Henry Gates

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Hr id is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, and of The Root, an online news magazine dedicated to coverage of African American news, culture, and genealogy.

In 2008, Oxford University Press published the African American National Biography. Co-edited with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, it is an 8-volume set containing more than 4,000 biographical entries on both well known and obscure African Americans. The companion website will add more than 1,000 entries to those in print within the next two years. With K. Anthony Appiah, he co-edited the encyclopedia Encarta Africana published on CD-ROM by Microsoft (1999), and in book form by Basic Civitas Books under the title Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999). Oxford University Press published an expanded five-volume edition of the encyclopedia in 2005. He is most recently the author of Finding Oprah’s Roots, Finding Your Own (Crown, 2007), a meditation on genetics, genealogy, and race. His other recent books are America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans (Warner Books, 2004), African American Lives, co-edited with Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford, 2004), and The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, edited with Hollis Robbins (W. W. Norton, 2006). In January 2009, his book In Search of Our Roots will be published (Crown), expanding on interviews he conducted for his multi-part PBS documentary series, “African American Lives.”

In 2006, Professor Gates wrote and produced the PBS documentary also called “African American Lives,” the first documentary series to employ genealogy and genetic science to provide an understanding of African American history. In 2007, a follow-up one-hour documentary, “Oprah’s Roots: An African American Lives Special,” aired on PBS, further examining the genealogical and genetic heritage of Oprah Winfrey, who had been featured in the original documentary. The second series, “African American Lives 2,” aired on PBS in February 2008. Professor Gates also wrote and produced the documentaries “Wonders of the African World” (2000) and “America Beyond the Color Line” (2004) for the BBC and PBS, and authored the companion volumes to both series. PBS will broadcast his newest documentary, “Looking for Lincoln,” in February 2009.

Professor Gates is the author of several works of literary criticism, including Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the “Racial” Self (Oxford University Press, 1987); and The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (Oxford, 1988), winner of the American Book Award in 1989. He authenticated and facilitated the publication, in 1983, of Our Nig, or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859), by Harriet Wilson, the first novel published by an African American woman. Two decades later, in 2002, Professor Gates authenticated and published The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, dating from the early 1850s and now considered one of the first novels written by an African American woman. He is the co-author, with Cornel West, of The Future of the Race (Knopf, 1996), and the author of a memoir, Colored People (Knopf, 1994), that traces his childhood experiences in a small West Virginia town in the 1950s and 1960s. Among his other books are The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (Basic Civitas Books, 2003); Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Black Man (Random House, 1997); and Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (Oxford, 1992). He is completing a book on race and writing in the eighteenth century, entitled “Black Letters and the Enlightenment.”

Professor Gates has edited several influential anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (W. W. Norton, 1996); and the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers (Oxford, 1991). He is the editor of numerous essay collections, including Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (Meridian, 1990); "Race," Writing, and Difference (University of Chicago, 1986); and, with K. Anthony Appiah, volumes on the authors Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes. In addition, Professor Gates is publisher of Transition magazine, an international review of African, Caribbean, and African American politics. An influential cultural critic, Professor Gates has written a 1994 cover story for Time magazine, numerous articles for the New Yorker, and in September 2004, a biweekly guest column in The New York Times.

Before joining the faculty of Harvard in 1991, he taught at Yale, Cornell, and Duke. His honors and grants include a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” (1981), the George Polk Award for Social Commentary (1993), Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans” list (1997), a National Humanities Medal (1998), election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999), the Jefferson Lecture (2002), a Visiting Fellowship at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2003-2004), the Jay B. Hubbell Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies from the Modern Language Association (2006), ), the Rave Award from Wired Magazine (2007), the Let’s Do It Better Award from of the Columbia University School of Journalism for “African American Lives” (2007), and the Cultures of Peace Award from the City of the Cultures of Peace (2007). He has received 49 honorary degrees, from institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, New York University, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Williams College, Emory University, Howard University, University of Toronto, and the University of Benin. In 2006, he was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution, after he traced his lineage back to John Redman, a Free Negro who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Professor Gates served as Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard from 1991 to 2006. He serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the Whitney Museum, Lincoln Center Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

July 2009 arrest and aftermath

On Thursday, July 16th, 2009, he was arrested outside his home for disorderly conduct. According to the official police report Sgt. James Crowley had been responding to a call from neighboor Lucia Whalen that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks attempting to force their way into the residence. Sgt. Crowley then observed an older black man standing in the foyer of the residence in question, later identified to be gates. According to the report, Sgt. Crowley asked the man to step out onto the porch to speak with him, to which the man replied "No I will not." after which he demanded that Sgt. Crowley identify himself. Sgt. Crowley then told him that he was investigating a possible break in progress, which Gates interupted with "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?". Crowley continued to ask routine questions, inquiring about any other people in the residence and asking to see identification. Gates remained uncooperative and demanded to see Sgt. Crowley's identification first, all the while yelling threats. After ascertaining that Gates was affiliated with Harvard, Sgt. Crowley told Gates that he was going to leave the residence. Gates responded with "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside". As Sgt. Crowley left the residence Gates continued to follow him and shouting that he was a racist cop, and that "you haven't heard the last of this". Sgt. Crowley then warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly which Gates ignored, and continued to yell in full public view.

The Cambridge Police Department has since dropped all charges against Professor Gates, and released him. Since then Gates has gone on several high level news media outlets claiming that Sgt. Crowley is a racial police officer, and that race is what motivated the arrest. He has publicly asked Sgt. Crowley to apologize for his actions. President Barack Obama is on record as saying "The Cambridge Police acted stupidly". Obama has also acknowledged that Gates is a friend of his.

Sgt. Crowley, in a radio interview, stated that what his actions were justifiable in the situation. He explains that he asked for Gates to speak with him outside for his personal safety, and the safety of Gates. He explained that, had Gates been attempting to break in, he didn't want to be alone in the house with him, and if not, he wanted to get Gates out of the house in case anyone had managed to break in and was still there. He said that he will offer no apology, and claims that Gates was out of line in his actions. "That apology will never come from me as Jim Crowley. It won't come from me as sergeant in the Cambridge Police Department," Crowley told Boston radio station WEEI. "Whatever anybody else chooses to do in the name of the city of Cambridge or the Cambridge Police Department, which are beyond my control, I don't worry about that. I know what I did was right. I have nothing to apologize for."

The commissioner for the Cambridge Police Department has said that the incident is regrettable, but that Sgt. Crowley had responded as his training dictated.

In a statement, the International Association of Chiefs of Police expressed disappointment in Obama's remarks. "Police chiefs understand that it is critically important to have all the facts on any police matter before drawing conclusions or making any public statement," said Russell B. Laine, association president and chief of the Algonquin, Illinois, police department, in the statement. "For these reasons, the IACP was disappointed in the president's characterization of the Cambridge Police Department."

Education

• B.A. summa cum laude, History, Yale University, where he was a Scholar of the House, in 1973; Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year.
• M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge, and . He became a member of