It is the black poet who bridges the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who translates experience into… — 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 sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the… — 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
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
In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on… — 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
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 want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time, but… — 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
You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames.… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...'… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate… — 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… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of… — Henry Louis Gates Copy Share Image
You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've… — 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
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 Image
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 Image
