Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

Professor Gates is Editor-in-Chief of TheRoot.com, a daily online magazine, and of the Oxford African American Studies Center, an online scholarly resource for African and African American Studies. In 2008 he co-edited the eight-volume biographical encyclopedia African American Lives.

Gates is the author of several works of literary criticism, including The Signifying Monkey, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and a memoir, Colored People. His most recent book is In Search of Our Roots (Crown, 2009), which expands on interviews he conducted for his critically acclaimed multi-part PBS documentary series, “African American Lives 1 and 2.” Gates is the editor of several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.

An influential cultural critic, Gates is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and other national publications, and has appeared on several television and radio programs. In addition to the “African American Lives” series, Gates’s other PBS documentaries include Wonders of the African World and America Beyond the Color Line. His current documentary, airing on PBS in February 2009, is Looking for Lincoln.

Gates graduated from Yale University and Cambridge University and has received 50 honorary degrees. His many awards include a 1981 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award and the National Humanities Medal in 1998. In 2006 Gates was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution after tracing his lineage back to a free negro who served in the Revolutionary War.