Henry Louis Gates: Genealogy and African American History

Author, documentarian and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr gives a stirring address on race in the United States with a look at the genealogy and genetics in African-American history. Gates is presented by the Council of Provosts and Thurgood Marshall College at UC San Diego. Series: Helen Edison Lecture Series [11/2010] [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 19364]

- [Voiceover] This UCSD TV program

is a presentation

of University of California television

for educational and non
commercial use only.

(upbeat instrumental orchestral music)

- Good evening,

good evening everybody.

Good evening and welcome.

Good evening.

It's delightful to see the ballroom

at capacity seating.

I am Allan Havis,

provost of Thurgood Marshall College.

I would now like to provide

a brief introduction

to our distinguished keynote speaker.

And I could go on for hours,

but I have to make this short.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.,

considered to be one
of the most influential

academic voices in America,

is the Alphones Fletcher
University professor

and director of the WEB Dubois Institute

for African and African American research

at Harvard University.

Author of countless books, articles,

essays and reviews,

Dr. Gates, who has displayed

an endless dedication to bringing

African American culture to the public,

has co-written, co-edited and produced

some of the most comprehensive

African American reference material

ever created.

In 2006, Dr. 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 documentary,

Oprah's Roots,

an African American live special,

aired on PBS,

further examining the
genealogical heritage

of Oprah Winfrey.

The second series,

African American Lives two,

aired on PBS in February 2008.

Dr. Gates also wrote and produced

the documentaries,

Wonders of the African World, in 2000,

and America Beyond the Color Line,

in 2004, for the BBS

and PBS networks.

And authored the companion volumes

to both series.

PBS broadcast his newest documentary,

Looking for a Link In, in February 2009.

Even a short walk down
a busy airport corridor

with Dr. Gates last night,

one will witness dozens of bystanders

recognizing his face,

and asking to shake his hand.

And he shook every hand.

He is most recognized for
his extensive research

of African American history and literature

and for developing and expanding

the African American studies program

at Harvard University.

The first black to have received a PhD

from Cambridge University,

Dr. Henry Louis Gates
earned his MA and PhD

in English literature from Clare College

at the University of Cambridge

and his BA in history
from Yale University.

Before joining the faculty
of Harvard in 1991,

he taught at Yale, Cornell and Duke.

His numerous honors and grants include

a MacArthur Foundation
genius grant in 1981.

The George (mumbles), sorry,

the George Polk award
for social commentary

in 1993.

Time Magazine's, 25 most influential

Americans list in 1997,

a National Humanities medal in 1998,

an election to the American Academy

of Arts and Letters, in 1999.

He has received 49 honorary degrees

and in 2006, he was inducted

into the Sons of the American Revolution,

after he traced his remarkable lineage

back to John Redman,

a free negro, who fought

in the American Revolution, the war.

It is my sincere and warm honor,

and distinct pleasure

to now welcome Dr. Henry Louis Gates

to the podium.

(applause)

- Thank you.

Thank you Allan,

for the kind introduction.

Thanks to you all for coming out

and ignoring the World Series,

to hear me talk about
genealogy and genetics.

Allan was right, we flew
back on the same plane

from New York, last night,

and just by coincidence.

And he was kind enough

to drive me to the hotel.

And he said that a few people

recognized me,

and,

asked to shake my hand.

But the only reason, it's not because

of my scholarship, it's
because I was arrested.

Everybody knows that.

(laughing)

They go, "you're the beer guy,

"you're the beer guy."

I go, yeah I'm the beer guy man, you know.

Do you know how many people have asked me,

"was the beer cold?"

I mean they all think it's original right.

(laughing)

I go, the damn beer was cold, it was cold.

"How was the beer with Obama?"

Oh man it was great.

The best beer I ever had in my whole life.

(laughing)

I'm making a new film series

on black people in Latin America.

I've shot it, I'm just writing the script,

so it'll be out in April.

Called, Black in Latin America.

And I was filming just in a middle class

family's home in Brazil,

and we had been there with the film crew

for about an hour,

and an uncle burst in,

and he'd just Googled me.

And he'd been across town,

drove through traffic.

He goes, "you're (mumbling),

"the beer man."

And I go, yeah man.

Even in Brazil, you know.

What can I say?

What can I say?

But thank you so much for being here.

I love UCSD, I love San Diego.

I don't know it very well,

I've lectured here a long, long time ago,

nobody can even remember when.

But I had one of my best
friends in the world,

Anthony Davis, who's
professor of music here,

and his wife Cindy
we're very close friends

and their son Jonah, I'm his godfather,

so I love coming through and seeing them.

But especially,

I think whenever I,

come near San Diego, or here,

I think about Shirley Anne Williams,

who was a great professor

of African American literature,

and a great novelist.

And I miss her very much.

She died much too young.

And earlier at a reception,

but I want to announce this,

in case anybody wants to contribute,

I decided to take part of my honorarium

and offer it to the university,

create a prize in Shirley
Anne Williams' honor.

So give it up for Shirley Anne Williams.

(applause)

Alright, we're gonna
start with a video clip,

and then I'll talk,

and then I'll answer some questions, okay.

If we can play that.

(instrumental acoustic music)

- [Voiceover] Coming to PBS in February,

African American Lives two.

- Wow, I'm in for a ride here.

- I'm fired up now.

- Wow!

- I think that's pretty remarkable.

- [Voiceover] It's a very personal look

at American history.

- It's my family that we're talking about,

it's not some story in a book.

All of the little stories are amazing,

are fascinating.

- A lot has been stolen
from black Americans.

A lot has been hidden
from black Americans,

and so there's always a longing

to know who you are

and where you come from.

- [Voiceover] Intimate stories bring

our country's past to life.

- "Cindy Anderson,
Charleston, Mississippi.

"My master was Mr. Herb Cane.

"Old Mr. Cane bought my father and mother

"in North Carolina when they

"was little children.

"But after I was born,

"he sold my father to a man

"named Colonel Wright.

