Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an
American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor and
public intellectual. He was the first
African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship. He has received numerous honorary degrees and awards for his teaching, research, and development of academic institutions to study
black culture. In 2002, Gates was selected to give the
Jefferson Lecture, in recognition of his "distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." The lecture resulted in his 2003 book,
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley.As the host of the 2006 and 2008
PBS television miniseries
African American Lives, Gates explored the genealogy of prominent African Americans. Gates sits on the boards of many notable arts, cultural, and research institutions. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher
University Professor at
Harvard University, where he is Director of the
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Michael Kinsley referred to him as "the nation's most famous black scholar."
Biography
Early years
Gates was born in
Keyser, West Virginia, to Pauline Augusta Coleman and Henry Louis Gates, Sr. He grew up in neighboring
Piedmont, the inspiration for his best selling memoir
Colored People. At the age of 14, Gates was injured while playing touch football, fracturing the
ball and socket joint of his hip, resulting in a
slipped epiphysis. The injury was misdiagnosed by a physician who told Gates's mother that his problem was "
psychosomatic." When the physical damage finally healed, Gates' right leg was two inches shorter than his left. Because of the injury, Gates uses a cane to help him walk.
[. Vol. 67. Gale, 2008. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center, Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009.]Gates graduated from Piedmont High School in 1968 and attended Potomac State College in Keyser, West Virginia before earning his undergraduate degree at
Yale University, gaining a
B.A. summa cum laude in History. To his eventual embarrassment, he wrote in his Yale application, "As always, whitey now sits in judgment of me, preparing to cast my fate. It is your decision either to let me blow with the wind as a nonentity or to encourage the development of self. Allow me to prove myself."
The first African-American to be awarded an
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the day after his undergraduate commencement, Gates set sail on the
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 for England and the
University of Cambridge. There he studied
English literature at
Clare College. With the assistance of a
Ford Foundation Fellowship, he worked toward his
Ph.D. in
English. While his work in history at
Yale had trained him in
archival work, Gates' studies at Clare introduced him to English literature and
literary theory.
At Cambridge, Gates was also able to work with
Wole Soyinka, a
Nigerian writer denied an appointment in the department because, as Gates later recalled,
African literature was then deemed "at best,
sociology or
socio-anthropology, but it was not real literature."
Soyinka would later become the first black
African to be awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature; he remained an influential
mentor for Gates. His novels were the subject of numerous works by Gates. Finding mentors in those with whom he shared a "common sensibility" rather than an ethnicity, Gates also counted
Raymond Williams,
George Steiner, and
John Holloway among the European scholars who influenced him.
Gates married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979. They had two daughters. They later divorced.
Career
After a month at
Yale Law School, Gates withdrew from the program. In October 1975 he was hired by Charles T. Davis as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale. In July 1976, Gates was promoted to the post of Lecturer in Afro-American Studies with the understanding that he would be promoted to Assistant Professor upon completion of his
dissertation. Jointly appointed to assistant professorships in English and Afro-American Studies in 1979, Gates was promoted to Associate Professor in 1984.
After being denied
tenure at Yale, Gates accepted a position at
Cornell University in 1985, where he taught until 1989. After a two-year stay at
Duke University, he was recruited to
Harvard University in 1991. At Harvard, Gates teaches undergraduate and graduate courses as the Alphonse Fletcher
University Professor, an endowed chair to which he was appointed in 2006, and as Professor of English.
Additionally, he serves as the Director of the
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.As a literary theorist and
critic, Gates has combined literary techniques of
deconstruction with native African literary traditions; he draws on
structuralism,
post-structuralism, and
semiotics to
textual analysis and matters of
identity politics. As a black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the
Eurocentric literary canon. He has insisted that black literature must be evaluated by the aesthetic criteria of its culture of origin, not criteria imported from Western or European cultural traditions that express a "tone deafness to the black cultural voice" and result in "intellectual
racism."
In his major scholarly work,
The Signifying Monkey, a 1989
American Book Award winner, Gates expressed what might constitute a black cultural aesthetic. The work extended application of the concept of "
signifyin(g)" to analysis of African-American works; it thus rooted African-American literary criticism in the African-American vernacular tradition.
