The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
Precisely that, covering 500 years of African-American history in six hours. I've been working on this for seven years. The biggest challenge… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
So, the kind of precious memories about being black for my generation won't exist for my kids' and grandkids' generations unless we… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The second thing that happened is, DNA analysis is much more sophisticated. All you have to do now is spit in a… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
My producers and I worked with these consultants and came up with seventy [stories] which we think are exemplary of the larger… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The first slave came to Florida in 1526. The first one we know by name, Esteban, which means Stephen, came a couple… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
I think that is what we do by preserving and telling our stories. If you don't tell your stories, other people will… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
We can't all work in the inner city. And, I don't even think that it is incumbent upon an African-American intellectual to… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
I find that people today tend to use them interchangeably. I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
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… — 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
We can see that the complexity we witness inside the African-American community today has always been there. Black people were just as… — 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 Image
Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
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 Image
I think that the implication of King's assassination has not been fully appreciated. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black. — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
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 Image
