They know about their heritage.' The video will be available shortly. GATES: Well, the average African-American GATES: The average African-American is 24 percent European. Even the Native Americans came from someplace else about 16,000 years ago. And my grandfather was so white, we called him Casper behind his back. And what's the real showstopper for me is the fact that my three sets of my fourth great grandparents lived 18 miles from where I was born. And the obituary said, died this day in Cumberland, Md., January 6, 1888; Aunt Jane Gates, an estimable colored woman. Kids don't even know what they are anymore, but everybody here does. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. To put it simply, Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a man who knows his history, and if knowledge is power, he is a powerful man indeed. 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. GATES: Maybe for Christmas, OK, that's fine (laughter). Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. 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. GATES: And, you know, what's even more amazing, it's - one, it was my mother's third great grandfather - my fourth great grandfather. Thank you for being you. Now you can get a full sequence for less than $5,000 - some people say $1,000 or $2,000. Gates Jr., a self-confessed fan of Succession, was thrilled when Cox agreed to do the show, and shared a behind-the-scenes video of the segment on Twitter on Monday. And they fought in the Revolutionary War. Books can take a long time to produce, so make sure youre clear on the timeline and payment schedule. GROSS: But you had family that passed for white. I found the first edition when I was an adult. Why book banning is back in 2022 - Vox . And I watched reruns of early black films like "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Beulah." And the only reason that I started making the series that became "Finding Your Roots" is because of that obituary and that photograph. GATES: So obviously somebody gave her that money. I killed my mama. Unfortunately Gates failed in delivering on this, and instead left the . "My wife, Marial Iglesias Utset, is a Cuban citizen and a historian of slavery and the slave trade to Cuba," he explained. I could've won the Nobel Prize, and somebody would say congratulations. 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. What is race? GROSS: And you got this information from the 1870 census. GROSS: Is that too personal? GATES: And we - they only put - remember "The Late Show"? Gates has said back then that he and the producers decided not to include the information about Affleck's slave-owning history because they focused on other stuff they found more interesting about his family history. 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). 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. After Ben Affleck Scandal, PBS Postpones 'Finding Your Roots'. After more than 500 years of skewed, racist, Euro-centric interpretations of African history and culture, Wonders of the African World with Henry Loius Gates Jr. was to be a bold step towards reclaiming the oft-overlooked and minimized splendor of African civilization. You have to get permission. So we knew he was Irish. Henry Louis Gates Jr. doesn't seem too worried about "critical race theory" or "white fragility" or "woke warriors" or any of those ridiculous buzzwords . The fifth season of "Finding Your Roots" is currently showing on PBS. Discover Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. executive producer (40 episodes, 2012-2023) Dyllan McGee . 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. 825 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019, WNET is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We're all admixed. "My favorite class was an ancient history class in the fifth grade when I was 10 years old. **This blog post was updated on 6 April 2022**So, youve been watching the amazing stories about celebrities family histories on the TV show Finding Your Roots on PBS, and after a few episodes, youve started to wonder, Can Henry Louis Gates research my family tree?. 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." He couldn't hear me, couldn't see me. Season 9 of "Finding Your Roots" on PBS has seen actors Danny Trejo and Julia Roberts discover more about their family history. And I learned a lot about the medium. 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. And at the time, the airwaves were so segregated, they only put black films on "The Late Late Show." 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 . 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. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FINDING YOUR ROOTS"). GATES: You know, I'm totally exposed. And I have my mother's certificate from this vocational school where she learned to be a seamstress. Where does your nickname Skip come from? Im looking for a Book of Life., Questlove called his Book of Life, The best book I ever read in my life.. And when I was a young teenager, early adolescence, my father and I connected through the news. GROSS: It has been a great honor to speak with you. a book. Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosts the program, butas I understand ithe does not do the research into the guests family histories himself. Testing showed he had ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Ireland and England. Henry Louis Gates says, Would you please turn the page?. 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 . Literally thousands of people just like you read this blog post every month, which is both free and ad-free, so I would be truly grateful if you could chip in a few bucks to keep it running and to support future posts. 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. Henry Louis Gates. The skill of the genealogist factors into the cost, with less experienced researchers charging less than seasoned professionals. Mama - I'm sorry, Mama. The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. By Emily Guskin, Mahvish Shahid Khan and Amy Mitchell. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. So where does that come from? He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. So reading this - that she's a mulatto; she'd been a slave - the first question that comes to my mind - and I don't know if it was the first question that came to yours - was, was she raped by the man who owned her? And she would stand up and read their obituary, their eulogy. Accuracy and availability may vary. He married Pauline Augusta Coleman. PBS says it's now delaying the airing of new episodes until it can improve editorial oversight. My father loved sports, and I didn't care about sports that much. Last year, Gates uncovered a manuscript of a novel purportedly written in the 1850s by an African American woman who had been a slave. As you can imagine, there's a bit of you get what you pay for here, with the most expensive books being the most customized (although there are some grifters out there, which I explain how to spot below). He was a free negro, as we would have said then. And they stayed home, and they read. When I was a boy, I was closer to my mother than my father. Also, journalist Brian Palmer talks about how slavery and the Civil War are described at Confederate historic sites in the South. My mother would say, tell them about your brother who's a dentist. And we knew the name of his great-great-grandmother and the name of this white man. Variety has an exclusive first look at Gates' appearance; scroll down for [] That's a long time when you're young. Gates first enrolled in college at Potomac State College in 1968, before transferring to Yale University in 1969. It's a lot of data to process. CORNISH: That's NPR's TV critic, Eric Deggans. So I want to read something that you wrote about her. And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. Please try again. And it turned out - my father used to say, you know, your mother's family is really distinguished, too? GATES: Don't you? This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: Your father died not too long ago - a few years ago. GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. GATES: Yeah, I was 15 years old. War, Thinking, Civilization. Woodson was "keenly aware of the role of politics in the classroom," said Gates . 