Latest Henry Louis Gates Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Men, Race, Stories

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• My earliest childhood memory is of my father going crazy when the Giants won the World Series in 1954. He started whoopin' and hollerin' and jumpin' up and down all around the living room. I started crying because he scared me to death.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Memories, Father, Crazy

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• I find that people today tend to use them interchangeably. I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Thinking, People, African American

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• Without doubt, President [Barack] Obama is a great historical figure.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Historical, Doubt, President

• The truth is I would do my job for free! I love it every day. If you can possibly choose a vocation that's an avocation, a job that's really a hobby, then you'll be way ahead of the game.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Jobs, Games, Hobbies

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• You should not pick an occupation because your think your parents want you to do it, or because you think it's the noble thing to do. You should only pick a job because it turns you on.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Jobs, Thinking, Parent

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• We can see that the complexity we witness inside the African-American community today has always been there. Black people were just as noble and just as ignoble as anybody else.

  Henry Louis Gates

  People, Community, African American

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• I think that is what we do by preserving and telling our stories. If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things change. Existence means change. So, the kind of precious memories about being black for my generation won't exist for my kids' and grandkids' generations unless we preserve them through fiction, through film, through comic books, and every other form of media we can possibly utilize to perpetuate the story of the great African-American people.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Memories, Book, Mean

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• Like the amazing story of Anthony Johnson. This man was a slave, then became free, accumulated 250 acres, and even had his own slave, a black man who took him to court in Virginia in 1654.That man argued that he should be freed like an indentured servant. But Johnson, who we believe was a pure African from Angola, said, "No way, you're my slave." And the court agreed.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Believe, Men, Virginia

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• The first slave came to Florida in 1526. The first one we know by name, Esteban, which means Stephen, came a couple of years later. So, we start with the stories of Juan Garrido and Esteban to show that African-American people have been here a century longer than anyone thought, and that the diversity we see in the African-American community today has existed since the beginning.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Couple, Mean, Years

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• You had one guy who was a slave, and another who wasn't. And I actually know what happened to them. [Juan ] Garrido ended up getting good jobs and a pension in Mexico which was the center of New Spain, as it was called. Esteban ended up being killed by the Zuni Indians.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Jobs, Guy, Spain

  "Gates Unlocked: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The "The African Americans" Interview". Interview With Kam Williams, lasentinel.net. October 17, 2013.

• The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the 20 who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. All of us had been taught that. The first African came to Florida in 1513. And the huge shock is we know his name, Juan Garrido, and that he wasn't a slave. He was free!

  Henry Louis Gates

  Names, Florida, People

  "Gates Unlocked: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The "The African Americans" Interview". Interview With Kam Williams, lasentinel.net. October 17, 2013.

• In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the greatest historians of both African and African-American history, and hired them as consultants. I had them submit what they thought were the indispensable stories, the ones they felt this series absolutely had to include.

  Henry Louis Gates

  African American, Documentaries, Stories

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

• My producers and I worked with these consultants and came up with seventy [stories] which we think are exemplary of the larger arc of African-American history between 1513 and 2013. We covered half a millennium, and it's amazing.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Thinking, African American, Stories

• Precisely that, covering 500 years of African-American history in six hours. I've been working on this for seven years. The biggest challenge was deciding which stories to tell.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Years, African American, Challenges

• I try to be sensitive, but the atmosphere I create is very supportive. One overriding premise of the series is that guilt is not heritable. It's good to know about them, but you are not responsible for them. You don't have to apologize for them. It's a process of knowing, and the more you know, the richer the sense of yourself. The firmer your foundation as a human being is

  Henry Louis Gates

  Knowing, Atmosphere, Supportive

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• Our society is driven today by so much ethnic discord. We have Black Lives Matter, which I praise and celebrate. We have the demagogues stereotyping Muslims and resurrecting racist stereotypes they used to visit on us. The larger goal is to show that we are all the same, we all come from Africa, and we all have the same larger family tree. It's about the fundamental unity of the human community.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Goal, Community, Tree

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• The more you learn about yourself and your family tree, your self-esteem goes up. They will learn archival skills, historical analysis and science skills. You learn all this in the most seductive way, and that is through learning about yourself. Who doesn't like talking about themselves? It doesn't seem like science or history, it's just fun.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Fun, Self Esteem, Talking

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• What happened in the interim is, billions of records have been digitized. Historians and scholars have always used genealogical records to tell the story of American history. It takes months and years of research. I can't even tell you how laborious that is. You have to be somebody who has a lot of free time, like a professor who can take tenure or someone with a great deal of leisure.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Years, Stories, Records

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• The second thing that happened is, DNA analysis is much more sophisticated. All you have to do now is spit in a test tube and you find out all kind of things in six weeks - where they are from in Africa or Europe. You can prove or disprove the fundamental African-American myth that you descended from a Cherokee great, great grandmother.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Grandmother, Dna, Europe

  "Black Ancestry Matters on ‘Finding Your Roots’". Interview with ALEXANDRA PHANOR-FAURY, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• We have chaos reigning in the Middle East. There is a great deal of instability. In the past, people would have turned to their church, and some still do. Counterintuitively, people are now turning into themselves to find their roots. The way you do that is through your family tree. "Where did I come from?" There is an urge to preserve the names of the people who produced you.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Past, Names, Roots

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• Thousand years ago, we all descended from Africans who left the continent. Those ancestors, we will never know their name. We can go back 200 or 300 years and actually populate your family tree with real people who had names and documents. They had customs, characteristics that, unbeknownst to you, you have inherited. Almost through osmosis it has been passed down to you.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Real, Years, Osmosis

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• I got a letter from this lady of Russian and Jewish descent. She asked me if I was a racist because I didn't do any White people. I was shocked, because my mandate is to do Black studies. It would have never occurred to me if this lady hadn't written this letter. We decided we were going expand the brand and do everybody.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Laughter, White, People

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• In the old days, you lived in one neighborhood, you knew all your neighbors and your daughter married the guy next door. That was social and economic progress. That model is gone now. We also had a world order that was fraught but fairly stable.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Daughter, Doors, Order

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

• I thought, "why don't we be innovative and create something nobody had ever done before?" It was a huge hit and we immediately did a sequel with Chris Rock, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner and Maya Angelou.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Rocks, Done, Innovative

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.