship, but she managed to own her own home five years after being freed from slavery. So that was a steal. And she throws herself on the casket. Yeah. So you GATES: Because of this white man. The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In general, however, a family history book is a bound or digital book with sections devoted to your ancestors. We'll hear more after a short break. GROSS: Totally stunned. One, dated Saturday, January 7, 1888, was from the Cumberland Evening Times. 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. What percent would be Native American? And they stayed home, and they read. Discover Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? So we went - my father showed us that picture and that obituary, and we went home. Meryl Schumacker is Board-certified genealogist no. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an author, documentary filmmaker, essayist, and literary critic. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. Gates attended Yale University and the University of Cambridge. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Dr. Gates is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. JustWatch. And our family - my cousin, Johnny Gates (ph), still owns that house to this day. I regret we are out of time. Unfortunately Gates failed in delivering on this, and instead left the . (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FINDING YOUR ROOTS"). MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: Over the course of his many years hosting history and genealogy shows on PBS, scholar and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. has guided dozens of people through emotional deep dives into their family histories, unearthed with the help of DNA and a team of expert . They lived together. As of 2014, he has written seventeen books and created thirteen . And she was a beautiful woman. Gates wrote a friend of his who was a top executive at Sony to ask for advice after Affleck objected to the inclusion of all this slavery material, so those emails came out in April after hackers took a bunch of information from Sony and WikiLeaks published the material. Biography & Autobiography Rich & Famous Books 1 - 2 of 2 Sort by Publication Date Sort by Title A - Z Sort by Title Z - A Sort by Relevance Sort by Price - Low to High You know, and your family was, one of them anyways, was in the Revolutionary War. DEGGANS: Well, I'm not really sure. I only did black people. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. But this week, Gates's wish came true. I hope you never come back, you know? And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. Gates Jr. added, "Oprah just broke down and cried in the middle of the shoot. And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. 2. A team of geneticists at Trinity College led by professor Dan Bradley have discovered that as many as 3 million men worldwide may be descendents of the Irish warlord, who was the Irish "High King" at Tara, the ancient center of Ireland from A.D. 379 to A.D. 405. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. An error has occured while loading the map. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. Gates Jr. says since Moore joined the show, she has "changed fundamentally what was possible in terms of doing a person's family tree.". Terry spoke to Henry Louis Gates in front of an audience last May when he was in Philadelphia to receive WHYY's annual Lifelong Learning Award. CLIP. And when this little girl's passing for - she passes for white and breaks her mother's heart. Henry Louis Gates, PBS, . So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. ", Gates Jr. said he'd originally focused on Black guests as African and African American studies were his "brand as it were.". But I think that one of the mottos of finding your roots is that there is no such thing as racial purity, that these people who have fantasies, these white supremacists, of this Aryan brotherhood, you know, this Aryan heritage that is pure and unsullied and untainted, that they're living in a dream world. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. If youve enjoyed this blog post, you can hire me to create your family history book or research report. The show tends to highlight only a couple of ancestors for televisiona smart strategy, because it allows the shows researchers to allocate larger chunks of time towards researching the most interesting people. It is also the name of Irish pubs all over the world. Gates has been awarded many titles, such as Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, to name a few. The whole world calls me Skip. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. 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. 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. The conclusions wouldnt exist without research, citations, and analysis, but those structural underpinnings arent emphasized the way that they are in a research report. We wanted to see what more we could tell Ben Affleck about the roots of his family's interest in social justice. But one story not told to most Irish elementary schoolchildren was of Niall's prolificacy. African American Studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born in Keyser, West Virginia on September 16, 1950, the son of Henry Louis Gates Sr. and Pauline Augusta Coleman. 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. Gates first enrolled in college at Potomac State College in 1968, before transferring to Yale University in 1969. Maria Hinojosa's Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Railway CEO. 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. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. Every reveal [on Finding Your Roots] is another chapter in world history. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. They flew him in from San Francisco. Henry Louis Gates, (born Sept. 16, 1950, Keyser, W.Va., U.S.), U.S. critic and scholar. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. GROSS: Whoa. 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). After that, everything stopped. I'm going to be black. Preview E. Larry is joined by professor, historian, and host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots Henry Louis Gates Jr. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr S01 - Ep02 Mayor Cory Booker - Rep. John Lewis. This warlord was responsible for the very common Irish surname "O'Neill" -- which means "descendant son of Niall." Accuracy and availability may vary. And I was shocked by that. . . In my experience, cousins are usually more receptive to requests for pictures from known family members (as opposed to friendly but unfamiliar genealogists). Members get extended access to PBS video on demand and more. Henry Louis Gates Jr. reveals that he and John Lithgow are DNA cousins. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. Why are they so expensive? in Keyser, West Virginia, USA , United States (72 years), This form allows you to report an error or to submit additional information about this family tree: Henry Louis GATES (1950), Biography from Wikipedia (see original) under licence CC BY-SA 3.0. One important distinction between the Books of Life on Finding Your Roots and a book that you might get from a genealogist is that the books from the show are scrapbooks with relatively little context written down. Listen 9:01. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? A family history book can also be expensive, as weve covered, so its worth doing your research to find the best genealogist for your project. The video will be available shortly. It was better to be free than be a slave, but you were free but not free. And I think that that's sad. They had two geneticists. CORNISH: And they said that they found the show's producers violated PBS standards by failing to shield the creative and editorial process from improper influence. So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. I'm here to find my roots. The words Certified Genealogist and its acronym, CG, are registered certification marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by authorized associates following peer-reviewed competency evaluations. 4 min read. GATES: Yeah, I loved books. GATES: But then they did another special test. It was during Winfrey's investigation that Gates Jr. discovered the potential of the show's format. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. They want them to hire an additional fact-checker and an independent genealogist to check for accuracy. And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. GROSS: There's some people who are trying to use genealogy to out people who are white supremacists and say, oh, you think you're so pure white, that that's such a big deal? Thank you for being you. 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. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. said Henry Louis Gates Jr. "Encarta Africana 2000 is a captivating and engaging resource that can educate students of all ages." Within its 3,600 articles, the latest version includes new information and multimedia features that will allow students to learn even more about African culture and history. It measures your ancestry back 500 years approximately. January 16, 2018. DEGGANS: Yeah, that's true. GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. supervising producer (32 episodes, 2014-2023) . CLIP. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born on 16 September, 1950 in Keyser, West Virginia, United States, is an American professor. That slave would later escape, and go to become Ireland's patron saint, St. Patrick. Gates was born in Keyser, West Virginia, to Henry Louis Gates Sr. (c.1913-2010) and his wife Pauline Augusta (Coleman) Gates (1916-1987). In the show, notable guests discover their family roots based on genealogical research and DNA results. I was more of a bookworm. There are a couple of ways that your real-life book might differ from those the show, which Ive outlined below, but on the whole, books are pretty fabulous. So maybe you can help me. (Read Henry . Was this an equal sexual relationship? So I want to read something that you wrote about her. 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