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My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.

Henry Louis Gates

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Henry Louis Gates
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 16
Critic
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Genealogist
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Literary Critic
Philosopher
University Teacher
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West Virginia
Henry Louis Gates
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More quotes by Henry Louis Gates

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I think literacy is everything.
Henry Louis Gates
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In 1957, when I was in second grade, black children integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched it on TV. All of us watched it. I don't mean Mama and Daddy and Rocky. I mean all the colored people in America watched it, together, with one set of eyes.
Henry Louis Gates
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My producers and I worked with these consultants and came up with seventy [stories] which we think are exemplary of the larger arc of African-American history between 1513 and 2013. We covered half a millennium, and it's amazing.
Henry Louis Gates
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It's fascinating how life works.
Henry Louis Gates
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I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?
Henry Louis Gates
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I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.'
Henry Louis Gates
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Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.
Henry Louis Gates
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I would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity among other ethnic groups - a 'Faces of America 2.'
Henry Louis Gates
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Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.
Henry Louis Gates
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What's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories.
Henry Louis Gates
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There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Henry Louis Gates
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In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.
Henry Louis Gates
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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 you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, Did you see what that Negro did? A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.
Henry Louis Gates
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The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.
Henry Louis Gates
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When Europeans came upon real ruined cities they refused to believe that they had been built by Africans. Here the past has been distorted and denied.
Henry Louis Gates
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What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just like I try to be. He's been bridging divisions his whole life.
Henry Louis Gates
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I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.
Henry Louis Gates
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You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.
Henry Louis Gates
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People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances.
Henry Louis Gates
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In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.
Henry Louis Gates