GATES: And they said, OK, we won't tell you. It's a lot of data to process. *48.6% Sub-Saharan African. CLIP. I'm Dave Davies This is FRESH AIR. 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. His PBS series "Finding Your Roots" returns for its ninth season in January, and his latest documentary series . 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. Armstrong Williams, a person I really admire and like, I ask him, and he said absolutely not. Abby Wolf (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2012), a collection of three decades of his work, was published in 2012. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. But mutations exist. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. I mean, you're looking at, like, fancy celebrities talk about their backgrounds. And she was a beautiful woman. You can learn more about how to spot these and other criteria in Part 2 of my free guide to finding a professional genealogist, linked below. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. GATES: Yeah, yeah. Why are they so expensive? So you're saying I should have been an undertaker. The daughter of prominent black scholar and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said her father's arrest last week at his Cambridge home has deeply saddened him . And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. GROSS: Thank you for all of all of the things you've written for your TV shows, for your movies. GATES: Well, I think that you should have the right to - you have to ask someone. - Part 01 HD Watch. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A new, four-part PBS series aspires to showcase the beauty, joy and achievements of the Black community. So you GATES: Because of this white man. pic.twitter.com/1fYFMj9eYC. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. GROSS: And it was reported as if it was a break-in, and a police officer came and arrested you. But this week, Gates's wish came true. - like the Aunt Jemima figure. On the show, they usually find photographs by contacting the guests relatives or distant cousins. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Published February 4, 2023 at 1:25 PM AKST. So where does that come from? Emmy Award-winning filmmaker . "My idea was that I would reveal where in Africa, on a guest mother's mother's line, they had hailed from. DEGGANS: Yeah, that's true. It was really, like, the photograph of her - of your great-great-aunt Jane Gates. Not sure which channel that is? GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? Historian and African American Studies professor Gates Jr. has hosted a number of genealogy shows in the past, but Finding Your Roots on PBS has proved his most popular yet. In general, however, a family history book is a bound or digital book with sections devoted to your ancestors. GROSS: When you were 14, you had a football injury. Copyright 2015 NPR. CORNISH: So as we said, this show features celebrities learning about their family history, and the controversy actually emerged from the Sony email hack, right? edit data. Related Links. 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. They were buried next to each other. GROSS: And it made me think about - because I was just reading this - it made me think about how a president can set the tone for the country on so many things, including, you know, racial issues, immigration. His expertise and experience eventually led him to TV, where he started working as a . So I thought that I had a pretty good chance. It doesn't exist. So maybe you can help me. And we know from the analysis of my DNA that goes back to Ireland. Except in the next scene, I showed him their headstones. So overseer, slave plantation - rape, right? Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, . Family history books are most similar to the Books of Life featured on the show, so Ill be talking about them here. When I became a teenager, my father and I bonded. 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. So everybody who showed up on this continent is from someplace else. So PBS started an internal investigation to figure out what happened, and then on Wednesday they issued their findings. GATES: Oh, my father and I were the first father and son of any race and the first African-Americans fully sequenced. Biology matters. The whole world calls me Skip. You don't get $1,400 by saving your nickels and dimes as a slave, right? So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. Henry Louis Gates : biography 16 September 1950 - Supporters of Afrocentrics such as Molefi Asante and others say that they assert not that the study of Africa should be exclusively Black, but that the approach of Afrocentricity is critical for setting up black people as agents of their own history. I'm going to be black. 2023 WNET. Finding Your Roots is partnered with the genealogy company Ancestry.com, which recently found in a survey that most people (over 50%) know more about fictional TV families like the Roys in Succession, than they do about their own family history. GATES: We know he was Irish from my DNA. And my mother used to write the eulogies, the obituaries for all the black people in the Potomac Valley, where I grew up. CORNISH: That's NPR's TV critic, Eric Deggans. So it was just the two of us and my mom, right? RELATED VIDEOS. When youre comparing professional genealogists, it is helpful to read their other writing. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. And another person to interpret my genetic data because it's 6 billion base pairs, right? But just in case youre not, there are other ways to get the Finding Your Roots experience off-screen. In 1970, he received a fellowship from Yale that would allow him to work and travel in Africa. My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," right? The researchers also found that as many as one in 12 men in Ireland have the same DNA as the Irish king -- and in Ireland's northwest, that figure rises to one in five. You've been known to sing on the set of "Finding Your Roots.". And that is the lesson of "Finding Your Roots. And she invents this pancake mix, and they become fabulously wealthy. Books can take a long time to produce, so make sure youre clear on the timeline and payment schedule. A professional genealogist is the person who will build your family tree using records youre familiar with from the show, like censuses and vital records. Was this an equal sexual relationship? They - but you're absolutely right. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." And just the optics of a seeing a rich, white movie star pressure a black historian into suppressing information about this guy's slave-owning past and his family, that's really bad on all kinds of levels. That the emotional apex would not be around them discovering where in Africa their mother's mother's line came from. This sounds really obvious, but when youre comparing genealogists, make sure the genealogist offers family history books. Reader, ed. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. The video will be available shortly. But you know what? Gates co-produces and hosts the genealogy show, "Finding Your Roots." He grew up in neighboring Piedmont. Some projects take literally years to complete. In 2009, when I did "Faces Of America," a retail value of full genomic sequencing was $300,000. So, to summarize, you probably cant hire Henry Louis Gates Jr. himself, but you can get a similar work product from a qualified professional genealogist. GATES: Very close to them, yeah, particularly to my mother. (Preston Crawley) "I love being in Utah because I love genealogy," Henry Louis Gates Jr. said as he addressed BYU . I also cover the pros and cons of hiring an individual genealogist vs. a large company for your project, in case that interests you. 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. It comes from slavery. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. And it's for my father. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. To be clear, I dont work for Finding Your Roots; Im just a professional genealogist who knows people who have worked on the show and I was present for the filming of an episode. And at this point, I'd run over to my mother and say, Mama, I'll never pass for white, Mama. 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 . GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? If my areas of expertise do not align with your needs, check out my guide for finding a professional genealogist. Well, that might be related to police excesses and abuses, but it's a far end of the . (SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "EGYPTIAN FANTASY"). The short answer is that genealogical research is charged by the hour, and research like that on Finding Your Roots takes a lot of hours. And so he introduced me to the Yoruba people. Now think about that. This kind of research has been especially important for African-Americans whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved. In the latest episode of Finding Your Roots, Cox discovers previously lost information about James McCann, his grandfather who died before he was born, and his military service for Great Britain in World War I. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. The show proved so successful, it was continued in various guises before eventually developing into Finding Your Roots. By Henry Louis Gates Jr. Dr. Gates is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. Jeff Daniels sits with "Finding Your Roots" host Henry Louis Gates Jr. in an episode from Season 9 on PBS. Related Articles Around the Web. Henry Louis Gates. But maybe youre thinking, But Im not here for a research report. And while youre at it, think about moving those pictures to dry, acid-free storage above-groundyour descendants will thank you! 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. GROSS: Yeah. He is an American professor, historian, filmmaker, and literary critic. His name was John Redman. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. We're all admixed. Birth of Henry Louis Gates, Sr. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. A family history book is like the entire car. A report is a little more nitty gritty than a book, sort of like how understanding the mechanics of an engine will help you understand what makes a car run. So to me, it leaves open a question of whether or not letting Affleck lobby Gates was the problem or having him actually pressure them and get them to change the material was the problem. And the black woman says all she wants is enough money to have a New Orleans-type funeral. I don't think that's true for very many people in this room or any - or many people who are watching this show. He loved the news. . GATES: Right after the Beer Summit, it all went away. There he found that he shared 10 of the 11 DNA matches with offspring of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the fourth century warlord who created one of the dominant strains of Irish genealogy because he had so many offspring. Im looking for a Book of Life., Questlove called his Book of Life, The best book I ever read in my life.. 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. And your father was a tailor, which is why we GATES: And my mother went to Atlantic City. As the host of the hit show Finding Your Roots, now in its sixth season on PBS, he helps guests like Ava DuVernay, Sean . I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. "My wife, Marial Iglesias Utset, is a Cuban citizen and a historian of slavery and the slave trade to Cuba," he explained. Henry Louis Gates Jr. 0:30. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. GATES: And then there was "The Late Late Show." Many thanks! One thing that your real-life book probably will not contain is photographs of your ancestors that youve never seen before. Author, Journalist, Industrialist, Businessman, American filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Born on September 16, 1950 You have to get permission. Affleck himself posted an apology on Facebook, saying that he'd talked to Gates about these changes, but the process was, quote, "collaborative." He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. Gates has been awarded many titles, such as Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, to name a few. Henry Louis Gates is married to a white woman. In such works as Figures in Black (1987) and The Signifying Monkey (1988) he has used the term signifyin . And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. And they would be published in the newspaper. I mean, they know Donald Trump. For tips, you can check out my three-part series of blog posts about How to Find a Professional Genealogist. But I think that you should have to get permission before someone is creeping around in your DNA. I can do it. WAYNE, N.J. Henry Louis Gates Sr., 97, formerly a resident of Cumberland and Piedmont, W.Va., died peacefully on Christmas Eve, 2010, in Wayne, at home with his family gathered at his bedside. Greg Moore, Arizona Republic. In front of all these people and all these viewers. Carlos Figueroa. Elizabeth Shotbolt , Phillip Fordham, Bridget Shelley , Anthony Hungerford. And under the skin, we are almost identical genetically. GATES: And then when they did my admixture, I'm 50 percent sub-Saharan African and 50 percent European and virtually no Native American ancestry, which really pisses my family off. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. And that is the strongest argument for brotherhood, sisterhood and the unity of the human species. July 28, 2009— -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots. And she throws herself on the casket. And I think that that's sad. And she dies of a broken heart because her little girl passes for white and goes off - and never sees her again. GROSS: Yeah. GATES: And my father lived to be 97 1/2 without any dementia. Username and password are case sensitive. Ironically, James Crowley, whose name in Gaelic means "hardy warrior," is also descended from the same line as Gates, having very close links to Niall of the Nine Hostages. For $50,000, they sequenced my father, me and then 12 of the guests who were in "Faces Of America" - not a full genome but a dense genotyping. He is the host of the PBS television series "Finding Your . Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored 17 books and created 14 documentary films . If you enjoy genealogical research or history yourself and you want to take a peek at how the pros do it, you might actually enjoy a research report as much as (or more than!) 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. I have the Ui Neil Haplotype. A family history book typically displays the conclusions about your family history, without overly emphasizing what went into reaching those conclusions. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. 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. I go, goodbye. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. Henry Louis Gates, (born Sept. 16, 1950, Keyser, W.Va., U.S.), U.S. critic and scholar. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. Gates is the host of the TV genealogy series "Finding Your Roots." Why book banning is back in 2022 - Vox . And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. Off. This is called an admixture test. kannonspatafora66si29. Discover Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. It was a horrible, horrible thing. Testing showed he had ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Ireland and England. Henry Louis Gates Jr. . And they got the brothers in uniforms with swords and stuff coming out of the church with this sad, black church music. On July 16, 2009, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home by local police officer Sgt. So you found out that your ancestors were, like, 18 miles away from where you lived. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. Brian Cox's family history in Scotland is investigated by host Henry Louis Gates Jr. on a Season 9 episode of "Finding Your Roots. Legend has it that it was Niall of the Nine Hostages who, on a raid in Wales, captured a young slave and brought him to Ireland. I love you. OK. And I hope they are. And I learned a lot about the medium. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? Thank you so much for accepting this award. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. You know, we used to say tribe, but now that's not politically correct - so the Yoruba ethnic group in Western Nigeria. Research report really, like, 18 miles away from where you.. Whose ancestors had their names and families taken away when they were enslaved you 're looking at like... Pm AKST for all of all these people and all these viewers photograph of her of. Emotional apex would not who is henry louis gates related to around them discovering where in Africa one of the happiest days of Life! He started working as a slave, right talk about their backgrounds, I was a,! 1950, Keyser, W.Va., U.S. critic and scholar pictures to dry acid-free. 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