While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of black literature and black culture, he does not advocate a "separatist" black canon. Rather, he works for greater recognition of black works and their integration into a larger,
pluralistic canon. He has affirmed the value of the Western tradition, but has envisioned a more inclusive canon of diverse works sharing common cultural connections:
Gates has argued that a separatist,
Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes. He maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature. He argues, "It can't be real as a subject if you have to look like the subject to be an expert in the subject,"
adding, "It's as ridiculous as if someone said I couldn't appreciate
Shakespeare because I'm not
Anglo-Saxon. I think it's vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a black mouth or a white mouth."
As a mediator between those advocating separatism and those who believe in a fixed
Western canon, Gates has faced criticisms from both sides. Some critics suggest that the additional black literature will diminish the value of the Western canon, while separatists say that Gates is too accommodating to the dominant white culture in his advocacy of integration of the canon.
As a literary historian committed to preservation and study of historical texts, Gates has been integral to the Black Periodical Literature Project, an archive of black newspapers and magazines created with financial assistance from the
National Endowment for the Humanities. To build Harvard's visual, documentary, and literary archives of African-American texts, Gates arranged for the purchase of "The Image of the Black in Western Art", a collection assembled by
Dominique de Ménil in
Houston, Texas. Earlier, as a result of his research as a
MacArthur Fellow, Gates discovered
Our Nig by
Harriet E. Wilson, written in 1859 and thus the first novel in the United States written by a black person. He followed this discovery by acquiring and authenticating the manuscript of
The Bondwoman's Narrative by
Hannah Crafts, a novel from the same period that scholars believe may have been written as early as 1853, which would give it precedence as the first novel by a black person. It was first published in 2002 and became a bestseller.
As a prominent black intellectual, Gates has focused throughout his career on building academic institutions to study
black culture. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for black Americans. His writing includes pieces in
The New York Times that defend
rap music and an article in
Sports Illustrated that criticizes black youth culture for glorifying
basketball over education. In 1992, he received a
George Polk Award for his social commentary in
The New York Times. Gates's prominence in this field led to his being called as a witness on behalf of the controversial
Florida rap group
2 Live Crew in an
obscenity case. He argued that the material which the government charged was profane, had important roots in African-American
vernacular speech, games, and literary traditions, and should be protected.
Asked by
NEH Chairman Bruce Cole to describe his work, Gates responded, "I would say I'm a literary critic. That's the first descriptor that comes to mind. After that I would say I was a teacher. Both would be just as important."
Other activities
Gates was the host and co-producer of
African American Lives (2006) and
African American Lives 2 (2008) in which the lineage of more than a dozen notable African Americans is traced using
genealogical and historic resources, as well as
DNA testing. In the first series, Gates learned of his high percentage of
European ancestry due to his descent from the mulatto John Redman. In addition, he discussed findings about ancestry of his guests.
In the second series of episodes, Gates learned that he is part of a genetic subgroup possibly descended from or related to the 4th-century
Irish king,
Niall of the Nine Hostages. He also learned that his ancestors included the
Yoruba people of
Nigeria. The two programs demonstrated the many strands of heritage and history among African Americans.
Cambridge arrest
On July 16, 2009, Gates returned home from a trip to
China to find the door to his house jammed. His driver attempted to help him gain entrance. A passer-by called police reporting a possible break-in and a
Cambridge police officer was dispatched. The resulting confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. The incident spurred a politically charged exchange of views about
race relations and
law enforcement throughout the United States. The arrest garnered national attention which eventually led to an invitation to the White House by President Barack Obama for a beer to discuss race relations.
Awards and honors
- Gates has been the recipient of nearly 50 honorary degrees and numerous academic and social action awards.
- He was listed in Time among its “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997.
- In 2002 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Gates for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.
[ at NEH Website . Retrieved January 22, 2009.] Gates's lecture was entitled "Mister Jefferson and the Trials of Phillis Wheatley." It was the basis of his later book The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (2003).
- On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University.
Bibliography
Books (author)
Books (editor)
Articles
Filmography
- The Two Nations of Black America, Host and Scriptwriter, Frontline, WGBH-TV, February 11, 1998.
- Leaving Eldridge Cleaver, WGBH, 1999
- Wonders of the African World, PBS, October 25–27, 1999 (six-part series) (Shown as Into Africa on BBC-2 in the United Kingdom and South Africa, Summer, 1999)
- America Beyond the Color Line, Host and Scriptwriter, (four part series) PBS, 2004.
- Looking For Lincoln, Host and Narrator, PBS, February 2009
