The Quotable Black Scholar: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on His Irish Roots
Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
(Source: Boston.Com)
***
It turns out that I’m descended on my mother’s side from a white woman who was impregnated by a black slave, and on my father’s side from an Irishman who conceived with a black woman named Jane Gates. I have an Irish haplotype called Ui Neill that goes back to some fifth century king. I was searching for African roots, and they led to an African kingdom called the United Kingdom.
–From an interview with John Lauerman, in Business Week, Feburary 17, 2012
Biographical Notes: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Posted in Uncategorized