"Nine years after (mumbles) time,

"before I ever seed my father again."

- You're the only person I know,

who can reach out and touch,

a remnant of their family's
history in slavery.

So that's your great grandfather,

William McAlpine.

- Right.

- Do you see anyone who
could've been his mother?

- Well I guess it could've been one

of these two women.

"Emily a woman, at 700 dollars value.

"And Park a woman, 700 dollars."

- Right.

- So Park or Emily.

- The next record we found,

is dated October, 1855.

Emily the woman,

we thought might have
been Williams' mother,

is purchased by another McAlpine heir.

And Park has disappeared by this time,

all together.

- So William is without mother at all.

- William's without mother at all.

- Okay.

Excuse me.

It's hard.

I can only imagine being separated

from my daughter.

It's just hard,

hard to imagine.

- [Voiceover] And the exploration reveals

little known events in history.

- Take a look at this.

- "Chickasaw Nation Freedmen Roll."

- This document is an
official enrollment card

for the Chickasaw Freedmen,

the former slaves owned

by the Chickasaw nation.

- Owned by the Chickasaw nation?

- Owned by the Chickasaw nation.

Your ancestors were enslaved

by native Americans.

You are one of the few African Americans

who was not enslaved by white people,

enslaved by native Americans.

- I don't know how I feel about that.

That's mind blowing.

- And I had no idea.

- I hadn't either, this is amazing.

- [Voiceover] There are moments

of heartbreaking tragedy.

- Now Ruth Griffin, your grand mama,

had been born and raised

in Blackstock, South Carolina,

and her family owned land there.

Did you know that?

- I don't know anything
about our background.

- According to the 1930 census,

the Griffin's had disappeared

from Blackstock, South Carolina.

Now we know that Ruth moved to Florida,

but what happened to
the rest of the family?

Two of her brothers were named,

Meeks and Tom Griffin.

I'm gonna show you their
death certificates.

- "September 29th."

- What's it say?

- "Legal electrocution.

"Cause of death, legal electrocution."

They electrocuted my?

- Yeah.

We discovered that in 1913,

your great uncles,

along with three other men,

were charged with killing

a confederate civil war veteran,

a white man, named John Lewis.

And the more we looked into the case,

the more questions we had.

So we discovered that the defense

only had two days,

to prepare for the trial.

There's no way that your two great uncles

could have prepared a defense

in so short a time.

But essentially, the moment

that your great uncles, Meeks and Tom,

were accused of the murder,

they were powerless to defend themselves.

- "Five negroes killed
in the electric chair,

"with protestations

"of innocence on their lips."

It's too late to get a,

to overturn the conviction.

- It's never too late.

- Clear their names.

- We can still clear their names.

- [Voiceover] Despite the heartache,

there are stories of joyful triumph.

- This is a land deed,
from Benjamin B. Flagg,

your great grandfather George Flagg's

older brother.

- "I Benjamin B. Flagg, B.B. Flagg,

"of Hayward County Tennessee,

"for the sum of 25 dollars cash,

"have sold to the trustee of Flagg."

- That's right, Flagg's.

- Flagg Grove schoolhouse?

- Mm hmm.

- "One acre of land."

- One acre of land.

- Flagg Grove was my, no.

- He made it possible to create

Flagg's Grove School.

- I went to Flagg Grove school,

in elementary school.

Great (laughing),

just great.

- Your great, great grandfather,

Julius Cesar Tinghman,

served in the US colored troops,

during the Civil War.

- Wow.

I'm gonna cry, I can't believe it.

You got me.

And there's more?

- [Voiceover] Guests discover

who their ancestors were

and where they came from.

- You are descended from the Luba people.

- Fascinating.

- You are 33 percent European.

- Really?

- And you'll see there's no figure

for native American,

cause you ain't got no native American.

(both laughing)

- Set the record straight.

- Do I look like an Irishman to you?

I'm here to find my roots.

I've been looking for my roots

all over Africa and couldn't find anybody,

so I ended up, up here.

Peter, you are descended
from a Jewish man.

- Well, that's,

surprising.

Every family with a (mumbles),

has a Jew in it somewhere.

- This suggests that on your mother's,

mother's, mother's, mother's side,

you are Mende.

- I know this is so.

There's so many surprises here,

but this one is not a surprise.

- [Voiceover] And we
consider what it means

to be African American.

- You are what you have to defend.

- Hmm.

- Cause it doesn't matter

that I'm 19 percent European,

81 percent African.

In America, I have to deal

with the problems that black people

in America have to deal with.

Out of the struggles and challenges

that black people in America have.

- Is being an African American then,

cultural rather than genetic?

- For me it's both.

For me it is absolutely both.

- Heritage is so complex,

that we have to be simple.

And,

we have to consider ourselves global.

Human beings are more alike

than we are unalike.

And no human being can be more human

than another.

- [Voiceover] African American Lives two.

- Thank you.

(applause)

Thank you.

Now, how did a guy with a PhD

in English literature,

from the University of Cambridge,

get involved in doing
genealogy and genetics,

and what difference does it make

to African American history?

This is the oldest Gates

that we can trace.

Her name is Jane Gates.

She was a slave.

And I want to tell you,

the day that I met her,

not literally obviously,

but when I first saw this photograph.

It was July third, 1960,

and it was the day

that they buried my grandfather,

Edward St. Lawrence Gates.

Edward St. Lawrence Gates,

was the son of Edward Gates Sr.

My great grandfather was born in slavery,

1857, you can see how fair he is.

His father was a white man.

And this is my grandfather.

Edward St. Lawrence Gates,

born in 1879, died in 1960.

Now he was so light complected,

that the kids,

you know my generation, the cousins,

called him Casper, behind his back.

(laughing)

He looked like a white man.

We couldn't figure out why

he looked like a white man,

but he looked like a white man.

So I am standing

in front of his casket,

on July third, 1960,

holding my fathers hand.

