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

Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1992. Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars. Oxford University Press. Abstract
Multiculturalism. It has been the subject of cover stories in Time and Newsweek, as well as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines around America. It has sparked heated jeremiads by George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa, and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fish and Catherine Stimpson on "Firing Line." It is arguably the most hotly debated topic in America today--and justly so. For whether one speaks of tensions between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights, or violent mass protests against Moscow in ethnic republics such as Armenia, or outright war between Serbs and Bosnians in the former Yugoslavia, it is clear that the clash of cultures is a worldwide problem, deeply felt, passionately expressed, always on the verge of violent explosion. Problems of this magnitude inevitably frame the discussion of "multiculturalism" and "cultural diversity" in the American classroom as well.
The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press. Abstract
This groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, Gates uncovers a unique system of interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. He uses this critical framework to reassess several major works of African-American literature, including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo.
Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1987. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self. Oxford University Press. Abstract
In this insightful volume, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a leading scholar in African-American studies, attacks the notion of African-American literature as a kind of social realism. Insisting, instead, that critics focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism--the language of the text--Gates advocates the use of a close, methodical analysis of language, made possible by modern literary theory. Incorporating the theoretical insights of critics such as Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Bloom, he explores the work of a wide range of African-American writers from Phillis Wheatley to Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker.
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Films

African American Lives
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2006. African American Lives. Writer, narrator and executive producer. Four-hour series, PBS, February 1 and 8, 2006. Abstract
An unprecedented four-part series, AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES uncovers a new level personal discovery. Using genealogy, oral history, family stories, and DNA analysis to trace lineages through American history and back to Africa, the series provides life-changing journeys for a diverse group of highly accomplished African Americans including Whoopi Goldberg, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Quincy Jones, Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Chris Tucker and Oprah Winfrey.
America Beyond the Color Line
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2004. America Beyond the Color Line. Writer and narrator. Four-hour series, BBC2/PBS, February 2 and 4, 2004. Abstract
The evolution of African American society has split into two distinct communities, according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. the privileged and the disenfranchised. Viewed through the lens of four intrinsic elements of the African American experience Black Hollywood, The Black Elite, The Ghetto, and The New South gates examines the legacy of the Civil Rights movement since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Leaving Cleaver: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Remembers Eldridge Cleaver
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1999. Leaving Cleaver: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Remembers Eldridge Cleaver. Writer, narrator, and correspondent. WGBH. Abstract
In March 1997, social activist, former Black Panther, and author, Eldridge Cleaver sat down with Henry Louis Gates Jr. for a discussion of his life as a civil rights activist. It would be the last major interview Cleaver gave before his death in May 1998. This film draws on the 1997 interview, archival footage, and commentary from Cleaver's former wife Kathleen, as well as audio tapes of a 1975 interview that Gates did with Cleaver in Paris.
Wonders of the African World
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1999. Wonders of the African World. Writer and narrator. Six part-series, PBS, October 25 – 27, 1999 (shown as “Into Africa” on BBC-2 in the United Kingdom and South Africa, Summer, 1999). Abstract
Africa is a continent of magnificent treasures and cultures--from the breathtaking stone architecture of 1,000-year-old ruins in South Africa to an advanced 16th century international university in Timbuktu. However, for centuries, many of these African wonders have been hidden from the world, lost to the ravages of time, nature and repressive governments. Uncover the richness of these African Wonders with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as he explores the many cultures, traditions and history of the African continent.
The Two Nations of Black America
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1998. The Two Nations of Black America. Writer, narrator and producer. On "Frontline," WGBH-TV, February 11, 1998. Abstract
In this FRONTLINE report, correspondent Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard scholar, explores the gaping chasm between the upper and lower classes of black America and probes why it has happened: "How have we reached this point where we have both the largest black middle class and the largest black underclass in our history?"
From Great Zimbabwe to Kilimatinde
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 1996. From Great Zimbabwe to Kilimatinde. Writer and narrator. In “Great Rail Journeys,” BBC/PBS, 1996. Abstract
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and his family travel by train from Zimbabwe to the village of Kilimatinde in Tanzania.
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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.