'The Simpsons' Brings Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s 'Finding Your Roots' to Springfield (EXCLUSIVE) Variety - Michael Schneider 2d There have been a lot of TV crossover episodes over the years, but this may be the most unique one yet: PBS' "Finding Your Roots" and host Dr. Henry It is the first known work of its kind and has great historical and literary significance. Maria Hinojosa's Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Railway CEO. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. GATES: Now, we don't do blood anymore, right? GATES: Our TV - when we woke up, the TV was on, and nobody ever turned it off until you went to sleep. This warlord was responsible for the very common Irish surname "O'Neill" -- which means "descendant son of Niall." Members get extended access to PBS video on demand and more. After that, everything stopped. Gates Jr. continued, "Brian, you know, broke down in tears because his grandfather was his hero. GROSS: OK, for two weeks. When Bernie Sanders turned the page in his Book of Life, he was so shocked he put his hand to his temple and said, Youre kidding Oh my god! and burst out laughing. GATES: Otherwise they wouldn't be in a database. And that is a long time. So my whole life is really an attempt to honor and please my parents and make them proud of me, you know. I regret we are out of time. And she's the cook for Claudette Colbert. 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. The map below shows the places where the ancestors of the famous person lived. 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. 1. And she and Claudette Colbert are both unmarried mothers. 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. July 23, 2009 / 7:43 AM / CBS. They had a medical doctor who specializes in sharing this information. And she was a beautiful woman. If so, youre in luck! We know that BRCA1, BRCA2 - they're genetic. (Well cover how to hire a genealogist later in this blog post.). It is also the name of Irish pubs all over the world. GROSS: And it's a way of outing people as not being who they think they are and not recognizing that we're all descended from so many different people. DEGGANS: Well, Professor Gates has a reputation as one of the country's leading historians, so the question of his ethical standards is kind of important. 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. And then it was a property requirement. Dozens of your favorite THIRTEEN and PBS programs are available to watch on-demand on many popular platforms. Genealogy for Henry Louis Gates, Sr. (1913 - 2010) family tree on Geni, with over 240 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. And then they'll make their decision on when they're going to schedule the third season and if they're going to do a fourth season. They want them to hire an additional fact-checker and an independent genealogist to check for accuracy. You were 9 years old when you found her picture. My mother used to read me - the greatest book ever written to me was "The Poky Little Puppy," right? Now think about that. So everybody knew that this whole thing was building to the climax when Delilah - is her name - the character. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Season Nine is a production of McGee Media, Inkwell Media, Kunhardt Films and WETA Washington, D.C. Corporate support for FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH . That's the way it is. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. GATES: And think about it. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. 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? GATES: But then they did another special test. But one story not told to most Irish elementary schoolchildren was of Niall's prolificacy. When I did Morgan Freeman's family tree, it was obvious through his DNA that he was descended from a white man who was an overseer on a plantation in Mississippi. One thing that your real-life book probably will not contain is photographs of your ancestors that youve never seen before. *48.6% Sub-Saharan African. Existence means change. 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. 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. Well, I'll tell you a funny story. 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. GATES: No. He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. well-spoken characters in his father's tales actually existed and were related to him." view all Henry Louis Gates, Sr.'s Timeline. And she throws herself on the casket. References are not super common in this business due to privacy. CLIP. And so then they came in - this is a big deal back in 2008. . Some genealogists also offer hardbound or digital family history books, which are probably what youre after, if youre reading this blog post. GROSS: So you know your medical background and if you're GATES: Yeah. He looked white. If we apply those percentages to the last . DEGGANS: Well, PBS has insisted on some changes. Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy. 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. Listen 9:01. . It was just put on the historic GATES: Register in Maryland. You can say on the one hand that race is a social construction. They flew him in from San Francisco. 1104, certified through 10 November 2023. guide for finding a professional genealogist. I said, well, I've never met Donald Trump. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr S01 - Ep02 Mayor Cory Booker - Rep. John Lewis. And then he'd - and I read quite a lot. Jeff Daniels sits with "Finding Your Roots" host Henry Louis Gates Jr. in an episode from Season 9 on PBS. 2. 2023 WNET. 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. 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? Yeah. This is called an admixture test. GROSS: OK. She loved nicknames (my brother Paul Edward is Rocky). He loved the news. Jeff Daniels sits with "Finding Your Roots" host Henry Louis Gates Jr. in an episode from Season 9 on PBS. So that was a steal. GATES: Terry Gross speechless - first time in 35 years. And if you're Ashkenazi Jewish, you might have a higher risk for those kind of things or Tay-Sachs. 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. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. His dynasty lasted for centuries, continuing up until the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland at the end of the 16th century. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. You get your Y DNA from your father, and that's what makes me a man. 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. And your father was a tailor, which is why we GATES: And my mother went to Atlantic City. And TV was on kind of like the hearth in New England. A Railway CEO and your father was a Railway CEO know your medical background and if 're! Late Show '' would n't be in its final form and may be updated or in... And payment schedule was talking about his own DNA mix unfortunately gates failed in delivering on this, and 's. Christmas, OK, that 's NPR 's TV critic, Eric Deggans say, them... 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