Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. was born September 16, 1950 as the son of Henry Louis Gates, Sr. and Pauline Augusta Coleman Gates. He is a literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. Gates currently 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.

Henry Gates emerged from Mineral, West Virginia, to become one of the leading scholars in the U.S. He was one of the first Black students to attend the newly desegregated public schools of Piedmont following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Gates took an interest in local civil rights issues and with three other blacks, known as the "Fearsome Foursome," pressured the Blue Jay restaurant and nightclub to integrate.

He initially enrolled at Potomac State College, transferred as an undergraduate to Yale where he spent a year volunteering at a mission hospital in Tanzania and traveling throughout the African continent in order to complete the year-long “non-academic” requirement of his five-year Bachelor of Arts program; upon his return, Gates wrote a guest column for the Yale Daily News about his experience. Having been appointed a "Scholar of the House" during his final year at Yale and thus relieved of academic coursework requirements, Gates spent his final undergraduate year writing, under the guidance of John Morton Blum, an unpublished book entitled The Making of a Governor, which described John D. Rockefeller IV's gubernatorial campaign in West Virginia. In 1973, Gates graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history from Yale.

The first Black 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 the University of Cambridge, where he studied English literature at Clare College. With the assistance of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, he worked toward his MA and 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 Clare College, 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 at the time deemed "at best, sociology or socio-anthropology, but it was not real literature." Soyinka would later become the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize; he remained an influential mentor for Gates and became the subject of numerous works by Gates.

Gates was hired as a secretary in the Afro-American Studies department at Yale in October 1975. 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. He left Yale for Cornell in 1985, and stayed until 1989. After a two-year stay at Duke University, he moved to his current position at Harvard University in 1991. At Harvard, Gates teaches undergraduate and graduate courses as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor 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 Black intellectual and public figure, Gates has been an outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary law and has instead insisted that Black literature must be evaluated by the artistic 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." Gates tried to articulate what might constitute a Black cultural artistic in his major scholarly work The Signifying Monkey, a 1989 American Book Award winner; the work extended the application of the concept of “signifying” to analysis of Black works and thus rooted Black literary criticism in the African vernacular tradition.

While Gates has stressed the need for greater recognition of Black literature and Black culture, Gates does not advocate a "separatist" Black law but, rather, a greater recognition of Black works that would be integrated into the main stream literature. He has affirmed the value of the Western tradition but envisions diverse works integrated by common cultural connections. Moreover, Gates has argued that a separatist, Afrocentric education perpetuates racist stereotypes and maintains that it is "ridiculous" to think that only Blacks should be scholars of African and African-American literature.

As a literary historian committed to the 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 Black texts, Gates arranged for the purchase of “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” a collection assembled by Dominique de Menil in Houston, Texas. Earlier, as a result of his research as a MacArthur Fellow, Gates had discovered Our Nig, the first novel in the United States written by a Black person, Harriet E. Wilson, in 1859; he followed this discovery with the acquisition of the manuscript of The Bondswoman’s Narrative, another narrative from the same period.

As a prominent Black intellectual, Gates has focused throughout his career not only on his research and teaching but on building academic institutions to study Black culture. Additionally, he has worked to bring about social, educational, and intellectual equality for Black Americans and has written 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' prominence in this field led to him being tapped as a witness on behalf of the controversial rap group 2 Live Crew in their obscenity case. He argued the material the government alleged was profane, actually had important roots in dialect, games, and literary traditions and should be protected.

Gates has been the recipient of nearly 50 honorary degrees and numerous academic and social action awards. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1981 and was listed in Time among its “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. In January 2008, he co-founded The Root, a website dedicated to African-American perspectives published by The Washington Post Company. Gates currently chairs the Fletcher Foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is on the boards of many notable institutions including the New York Public Library, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, HEAF (the Harlem Educational Activities Fund), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, located in Stanford, California.

The popular Harvard-area burger restaurant, Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, sells a Professor Skip Gates burger topped with pineapple and teriyaki sauce.

Gates has been the host and co-producer of African American Lives and African American Lives 2 in which the lineage of notable Black Americans is traced using genealogical resources and DNA testing. In the first series, Gates learns of his White ancestry (50%), and in the second installment we learn he is descended from the Irish King, Niall of the Nine Hostages. He also learns that he is descended in part from the Yoruba people of Nigeria. In 2006, Gates 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 is co-editor, with K. Anthony Appiah, of the encyclopedia Encarta Africana, published on CD-ROM by Microsoft and in book form by Basic Civitas Books under the title Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. He is the author of Wonders of the African World, the companion book to the six-hour PBS television series of the same name.

In addition, Professor Gates is the author of several works of literary criticism, including Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the 'Racial' Self; The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, winner of the 1989 American Book Award; and Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars. He is the author of Colored People: A Memoir, which traces his childhood experiences in a small West Virginia town in the 1950s and 1960s; The Future of the Race, co-authored with Cornel West; and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.

Professor Gates's publications also include a 1994 cover story for Time magazine on the new Black Renaissance in art, as well as numerous articles for The New Yorker. In addition, he has edited several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and The Oxford-Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers, and is the co-editor of Transition magazine. Previously for PBS, Professor Gates produced and hosted Wonders of the African World, America Beyond the Color Line, African American Lives and Oprah's Roots.

Will Jeremiah Wright Knock Barack Obama Out?