I'm nine-years-old.

Now my father is still alive.

Thank god my father's 97-years-old,

Henry Louis, he's the
real Henry Louis Gates.

My father is the funniest man I know.

My father makes Red Fox
look like an undertaker.

(laughing)

I'll tell you how funny he is.

Cause it's important to the story.

When I was growing up,

now I was born in 1950,

I wanted to go to Harvard or Yale

and I wanted to be a Rhodes scholar.

I wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge.

My momma, god rest her soul,

wanted two doctors.

My brother's an oral surgeon

and he's five years older than I am.

And there was little old me.

In my day, little colored boys,

and colored girls, as we would've said

in the 50's, who are as smart,

and raised to be doctors.

That was the next closest thing

to divinity that you could be

in the black community.

So that's what I was gonna be.

But I wanted to go to Harvard or Yale

and I wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge.

So I've always been, as our people say,

have been blessed in the classroom.

And I went to a junior college,

that's why I'm a big
fan of junior colleges.

Junior college my freshman year

and then I transferred

from Piedmont, from Keyser, West Virginia,

from Potomac State College

to Yale, and I did
very, very well at Yale.

And I was Junior Phi Beta,

I was,

graduated summa cum laude,

and I'm telling you that not to brag,

but because I knew

that I was gonna get
one of these fellowships

to go to Oxford or Cambridge,

cause I was black, I
was from West Virginia,

you know it was 1973,

and I had almost straight A's.

So you know, what's not to like right.

So I applied

to all of these fellowships

to go to Oxford and Cambridge.

I applied for rose, I
applied for (mumbles),

I applied for Fulbright,
for Keasbey, Mellet,

all these fellowships.

And I knew, I was so cocky.

Particularly I wanted the
students to hear this.

I was so cocky, I was so overconfident,

that I thought I would get all seven,

and then I'd be picking a choosing,

like a deck of cards, you know,

like a hand.

So okay, which one do I want to take?

But guess what,

the first six, I was a
finalist for the first six

and I didn't get any of those fellowships.

None of those fellowships.

And I was in a real panic,

cause I hadn't applied to any kind

of graduate school,

cause I was gonna go
to Oxford or Cambridge.

And my girlfriend at the time,

is now professor at Stanford,

an African American woman,

Linda Darling, Linda Darling Hammond,

many of you know her.

We were a big junior year
item at Yale, you know.

That's back in the day.

We had dueling afros.

I had a big fro, I know
it's hard to imagine.

(laughing)

But it's true.

You could go online and look at my,

whatever the equivalent of Facebook

was back then.

I had a, you know Cornel
West was my main man.

Cornel West looked like
a crew cut, that afro.

(laughing)

So I'd tell Cornel,

but he doesn't believe me either.

So I went to Linda, and I was in tears,

you know, what am I gonna do?

And she called me Skippy,

cause that's my nickname.

My momma called me Skippy.

So she goes,

"you're being phony,

"you're being artificial.

"Just go in there and be yourself."

So I went in for my last,

I mean, what did I have to lose, right?

I went in for the last fellowship

and I got this fellowship.

They only picked two of these fellows

to go to the University of Cambridge

and I was one of the people.

And it was the happiest,

other than the day that my,

the days my two daughters were born,

ladies and gentlemen,

it was the happiest day of my life,

without a doubt.

So I went back to Calhoun College at Yale.

You know the dorms at Yale,

like here, are named colleges.

This was named for that great liberal,

John C. Calhoun.

(laughing)

We used to call it the Calhoun plantation,

back in the wild west days of revolution.

We'd always, we'd picket and boycott,

trying to get them to change the name,

of this Calhoun College,

but they wouldn't do it.

So I went back to my
room in Calhoun College

and I called back home,

and it was four o'clock in the afternoon.

I'll never forget it.

My daddy picked up the phone

and I said, daddy, daddy, put mom

on the extension phone.

Remember those days,

you had to have two phones,

you had a phone and an extension phone.

I don't know what genius
thought of this system,

but you had an extension phone.

So daddy was down
stairs, mom was upstairs.

I go, mom and daddy,
you'll never believe it,

you'll never believe it,

I'm the first Afro American.

Now remember this was 1973.

We were Afro Americans back then.

I'm the first Afro American

to get a Mellon fellowship.

I'm going to Cambridge!

I'm going to the University of Cambridge.

And my daddy, without
missing a beat, he said,

"you're the first negro

"to get a Mellon fellowship?"

I go, yeah daddy.

He said, "huh, they're gonna call it

"the watermelon fellowship from now on."

(laughing)

Now you talk about politically incorrect,

my father is the most
politically incorrect

person I have ever met.

(laughing)

So armed with my watermelon fellowship,

I went off to the University of Cambridge.

I site that just to say
how funny my father is.

So go back with me to July third, 1960,

I'm holding my father's hand,

the same funny man,

standing in front of his father's corpse.

And I stupidly you know looked at

how white my grandfather looked.

Now if he looked like Casper,

alive with blood coursing
through his veins,

imagine how white he looked dead.

He looked like he was alabastered,

had been coated with white paint.

And I thought he looked ridiculous.

And I heard this noise from my father,

so I thought he was laughing

at how ridiculous, we called him Pop,

Pop Gates was.

And so I started to laugh.

Now all, as we would've said then,

all the colored people
in Cumberland, Maryland,

were gathered in the Kite funeral home,

cause my grandfather was a prominent man

in the black community.

And I stated laughing

in front of my grandfather's corpse.

Fortunately, I looked up to my father

to share the joke,

and the noise I had
heard was tears, sobbing,

he was crying hysterically,

over his father's death.

And I was mortified at
how stupid I had been.

How I had embarrassed myself

in front of everybody

and all the colored people

in Cumberland, Maryland.

But nobody noticed me,

because they were all
busy staring at my father.

So when I looked at him I was mortified

and also, it was the first time

I ever saw my father cry.

So I started to cry too.

