Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University.

Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. The Black Church (PBS) and Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches (HBO), which he executive produced, each received Emmy nominations. In January 2024, Finding Your Roots, Gates’s groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, returned for its tenth season on PBS. His most recent history series for PBS, Gospel, premiered in February 2024.

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Gates is a recipient of a number of honorary degrees, including his alma mater, the University of Cambridge. Gates was a member of the first class awarded “genius grants” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998 he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2001 he discovered the first novel written by a Black female author, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, by Hannah Craft.

A native of Piedmont, West Virginia, Gates earned his B.A. in History, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at Cambridge in 1979, where he is also an Honorary Fellow. A former chair of the Pulitzer Prize board, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on a wide array of boards, including the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of America, and The Studio Museum of Harlem. In 2011, his portrait, by Yuqi Wang, was hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Books

And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kevin M. Burke. 2015. And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK. Ecco/HarperCollins. Publisher's Version Abstract

The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s PBS series, And Still I Rise—a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos.

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.

Os Negros Na América Latina
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2014. Os Negros Na América Latina. Companhia das Letras. Abstract

Latin American Edition of 'Black in Latin America'

Segundo Henry Louis Gates Jr., a história da diáspora africana é em grande medida a história dos ciclos econômicos - mineração, açúcar, tabaco, pecuária - das colônias europeias no Novo Mundo. A partir da descoberta da América, milhões de homens e mulheres foram transportados em horríveis condições até portos como os de Havana, Veracruz e Salvador. Aqueles que sobreviviam à viagem em geral trabalhavam até a morte nas fazendas, minas e cidades coloniais, assim como seus descendentes.

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Donald Yacovone. 2013. The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Smiley Books. Abstract
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is the companion book to the six-part, six hour documentary of the same name, airing on national, primetime public television in the fall of 2013. The series is the first to air since 1968 that chronicles the full sweep of 500 years of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent and the arrival of the first black conquistador, Juan Garrido, in Florida in 1513, through five centuries of remarkable historic events right up to today—when Barack Obama is serving his second term as President, yet our country remains deeply divided by race and class.
The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2012. The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader. Edited by Abby Wolf. Basic Civitas Books. Abstract
Educator, writer, critic, intellectual, film-maker-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been widely praised as being one of America's most prominent and prolific scholars. In what will be an essential volume, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Reader collects three decades of writings from his many fields of interest and expertise.

Films

Black History in Two Minutes (or So)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2022. Black History in Two Minutes (or So). Writer, host, and executive producer. Web series. Series Two and Three, 2022-2023. Abstract
It's Black History delivered in short, lively, fact-packed stories accessible to people of all ages and education levels. It's fast, accurate U.S. history describing major historical events and introducing less well-known experiences involving Black Americans. The topics range from recent events to the founding of the United States of America. Heroes of the Civil Rights movement are covered, as are some of the more obscure figures in the fight for equality.
Finding Your Roots, Season 7
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2021. Finding Your Roots, Season 7. Writer, host, and executive producer. Television series, PBS (ten, one-hour episodes). Abstract
Renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. returns for a new season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS. Using genealogical detective work and cutting-edge DNA analysis, Gates guides influential guests deep into the branches of their family trees, revealing surprising stories of love, hardship, and triumph that transcend borders and merge to form an American root system fortified by its diversity.
Finding Your Roots, Season 7
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2021. Finding Your Roots, Season 7. Writer, host, and executive producer. Television series, PBS (ten, one-hour episodes). Abstract
Renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. returns for a new season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS. Using genealogical detective work and cutting-edge DNA analysis, Gates guides influential guests deep into the branches of their family trees, revealing surprising stories of love, hardship, and triumph that transcend borders and merge to form an American root system fortified by its diversity.
Black Art in the Absence of Light
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2021. Black Art in the Absence of Light. Executive producer: Feature-length documentary, HBO: February 2021. Abstract
A look at the indelible contributions of some of the foremost African American artists in today's contemporary art world.
The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2021. The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song. Writer, host, and executive producer: Four-hour series, PBS: February 2021. Abstract
Trace the history of the Black Church in America. From enslavement to today, the series explores key events shaping an institution at the heart of African American communities on the frontlines of hope and change.
Civil War (Or, Who Do We Think We Are)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2021. Civil War (Or, Who Do We Think We Are). Executive producer. Feature-length documentary, NBCUniversal, June 2021. Abstract
A journey across the United States to explore the story of the Civil War of Americans from President Obama's final year in office through the present.

Edited Books

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Hollis Robbins, ed. 2017. The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers. Penguin Classics. Abstract
The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women’s suffrage, temperance, and civil rights, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of African American women writers be read, remembered, and addressed.
The Annotated African American Folktales
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Maria Tatar, ed. 2017. The Annotated African American Folktales. Liveright. Abstract

These nearly 150 African American folktales animate our past and reclaim a lost cultural legacy to redefine American literature.

Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding African American lore with dozens of tales rarely seen before, The Annotated African American Folktales revolutionizes the canon like no other volume. Following in the tradition of such classics as Arthur Huff Fauset's "Negro Folk Tales from the South" (1927), Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men (1935), and Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly (1985), acclaimed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar assemble a groundbreaking collection of folktales, myths, and legends that revitalizes a vibrant African American past to produce the most comprehensive and ambitious collection of African American folktales ever published in American literary history. Arguing for the value of these deceptively simple stories as part of a sophisticated, complex, and heterogeneous cultural heritage, Gates and Tatar show how these remarkable stories deserve a place alongside the classic works of African American literature, and American literature more broadly.

Opening with two introductory essays and twenty seminal African tales as historical background, Gates and Tatar present nearly 150 African American stories, among them familiar Brer Rabbit classics, but also stories like "The Talking Skull" and "Witches Who Ride," as well as out-of-print tales from the 1890s' Southern Workman. Beginning with the figure of Anansi, the African trickster, master of improvisation―a spider who plots and weaves in scandalous ways―The Annotated African American Folktales then goes on to draw Caribbean and Creole tales into the orbit of the folkloric canon. It retrieves stories not seen since the Harlem Renaissance and brings back archival tales of "Negro folklore" that Booker T. Washington proclaimed had emanated from a "grapevine" that existed even before the American Revolution, stories brought over by slaves who had survived the Middle Passage. Furthermore, Gates and Tatar's volume not only defines a new canon but reveals how these folktales were hijacked and misappropriated in previous incarnations, egregiously by Joel Chandler Harris, a Southern newspaperman, as well as by Walt Disney, who cannibalized and capitalized on Harris's volumes by creating cartoon characters drawn from this African American lore.

Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Franklin W. Knight, ed. 2016. Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. Oxford University Press. Abstract
From Toussaint L’Ouverture to Pelé, the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography will provide a comprehensive overview of the lives of Caribbeans and Afro-Latin Americans who are historically significant. The project will be unprecedented in scale, covering the entire Caribbean, and the Afro-descended populations throughout Latin America, including people who spoke and wrote Creole, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. It will also encompass the full scope of history, with entries on figures from the first forced slave migrations in the sixteenth centuries, to entries on living persons such as the Haitian musician and politician Wyclef Jean and the Cuban author and poet Nancy Morejón. Individuals will be drawn from all walks of life including philosophers, politicians, activists, entertainers, scholars, poets, scientists, religious figures, kings, and everyday people whose lives have contributed to the history of the Caribbean and Latin America.
The Portable Frederick Douglass
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and John Stauffer, ed. 2016. The Portable Frederick Douglass. Penguin Classics. Abstract
This compact volume offers a full course on the remarkable, diverse career of Frederick Douglass, letting us hear once more a necessary historical figure whose guiding voice is needed now as urgently as ever. Edited by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Pulitzer Prize–nominated historian John Stauffer, The Portable Frederick Douglass includes the full range of Douglass’s works: the complete Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as well as extracts from My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick DouglassThe Heroic Slave, one of the first works of African American fiction; the brilliant speeches that launched his political career and that constitute the greatest oratory of the Civil War era; and his journalism, which ranges from cultural and political critique (including his early support for women’s equality) to law, history, philosophy, literature, art, and international affairs, including a never-before-published essay on Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Paul Devlin, ed. 2016. Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs. Library of America. Abstract
In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray (1916–2013) took aim at protest writers and social scientists who accentuated the “pathology” of race in American life. Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in American art embodies the “blues-hero tradition”— a heritage of grace, wit, and inspired improvisation in the face of adversity. Murray went on to refine these ideas in The Blue Devils of Nada and From the Briarpatch File, and all three landmark collections of essays are gathered here for the first time, together with Murray’s memoir South to a Very Old Place, his brilliant lecture series The Hero and the Blues, his masterpiece of jazz criticism Stomping the Blues, and eight previously uncollected pieces.
The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader
Wells, Ida B. 2014. The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader. Edited by Mia Bay and Henry Louis Gates Jr.. Penguin Classics. Abstract

Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks’s courageous act of resistance, police dragged a young black journalist named Ida B. Wells off a train for refusing to give up her seat. The experience shaped Wells’s career, and—when hate crimes touched her life personally—she mounted what was to become her life’s work: an anti-lynching crusade that captured international attention.

This volume covers the entire scope of Wells’s remarkable career, collecting her early writings, articles exposing the horrors of lynching, essays from her travels abroad, and her later journalism. The Light of Truth is both an invaluable resource for study and a testament to Wells’s long career as a civil rights activist.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.