November 2009

Henry Louis Gates Jr. “inspires” CRLS students to learn
Noted author, historian, and professor leaves indelible impression on students and staff

By Justin T. Martin
Director of Public Information and Communications
Cambridge Public Schools

CAMBRIDGE _ Harvard professor, historian, and author Henry Louis Gates Jr. addressed a standing room only crowd at the city’s new library facility yesterday [Nov. 13, 2009] and his message definitely resonated with the 150 Cambridge Rindge & Latin School students who witnessed it.

Professor Gates at the Cambridge Public Library

“After returning to school, one of my students said to me, ‘Man, we just want to be his friend. He seems like a cool guy to just hang with and talk to.’ Coming from the mouth of a fifteen year old boy, that is pretty impressive,” said CRLS English teacher Kira Lee Keenan.

Professor Gates presentation focused on his research, his new book, “Colored People”, and his own childhood.
“Our 10th graders had read Gates’ memoir of his early life, “Colored People” for their summer reading,” said CRLS Library Teacher Holly Samuels. “His enthusiasm for the science behind his topic and what it means for his knowledge about himself and his family was infectious for the kids. Many of them expressed an interest in learning more about themselves and their heritage. This very personal application of the newest developments in DNA testing may well ignite an interest in our students to learn more about the science of DNA and their own heritage.”

CRLS faculty and students were impressed with Professor Gates, describing his presentation as charismatic, engaging, and articulate. His humorous anecdotes, bordering on bawdy at times, left even the most apathetic students chuckling in their seats.

Professor Gates at the Cambridge Public Library

“He was very personable with our kids and they seemed to greatly enjoy his talk,” said Ms. Samuels. “Many stayed after to thank him personally, ask for his autograph, or have their picture taken with him.”

Gates discussed his African American Lives genealogy project, how DNA tests can determine ancestry, and how much this meant to him and others to learn about an ancestry that was clouded in mystery due to the depersonalization of slave records. He went into some detail about the genetics behind his project as well as the surprising results he found which debunked a number of myths about the racial and tribal ancestry of African Americans.

“He was engaging,” said CRLS Assistant Principal Bobby Tynes. “He revealed how, after tracing his ancestry, he discovered that he is 50% African and 50% Irish when you break it all down... The kids were terrific and I witnessed a few students go directly to the teen room in the new library to find the websites he spoke about. That tells you it really was a great session. The students learned a lot and they were inspired to learn more.”

Professor Gates earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge, and his B.A. summa cum laude in History from Yale University. Before joining the faculty at Harvard in 1991, he taught at Yale, Cornell and Duke. Included among his many honors and grants are a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" (1981), the George Polk Award for Social Commentary (1993) and Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" list (1997).

His presentation at the city’s new library, which sits on the CRLS campus, is part of the Cambridge Public Library’s “Cambridge READS: The Citywide Book Club” series. For more info about the program, go to http://cambridgereads.blogspot.com.

Professor Gates signing books for CRLS students at the Cambridge Public Library

Professor Gates new book, “Colored People” is a coming-of-age story as “enchantingly vivid and ribald as anything by Mark Twain or Zora Neale Hurston”. Professor Gates recounts his childhood in the mill town of Piedmont, West Virginia, in the 1950s and 1960s and ushers readers into a now-vanished "colored world of hellfire religion and licentious gossip, of lye-and-mashed-potato processes, and of slyly stubborn resistance to the indignities of segregation. Here are the funerals where his mother's inspired eulogies "turned the mean and evil into saints and angels," and the barber shop where Nicomus Carroll taught sex education with a library of dirty magazines.”

A winner of the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Award and the Lillian Smith Prize, Colored People is a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection, a work that extends and deepens our sense of African American history even as it entrances us with its bravura storytelling.

In 2006, Professor 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. In 2006, Professor Gates wrote and produced the PBS documentary called "African American Lives," the first documentary series to employ genealogy and genetic science to provide an understanding of African American history. In 2007, a follow-up-one-hour documentary, "Oprah's Roots: An African American Lives Special" aired on PBS, further examining the genealogical and genetic heritage of Oprah Winfrey. "African American Lives 2" was awarded the Gold Award in Television by the Parent's Choice Awards in spring of 2009. Professor Gates is currently the director of Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research where he had served as chair from 1991-2006.

Material from Random House, the Cambridge Library website, and Wikipedia was used in this report. Photos courtesy of Larry Aaronson.

Justin T. Martin can be reached at jtmartin@cpsd.us.

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