So it was a very traumatic day.

So here's what happened.

They buried my grandfather

and then we went back to
the Gates family home.

And the Gates family home is still there,

it's still the Gates family home,

my cousin Johnny Gates owns it.

It was bought by Jane Gates.

This woman, this is her midwifery costume.

She was a midwife.

And she bought it, she
was a slave until 1865

and then bought a house

in an all white neighborhood in 1870.

1200 dollars, we have the deed.

Now where'd she get that money?

She didn't save her
pennies in slavery right.

So you know, this is all (mumbles),

and all her kids look white.

So you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes

to figure out where this came from right.

My father (chuckles), my father,

took my brother and me upstairs

in my grandparents house.

Now I don't know about you all,

but back in the day,

you didn't even,

I didn't even know my grandparents

had a bedroom.

We never went to my grandparents bedroom.

You know, things were very formal.

You called, I still call,
well my father's 97,

so most of his friends have passed,

but there are couple who are alive.

I still say Mr. Ozzy, and Miss Mary.

I never would presume

to call them by their first name.

You know, I don't know how it is here,

if you all are more casual in California.

But when students come to me,

I just turned 60 right,

and students,

say, "well can I call
you by your first name?"

And I go, yes.

And they go, "what's that?"

I said, professor.

(laughing)

When you get a PhD,

then you can be talking
about my first name.

So anyway, but I'm old school.

So my brother and I

are being taken upstairs,

in my grandparent's
house to their bedroom.

We didn't even know they
had an upstairs right.

So we are looking at each other like,

where are we going?

And my dad takes us back to their bedroom

and they have a sun
porch off their bedroom.

It's still there.

And daddy, I can see it just as clear

as if it were yesterday.

Daddy takes us out on the sun porch,

and there's a big
cabinet, like a wardrobe,

and he opens it,

and it's full of bank ledgers.

My grandfather was a janitor

and cleaned the First National Bank

in Cumberland Maryland,

and he was stealing these bank ledgers.

So my brother and I
looked at each other like,

man we must be rich, you know.

You know, you've got bank ledgers,

must be counting our money.

But as soon as daddy opened them,

he was looking for something,

and my brother and I were looking

over his shoulder.

They were scrapbooks.

My grandfather clipped newspapers

and he had two fascinations

that I could see even
looking over his shoulder.

And I own one of these.

Well I have a,

printout of one.

We had a photographer
take a picture of one,

because it's so valuable now,

the one that's left in the family.

He had a morbid fascination with death.

So that every kind of death,

people killed in airplanes crashes,

people killed in railroad crashes,

people killed in automobile crashes.

But particularly, the war dead.

Every day in the newspaper,

the number of people that were killed

the day before in World War II.

He clipped it every day.

So daddy was turning these pages

looking for something.

His other area of special concern,

was black history.

He had all these articles.

The first negro judge

in New York City, 1942.

I mean, I was amazed to see

that he was the race
man, you know deep down.

And that was a good thing.

You know, what Adam Clayton Powell

was doing in Harlem, and in congress.

And lots of things like that.

Marian Anderson's famous concert

on the steps of the Lincoln memorial.

All that's in these multiple volumes,

these scrapbooks that were made

out of bank ledgers.

But daddy starting, he's
looking for something,

and looking for something

and finally he finds it and he goes,

"here you boys,

"look at this."

And it was an obituary,

and it was an obituary dated,

January sixth, 1888,

and it said, "died this day

"in Cumberland Maryland, Jane Gates,

"an estimable colored woman."

An estimable colored woman.

And daddy said, "that is the oldest Gates,

"and I never want you to forget her."

Well the next day was the fourth of July.

We went home that night,

and before I went to bed, we were always.

My father worked two jobs.

He worked at a paper mill in the day

and he was a janitor in the evening.

So we always had,

among the black community,

we always were very comfortable,

and I always had my own bedroom,

and so did my brother.

And more importantly for my mom,

I always had a desk and I had a bookcase.

And that night before I went to bed,

I had one of those red
Webster's dictionaries,

remember those Webster's dictionaries?

And I kept it on my desk,

and the last thing I did
before I went to bed,

I looked up Allan, the word estimable,

cause I didn't know what it meant.

And I thought, wow this lady

must be very special.

The next day was the fourth of July

and we had the, what we used to call

the colored picnic, the colored cookout.

And everybody black in our segregated town

in Piedmont.

West Virginia by the way,

is half way between
Pittsburgh and Washington

on the Potomac river,

and it's right on the Maryland,

West Virginia border.

The Gates' lived in Cumberland, Maryland,

the Coleman's, my mother's family

lived 20 miles away

on the West Virginia side.

So we went to the cookout

and on the way back,

I stopped at Red Bulls news stand,

in the middle of our town.

A population of 2,000 people.

An Irish, Italian paper mill town

with 2,000 people when I was born.

386 of whom were black, alright.

So you get the picture.

I stopped at Red Bulls news stand,

I bought a composition book

and you know what I did that night?

I interviewed my parents,

about their family tree.

I asked them what their mother's name was,

their father's name,

where they were born.

I had absolutely no
precedent for doing this.

I have no explanation
today of why I did it.

But since that day,

in July 1960,

I have been obsessed

with my own,

family tree.

So, that's how I got interested.

Now, I was just a little kid.

So I would get bored

with these composition books.

Sometimes I would even lose them.

So I would start the
whole process over again.

But I never lost the passion

for finding out about my ancestors,

of the Coleman side and the Gates side.

And we can go back to Jane Gates,

and this was her son.

She only told her children,

she had five children,

she only said they were
fathered by a white man,

which was obvious if you look at her kids

and they all had the same father.

But she took the secret

of this white man's identity to her grave.

And you know how it was back in the day.

I mean way back in the day.

People didn't want to talk about slavery.

You know, we've lost so many records

because our people have suffered so much.

And they don't want to relive that pain.

And it's a great loss to us as scholars

and as people, as a people,

not to have that record.