Hearing what Pastor Jeremiah Wright said in his speech to the National Press Club Monday was both liberating and alarming. Liberating because, after weeks of the endlessly repeated sound bites from his controversial sermons, which have been used as justification to smear Senator Barack Obama, Pastor Wright got to speak up for himself. He spoke plainly about racism, his own political point of view. What is so good about him speaking is that the United States is one of the few places on earth that it could happen. Also with Pastor Wright seeming to literally go off the deep end surely no one in their right mind could think that these two have anything in common at this point.

It was alarming to me because Pastor Wright, knowing full well that anything that he says at this point is attributed to Senator Obama. And many people cannot seem to separate people you know from you. I am glad that Senator Barack Obama received the Audacity of Hope message and cast out your audacity of grand standing. His name is out there -- is he seeking a book contract? It appears to me that Pastor Wright cares little for the welfare of one of his flock. In the middle of a race this tight race Senator Obama does not need any more negative fodder for the already swarming sharks in the media to feed. There is no one Black church. There are many Black churches as there are many White churches. If you are a Christian church, preach Christ. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

In the past few days Pastor Wright blew away any hope Senator Obama’s campaign may have had that he would stay in the background and let the storm of controversy he kicked up with his politically incorrect sermons pass. Instead, Pastor Wright came out swinging, mocking the media for knowing nothing about the Black church, for taking sound bites from his sermons out of context, and, basically, for being lazy and ignorant. He called the news generated by his controversial remarks "the most recent attack on the Black church." And while he takes the media characterizations of him personally he implied that his decision to speak up now was a defense of his people -- the Black church.

The audience of his friends and supporters, including Cornel West and Jim Wallis, ate up his strikes back against what has surely been a racist and unfair campaign against him. Pastor Wright's 9/11 sermon, though it looks, in sound bite form, supremely insensitive, was actually a profoundly moving statement on the tragedy and on the desperate, destructive logic of revenge. The "chickens coming home to roost" line was a quote from a U.S. ambassador, by the way, not Pastor Wright's own words. He is a scholar, and he brings layers of meaning and understanding to the themes he addresses. But that is quickly lost in a news report.

Unlike Senator Obama, who is relentlessly positive, Pastor Wright's points in his speech tended to characterize the U.S. government as an agent of evil more than a beacon of hope. "While our government cuts Food Stamps and spends billions fighting an unjust war in Iraq," he said, his own church has been working hard to serve the poor. On slavery, South African apartheid, and other issues throughout history, he pointed out the leadership of his church, contrasted with the unenlightened thinking of the U.S. government. "While those who call me unpatriotic have used their position of privilege to avoid military service . . . sending others to die for a lie."

Furthermore, Wright pointed out, "the Christianity of the slaveholder is NOT the Christianity of the slave." So much for national or religious unity. Wright doesn't hesitate to puncture the national myth of America's essential goodness. None of this is terribly shocking to those of us who are quite familiar with the U.S. government's misdeeds over time. But it's a heck of a message to send mainstream American voters. Needless to say, this is not the Obama campaign jingle. What will this mean for the rest of the nation?

Wright fielded questions on all his controversial statements. Including patriotism: "I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?"

We'll see what the press, whom he clearly enjoyed teasing, makes of it. And what the voters have to say. Not to mention Senator Obama. Senator Obama’s campaign raises hopes that the U. S. could get past its racially torrid history. Pastor Wright is here to remind us what a huge feat it will be to make that dream a reality.

BET Honors

The first annual celebration of the BET Honors, which aired this passed Friday night, was truly a celebration. The event was hosted by Cedric “The Entertainer, and included an all star line-up including such notables as Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Gladys Knight, Wyclef Jean, Jill Scott, Brian McKnight, Ne-Yo, Raheem DeVaughn, Blair Underwood, Danny Glover, Kerry Washington, Idris Elba, Hill Harper, Vivica A. Fox and Kiesha Cole.

Friday’s broadcast showed the inaugural celebration of the BET Honors, which was held on January 12 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. The show recognized six honorees across a range of achievements. The honors went to Dr. Cornel West, (noted Princeton University professor at the Center for African American Studies), for education; Tyra Banks, (producer, reality-show host, talk-show host, model, actress), for media; Janice Bryant Howroyd, (the chairman, chief executive officer and founder of Act 1 employment services corporation that she started out of a storefront and now has 90 offices across the nation and $500 million in 2007 revenue), for entrepreneur; Alicia Keys (musician, actress AIDS/HIV activist), for entertainment; Richard Parsons (Chairman of the Board of Time Warner), corporate citizen; and The Honorable Maxine Waters (who is serving her ninth term in the U.S. House of Representatives), for public service.

It was a wonderful event but while they were having fun inside, on January 12, the date of the actual taping, a crowd of a couple hundred protesters shouted from behind police barricades across 14th Street. A group called Enough Is Enough led the protest saying the show was an expensive fig leaf to mask the corporation’s sins of exploitation. Signs in the crowd read “I Am Not a Pimp” and “I Am Not a Gangster.” I wonder if “The Boondocks” creator Aaron McGruder, who over the years has had his comic-strip characters ridicule BET for its programming content, most notable for its habit of profit-pushing thuggish rap videos. The protesters have to admit that BET has aired much more family oriented programming lately.

Each honoree received an introduction, then a video bio and then a musical tribute. Wyclef Jean pitched in a foot-stomping take on "She's a Bad Mama Jama." Brian McKnight crooned "One." Wonder came out and ripped up "As," dedicated to Keys. It had the horn section dancing, the ushers keeping time in the aisles and the crowd rocking. Debra Lee, BET's chairman and chief executive, pointed out that each recipient has also "given back to the community in a significant way."