Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Finding Your Roots, Season 10
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.
GOSPEL
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction
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.”
You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston
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. 
The Image of the Black in Latin American and Caribbean Art, Book 1: From Colony to Nation
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.
Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Tonya Bolden. 2019. Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow. Scholastic. Abstract
This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely.
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked “a new birth of freedom” in Lincoln’s America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the “nadir” of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.
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. Penguin Books. Abstract
From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America.
The Black Box: Writing the Race
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 2024. The Black Box: Writing the Race. Penguin Random House. Abstract
A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country’s history.

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