So she took the identity of her lover,

the man who fathered all of her children

to her grave.

But this was her son, Edward,

who, he had a 200 acre farm,

where my father was born

and it's still there.

Addison's Creek, West Virginia.

And then as I said,

this was his son Edward
St. Lawrence Gates.

Well, cut to 1977.

You could say, what's the greatest event

in the history of mini
series in TV, Roots.

So you could say since 1977,

I've had one serious case of Roots envy.

You know, I had this
little composition book,

I could go back to my great, great,

I mean my great grandmother,

great, great grandmother,

on my father's side.

On my mother's side, great grandmother.

But that was it.

Here was Alex Haley
coming out of the blue,

could go all the way to Africa.

He could go to ship

that brought his African ancestors over

and then he went all the way back

to Gambia.

So I was totally jealous of Alex Haley.

And so I had a profound and severe case

of Roots envy.

But I figured, well I'll never,

only Alex Haley could do that right.

So I got to know Quincy Jones in 1999.

Anthony Hopia, my dear friend and I,

edited the Africana Encyclopedia

and then we founded Africana.com,

which we,

we needed some investors,

and by this time, it's complicated,

but I had gotten to be friends

with Quincy Jones, still
a great friend of mine.

And Quincy introduced me to Alex Haley.

And more than that,

Quincy it turned out was obsessed

with genealogy as well.

Quincy scored the music for Roots.

So for Christmas, he would give people

their family trees.

So you know I thought about that,

but there was nothing
I could do about that.

Well, a funny thing
happened, you never know.

The Bible says, "be
careful what you wish for."

In the year 2000,

a young black geneticist named,

Dr. Rick Kittles,

who at the time was teaching

at Howard University,

sent me a letter.

He's now at the University of Chicago,

medical school.

And he said, that he was asking

various African American men,

if they would submit themselves

to this new test.

And through this test,

he could trace on your mother's line,

where in Africa you were from.

Man that was some serious stuff!

And I said, yeah, I mean
I called him right away

and I said, definitely.

And he said, that of all the people

he had written to,

nobody was writing him back.

And later, I couldn't figure out why,

but I later found out why.

So I said, would you want me

to come to Washington?

He goes, "no, I'll come
up to Harvard square."

That's were I was living.

So about a week later,

he showed up.

And now, I've had many operations,

I broke my hip when I was playing football

when I was about 14.

It was misdiagnosed by a country doctor,

so I've had a zillion operations,

on my leg right.

So I know about having blood extracted.

If you could see my veins,

my veins,

look at a vial and blood pours out right.

It's very easy to get my blood.

Well, after half an hour,

I realized two things.

That Dr. Rick Kittles is
a brilliant geneticist,

but he's not brilliant
at extracting blood.

(laughing)

I also realized why no other black male

was stupid enough to let him come up

to try to take their blood.

(laughing)

That brother kept poking around

and I thought, damn this Kunta Kinte stuff

is hard work.

How badly do I want to know

where I'm from in Africa?

But I really wanted to know.

I wanted to know since
I was nine-years-old.

So, you know, let's go for it.

So finally, see at the time,

you had to extract a lot of DNA,

in order to run the test.

Now, you just swab your cheek

or spit in a test tube,

depending on the company

that you use,

and we can talk about that

a little bit later.

So it's very easy and it's very painless.

So I waited and I waited and I waited.

You know, Rick Kittles
went back to Washington.

I waited, waited, waited for the results.

And I didn't hear from him.

So finally, I called him,

and you know how people do.

He picked up the phone,

after I called him about a million times,

he goes, "oh man I was just about

"to return your phone call."

(laughing)

I said, Rick what's up man,

where am I from in Africa?

Who are my people?

You know I wanted to jump on a plane

and go, I thought I'd
buy some land, you know.

(laughing)

Get a fine little African sister,

you know, to hook up.

(laughing)

I was single at the time,

don't get me wrong.

I'm still single (laughs).

So he said, "well, your
results were anomalous,

"and we had to run it many times,

"but we finally have figured out

"where you're from.

"You are descended on your mother's side,

"from the Nubian people."

Now all African Americans,

not all African Americans,

many African Americans

want to be descended from one

or two ethnic groups.

Either the Zulu, because of Shaka Zulu,

and the Zulu kicked the
English in the behind

in the Boer wars right.

Until they finally were overcome.

But you want to be Zulu,

or you want to be Nubian.

Who are the Nubian's?

The Nubian's were the
black pharaohs right.

The Nubian's are in the Bible,

the 25th dynasty was the Nubian dynasty.

In Egyptian art, they always hated

the Nubians.

Nubians are always represented as darker.

You know, they were warring kingdoms.

And Nubia ran from what today's (mumbles),

the capital of Sudan,

up to the Aswan Dam,

the second cataract in the Nile River.

And so, a Nubian!

And all these people wanted to be Nubians,

descended from the black pharaohs.

So my friend Melefi Asante,

you know the founder of Afrocentricity,

we argue a lot in public,

but we're very good friends privately.

I joke, every time he attacks me,

I get a raise at Harvard so it's cool.

So I attack him, you know,

we do what Malcolm and Martin couldn't do.

Set it up and then we go split the money,

and slap five and go to Silvia's,

have fried chicken.

(laughing)

Believe me that's a much
better way to function,

than hating each other.

So I called Molefi first thing, I said,

Molefi, I just got my results back,

I'm a Nubian.

Where are you from (laughing)?

I am the true African prince (laughing).

(laughing)

My friend Anthony Hopia,

who's uncle was the Asantehene,

the king of the Asante people,

when Rick Kittles sent me a certificate,

announcing I was Nubian,

Anthony Hopia looked at it and said,

"what a ton of rubbish."

(laughing)

Now why would he say that?

Well, there's a slight problem

with being either Zulu or Nubian,

if you're African American.

Do you know what the problem is?

