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

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.

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.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2014. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism (25th Anniversary Edition). 25th ed. Oxford University Press. Abstract

25th anniversary edition of Gates's landmark work of cultural studies

New to this Edition:

New preface written by the author
New afterword written by noted critic W. T. J. Mitchell

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2013. En Busca De Nuestras Raíces: De Cómo 19 Extraordinarios Afroamericanos Rescataron Su Pasado. Latin American Edition of "In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past." Ciencias Sociales.

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.

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

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2024. Finding Your Roots, Season 10. 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 twenty-one compelling guests-including three of his loyal viewers--deep into their family trees, revealing surprising stories that transcend borders, illuminating an American root system fortified by its diversity.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2024. GOSPEL. Writer, host, and executive producer. Television series, PBS (four, one-hour episodes). Abstract

From acclaimed scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Gospel explores Black spirituality in sermon and song. From the blues to hip-hop, African Americans have been the driving force of sonic innovation for over a century. While musical styles come and go, there is one sound that has been a constant source of strength, courage, and wisdom from the pulpit to the choir lofts on any given Sunday: gospel.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2023. Finding Your Roots, Season 9. 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 twenty-one influential guests deep into the branches of their family trees, revealing surprising stories of forgotten ancestors that transcend borders, illuminating an American root system fortified by its diversity.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2022. Frederick Douglass in Five Speeches. Executive producer. Feature-length documentary, HBO: February 2022. Abstract

Famed anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass' words about racial injustice are brought to life in this documentary.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2022. Finding Your Roots, Season 8. 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 twenty-one 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.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2022. Making Black America: Through the Grapevine. writer, host, and executive producer. Television series, PBS (four, one-hour episodes). Abstract

Professor Gates, with directors Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris, chronicle the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” The series recounts the establishment of the Prince Hall Masons in 1775 through the formation of all-Black towns and business districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, destinations for leisure and the social media phenomenon of Black Twitter.

Edited Books

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., David Bindman, and Alejandro de la Fuente, ed. 2023. The Image of the Black in Latin American and Caribbean Art, Book 1: From Colony to Nation. Harvard University Press. Abstract

The Image of the Black in Latin American and Caribbean Art is the first comprehensive survey of the visual representation of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, some twelve million of whom were forcibly imported into the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Genevieve West, ed. 2022. You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston. Amistad. Abstract

You Don’t Know Us Negroes is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew S Curran, ed. 2022. Who's Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. Harvard University Press. Abstract

The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin―an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Eric Foner, ed. 2021. W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction. Library of America. Abstract

Upon its publication in 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction offered a radical new assessment of the post–Civil War era, a time when African American progress was met with a white supremacist backlash and, ultimately, the unjust social order of Jim Crow. Previously cast as a misguided, even villainous effort to impose an inverted and “unnatural” racial hierarchy on the defeated South, Reconstruction was for Du Bois nothing less than a milestone in the course of human history, “the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen.”

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Paul Devlin, ed. 2018. Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems. Library of America. Abstract

One of the leading cultural critics of his generation, Albert Murray was also the author of an extraordinary quartet of semi-autobiographical novels, vivid impressionistic portraits of black life in the Deep South in the 1920s and '30s and in prewar New York City. Train Whistle Guitar (1974) introduces Murray's recurring narrator and protagonist, Scooter, a "Southern jackrabbit raised in a briarpatch" too nimble ever to receive a scratch. Scooter's education in books, music, and the blue-steel bent-note blues-ballad realities of American life continues in The Spyglass Tree (1991), Murray's "Portrait of the Artist as a Tuskegee Undergraduate." The Seven League Boots (1996) follows Scooter as he becomes a bass player in a touring band not unlike Duke Ellington's, and The Magic Keys (2005), in which Scooter at last finds his true vocation as a writer in Greenwich Village, is an elegaic reverie on an artist's life. Editors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin round out the volume with a selection of Murray's remarkable poems, including 11 unpublished pieces from his notebooks, and two rare examples of his work as a short story writer.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kevin M. Burke, ed. 2017. Twelve Years a Slave: Norton Critical Edition. W.W. Norton. Abstract

This Norton Critical Edition of Solomon Northup’s harrowing autobiography is based on the 1853 first edition. It is accompanied by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kevin Burke’s introduction and detailed explanatory footnotes.