The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
My earliest childhood memory is of my father going crazy when the Giants won the World Series in 1954. He started whoopin'… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
In the old days, you lived in one neighborhood, you knew all your neighbors and your daughter married the guy next door.… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue.… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty.… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The thing about living in a village at the foot of a mountain is that the world for you becomes, without thinking… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
Very few Black people ever embraced back to Africa movements, and very few actually, a tiny number actually went back to Africa.… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black? — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
I think that the implication of King's assassination has not been fully appreciated. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share