None of our ancestors,

who came here in slavery,

came from South Africa, the Zulu people,

or from Nubia.

None, zero.

Egypt is over here,

the slaves came from the area

from Senegal down to Angola.

97 percent of the slaves

came from that region alright.

So do you know how long it would take

to walk from Sudan

to Senegal,

or to Angola?

It just didn't happen.

So I looked at Anthony and I said,

you're just jealous.

Cause I am a Nubian prince.

I didn't care, I had it framed,

I put it up in my living room,

so everybody can see

that I'm from royalty (laughs).

So I had to think about it,

I thought maybe it was strange.

Maybe it was on a trade route.

You know there were great
Muslim trade routes.

You know today, it's
important for the students,

in my time we were taught

that the Africans were
these benighted people,

and they were too stupid to build a boat,

or to be curious about the world,

to cross the Sahara desert.

It's rubbish.

Africans are just as
curious as anybody else.

The Sahara desert was a highway,

it wasn't a barrier.

So I thought well, and there were

great trade routes.

So I thought maybe my Nubian descendant

had come over and ended up being

tricked by some white man,

and ended up in Maryland

or Virginia or something (laughs).

(laughing)

So that was cool.

And if I needed an interpretation,

believe me I could produce one (laughing).

So and by the way,

you know the Zulu thing,

when we gave,

when Oprah was finally
in the first series,

and we gave her a DNA test,

basically the next day,

she went to South Africa

to announce that she was opening her,

what became the Oprah
Winfrey Leadership Academy.

She was in an auditorium,
like 75,000 people

or something and she announced

that she'd just had the test,

and that she was Zulu.

So it broke on CNN.

I was sitting in my living room,

minding my own business

and it said, "Oprah Winfrey is Zulu."

So I called Rick Kittles,

and I said, Rick,

did you tell Oprah she was Zulu?

He goes, "no man she
made that up herself."

(laughing)

It's a true story.

It's a true story.

I would lie to make you laugh,

but I'm telling you a true story.

So,

I said, Rick are you in your lab?

He said, "yeah."

I said, is anybody there?

He said, "no."

I said, when the results come in,

make here Zulu man (laughing).

I said, you're back there
making it up anyway.

(laughing)

Nobody believes you can take some spit

and figure out a tribe.

What are you crazy?

(laughing)

So anyway, I was a Nubian and it was cool.

Well here's the miracle,

one of the many miracles thank god,

(knocking on wood)

that happened in my life.

I got up in the middle of the night,

and to be honest, I have
to tell you the truth,

I got up to go to the bathroom

and I was standing there in the bathroom,

minding my own business (laughs),

and I had an idea.

And here was the idea.

I would take this passion I had

from the time I was nine-years-old,

in genealogy,

and I would get eight prominent

African Americans,

and I would trace their family tree,

back into the abyss of slavery.

Back to the time when the
paper trail disappears,

because inevitably, it
disappears for all of us,

all of our ancestors,

there just wasn't a paper trail.

You can't trace people,

if there's no printed record.

And then when the paper trail disappears,

I would do their DNA,

and tell them where they were from

in Africa.

I was so excited.

I had tears in my eyes.

And I couldn't wait till the next day.

The next day I called
my buddy Quincy Jones.

Now Quincy is like a vampire.

Quincy is up all night long,

cause he was a jazz musician.

And when the sun comes up,

he goes to bed.

So you can't do business with Quincy

till after three o'clock in the afternoon,

that's just the way it is.

So I waited until three o'clock

in the afternoon,

and then I called out to Bel Air,

or up to Bel Air.

Yeah, I forget where I am, San Diego.

And I said,

and he picked (mumbling),

this person put him on the line.

I said, Q,

if I could do for you what Alex did,

would you be in a PBS series?

I had no money, I had nothing.

Just an idea.

And this is very
important to the students.

I just had an idea.

And I said, would you be in it?

And he said, "could you do that?"

And I said, yeah.

He said, "does it hurt?"

(laughing)

And I lied and said,
no, no it doesn't hurt.

(laughing)

I said, are you in?

He said, "I'm in."

No who's his best friend?

Oprah Winfrey.

So I said, okay man, you're in.

I waited, beat, beat.

I said, would you call Oprah

and ask her to be in?

He went, "ah, no."

(laughing)

But he said, "I'm gonna do something."

You know, cause everybody hustles Oprah

and if you're a friend,

you can't be bringing in ideas.

You know, cause people want Oprah

to write a check to do everything.

So he said, "I'm gonna do you a favor.

"I'm gonna give you her secret name

"and address, and you write her a letter,

"and no guarantees man."

And so I wrote a letter.

"Dear Ms. Winfrey."

And you know, I figured it was like

throwing a message in a bottle,

and throwing it in the ocean right.

A week later, it was a Sunday,

my cellphone rang and
it was Quincy calling.

And I say, hey Q, what's happening?

And a deep woman's voice said,

"Dr. Gates, this is Oprah Winfrey."

I went, thank you Jesus (laughing)!

What are you talking about!

Oprah Winfrey was calling me (laughing).

People don't call,

powerful people don't
call you with bad news.

Somebody taught me that a long time ago.

If she was calling, it was good news.

She didn't call to say,

"I got your letter, and no.

(laughing)

"And don't write me again."

She said, "I'd be honored
to be in the series."

Now students, why is this important?

Because to do the series,

I needed six million dollars.

And it's hard to raise
six million dollars.

So, but when I walked

into these corporations and I said,

how would you like your product

associated with the whole world

knowing what ethic group, Oprah Winfrey

is descended from.

You know what it's like?

See that ceiling?

It's like that ceiling opened up

and a giant ATM machine came.

(laughing)

And they said, "how much do you need?"

It's like that Eddie Murphy routine,

remember when Eddie Murphy (mumbles),

becomes white?

And he goes to the bank,

and he wanted to fill out the application.

They go, "what application?

"There are none of them here.

"How much money do you need?"

Well that's how it was for me.

And the result,

was African American Lives.

And this was the poster,

I don't know if you can see it.

But in the upper left hand corner,

Whoopi Goldberg.

Whoopi heard that we
were doing the series,

and called and demanded
to be in the series.

Tony and I graduated from Yale,

as I said earlier.

Our classmate was Dr. Ben Carson.

And you know Ben Carson

is chief of pediatric neurosurgery

at John's Hopkins.

The first surgeon to successfully separate

Siamese twins conjoined at the head.

You know, I didn't want all entertainers

and athletes.

I wanted to show white people as we say,

that there were black doctors

and neurosurgeons.

You know, this brother was serious.

Mae Jemison, the first black astronaut.

Graduated African American studies major

at Stanford, then went to medical school.

First black female astronaut.

You know, you can't get more scientific

than that.

There's the big O under her.

There's Quincy in the middle.

Chris Tucker, I'd gotten
to know Chris Tucker

by this time,

who's I think a genius.

One of the funniest people.

Bishop T.D. Jakes.

I wanted a man of the cloth,

or a woman of the cloth.

And T.D.'s my homeboy from West Virginia.

Not that many black
people in West Virginia.

So I wanted T.D. to be in it.

And then my colleague under Chris,

is Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot,

who's a professor at Harvard

of sociology.

And the result was African American Lives.

It was a total risk, a total gamble.

And you know what?

It got the biggest rating

of any documentary,

in the history of PBS.

Thank you.

(applause)

Well I learned,

I had to do a lot of research

to put this together.

And I learned a few facts

that I wanted to share with you,

and then I'll stop,

and I'll answer some questions.

But this is fascinating.

It has implications for everyone

of African descent in this room.

We're all Africans.

And I was talking to the students,

had a great meeting this morning.

We're all descended from Africa,

but 50,000 years ago.

And most of that African DNA as it were,

has disappeared.

It's complicated to explain,

but what we do, is test people,

test your ancestry back from the last,

with one test, the last 500 years,

since the time of Columbus.

And that would pertain to the people

who are black, quote,
unquote, in this room.

Well, when I went to Harvard in 1991,

I raised money to count the slaves.

There were a group of scholars

who were trying to count the number

of Africans brought to the New World,

the entire New World, in the slave trade.

And some were in Liverpool,

some were in Angola,

some were in Cuba,

some were in Brazil.

All these scholars.

And someone came to me and said,

"if you raise money,

"you could bring these people together,

"it would be historic."

And that's what we did.

The result, you could
go home and look at it.

It's free online.

It's called The Transatlantic
Slave Trade Database.

And these scholars looked at

36,000 voyages of slave ships.

It was capitalism.

So the records were there.

It was property, right.

And those records are still there.

And guess what?

They counted 12.5 million Africans

shipped between 1502

and 1867 to the New World.

12.5 million, 15 percent about,

died in the middle passage.

So let's say 11.2 million we know,

Africans, our ancestors,
got off the slave ships

in the New World.

Here's the amazing fact.

Of that 11.2 million,

only 450,000 came to the United States.

Only 450,000 Africans

came to the United States,

between 1619,

and well the end of slavery,

it was 1865,

but 99 percent of the slaves were here

by 1820.

All the rest, over 10.5 million

went to places essentially south

of San Diego,

Texas, and Miami.

They all went to the Caribbean

and Latin America.

Isn't that astonishing?

And we know,

that over five million of those slaves,

that's what this slide shows,

went from Africa to South America.

Just under 4.5 million were shipped

directly from Africa to the Caribbean.

And 388,000 Africans were shipped

directly from Africa to the United States.

And another 60,000,

touched down briefly in the Caribbean

and then came to the United States.

And we know where they were shipped from.

So that we know that,

16.7 percent of our ancestors

came from eastern Nigeria, Igbo land.

2.4 percent came from Benin,

in western Nigeria.

24 percent came from Congo Angola.

That means if I did the DNA

of every black person in this room,

one in four of you would descend

from an ethnic group

that is clustered around Congo Angola.

It is an amazing, amazing tool,

and this thing didn't exist 15 years ago.

So and we know that another 24 percent

of our ancestors came
from Senegal and Gambia.

Senegal and Gambia,

and that's where remember,

Alex traced his family to.

So it's an incredible,

it's an incredible tool.

We also know,

that, how American,

are African Americans?

Well, by the day Thomas Jefferson,

who was the father

of the Declaration of Independence,

and the father of Sally Heming's children,

by the way.

The day that Thomas Jefferson

wrote the Declaration of Independence,

75 percent of our African ancestors

were here in this country.

By 1800, 80 percent of
our ancestors were here.

And by 1820, 99.7 percent

of our ancestors were here.

Here's another amazing statistic.

1860,

there were 3.9 million slaves,

according to the federal census.

And there were 488,000 free colored,

as they were called,

or free African Americans.

Now this is the shock.

Of that figure of 488,000

free African American people,

only,

I'm sorry,

of that figure,

there were only 225,000
living in the north.

More free negro's lived in the south

and stayed in the confederate states

and the border states
where slavery was free,

through the civil war,

than lived in the north.

This is counter intuitive,

because we're raised to think

that the slave that was the first to read

and first to write,

was the first to run away,

as Ishmael (mumbles) puns.

But that's not the way it was.

And why would that be?

Because in many of these states,

when you were free,

your master, in order to discourage

your master from freeing you,

you master had to give you property.

And had to give you
enough money to survive.

So what are you gonna do?

Go to New York?

Go to Philadelphia where you knew no one,

or stay in the south.

And that's what they did.

This is the kind of amazing stuff

that we discovered.

Now we gave everybody in
the series three tests.

If you're a man, we gave you a Y DNA test.

If you're a woman who
had a male descendant

of the father of the grandfather,

we gave that man a Y DNA test.

The reason the men are men in this room,

is because of Y DNA,

but women don't have Y DNA.

We all have mitochondrial DNA,

and your mitochondrial DNA,

you inherit from your mother.

Your Y DNA from your
father if you're a man,

is exactly the same.

Your mitochondrial DNA from your mother,

is exactly the same.

Yours is, whether you're a man or a woman,

is the same as your mother's,

hers is the same as her mother's.

Hers is the same as her mother's.

That's why they can
trace you back to Lucy,

or trace us all back to Lucy,

through your DNA.

And finally, the pie
chart is your admixture,

in which we examine

how much African ancestry you have,

how much Native American

or Asian ancestry,

or how much European ancestry.

And this chart shows you the number

of ancestors you have
at the sixth generation.

We have two parents, you
have four grandparents,

you have eight great grandparents,

16 great, great grandparents,

all the way up to 64

great, great grandparents.

And this is how you DNA markers

are passed down.

Your Y DNA is passed down

from the father to his sons,

and the mitochondrial DNA

is passed down from the mother to the sons

or daughter.

And what we do,

to trace your African ancestry,

we have this huge database,

we go all over Africa testing people,

and we say, what is your ethnic group.

And they might say, Igbo or Europa

and then we test this
young lady right there.

And if you match,

in the computer it's like ding.

If you have the same
mitochondrial DNA structure

as the person who says they're Igbo,

and ther are lots of Igbo people,

then that means you share an Igbo ancestry

in common.

It's as simple and as complicated as that.

We call it guilt by association.

And that's how we find.

Now, this is a,

and I'm gonna wrap up

and take a few questions,

cause they have to take me to dinner

after this thing is over with

and we sign books,

cause I could never eat before I talk,

and I want a glass of wine.

I can't come to California
and not do that.

But doing these series,

I found the big three myths

of African American genealogy.

The first one,

is that I'm descended

from an Igbo princess,

and she was so beautiful

that her foot never touched

the sorted soil of slavery.

That there was a German count,

walking by the shipyard

the docks in Charleston.

And he looked over

and saw my great, great grandmother

and said, "man she is fine!"

That is my Igbo princess.

And he goes and he buys her,

and makes her his wife,

and they live happily ever after.

It never happened (laughs).

Never happened.

Malcolm Gladwell.

I was on Martha's Vinyard

a couple summers ago.

A very prominent African American woman

said to me.

I said, do you know where your ancestors

where in slavery?

She said, "we were never slaves."

So to get to point number two.

"Because, my great, great grandmother

"was an Igbo princess.

"And there was a German walking by.

(laughing)

"And he bought her."

I go, really?

And the next day.

And I told her that (mumbles),

she got very angry at me,

so I decided to be cool about

how I told people

that they were believing myths.

The next day, Malcolm Gladwell

who is in my last series, Face of America.

I called him and I said,

Malcolm would you be in my new series?

And he said, "yeah."

And I said, how far can
you trace you ancestry?

He said, "oh man I'm so glad

"I've got somebody to tell.

"You know, we found out,

"I'm descended from an Igbo princess."

(laughing)

I go, yeah yeah, I heard that story.

The third myth.

Okay, I want everybody to be honest.

Just the African Americans in this room.

How many of you are descended

from a Native American?

Just raise your hand.

Don't be ashamed.

There you go.

Look at all them Native Americans.

(laughing)

Well I've got news for you.

None of y'all are descended

from Native Americans.

(laughing)

"My grandmother had high cheekbones

"and straight black hair."

Every negro I know claimed that in 1950.

(laughing)

Well guess what the DNA evidence shows.

Only five percent of the
African American people,

one out of 20,

have any significant
Native American ancestry.

But one out of 20.

But on the other hand,

58 percent of the African American people

have a significant amount

of white ancestry.

You know those high cheekbones

and straight black hair.

That came from your white,

great, great grandfather!

(laughing)

The average African American

and the average Native American

never saw each other.

I don't know about you all,

but you can't sleep with,

the internet can do a lot,

but you can't sleep with somebody

you can't see.

(laughing)

The average admixture

for African Americans,

the average black person
is 77 percent black,

17.5 percent European

and five percent Native American.

Now, I went to see,

I was telling the students this morning,

I went to see Labron lose,

against the Celtics on Tuesday night.

I'm very happy to say.

Yeah!

(laughing)

And I was thinking,

if I did the DNA of all the black men

on the court, which was
everybody on the court

when I got this idea (laughs).

If I did the DNA of all the black men

on the court,

or all the black men in this room,

one in three of you
descend from a white man.

30 to 35 percent,

of all African American men,

in their Y DNA goes to Europe,

not to Africa,

because of enforced sexuality, sex,

you know, rape.

And at the best an unequal
power relationship.

Because, you know, I found Morgan Freeman,

in African American Lives,

his white overseer,

impregnates black slave.

That's Morgan's great, great grandmother.

So you figure it's rape right?

Well guess what?

I ended up showing him their tombstones.

They lived together
illegally in Mississippi,

from the time of the abolition of slavery

to their death.

So they had some kind of connection.

So that maybe it is possible.

I don't know, you know.

It's complicated.

How can you love somebody who owns you?

But who am I to say.

But it was very complicated.

But in most cases,

it was enforced sexuality at the least,

and rape at best.

Here are the figures.

One percent of the African American people

have at least 50 percent
European ancestry.

The equivalent of one parent.

19.6 of the African American people

have at least 25 percent
European ancestry.

58 percent of us have
at least 12.5 percent

European ancestry.

The equivalent of one great grandparent.

And only five percent

of the African American people

have at least 12.5 percent

Native American ancestry.

An equivalent of one great grandparent.

So for those of you who raised your hand,

I've identified the Native American tribe

you're from.

It is the Blackfoot tribe.

That is (mumbles).

(laughing)

So ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion,

what we were trying to do,

is use the new sophisticated tools

of genealogy ancestry
tracing and genetics,

not to take our people back to the future,

but to take them black to the future.

Thank you very much.

(applause)

(instrumental orchestral music)