Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. An Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar and institution builder, Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. “The Black Church” (PBS) and “Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches” (HBO), which he executive produced, each received Emmy nominations. “Finding Your Roots,” Gates’ groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, which just completed its 10th season on PBS, has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy (2024). His most recent history series, “Gospel,” premiered on PBS in February 2024. His latest book is “The Black Box: Writing the Race” (Penguin Random House, 2024).
Gates is a recipient of a number of honorary degrees, including from his alma mater, the University of Cambridge, and, most recently, the London School of Economics. Gates was a member of the first class awarded “genius grants” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998 he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2001 he discovered the first novel written by a Black female author, “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” by Hannah Craft.
A native of Piedmont, West Virginia, Gates earned his B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at Cambridge in 1979, where he is also an honorary fellow. A former chair of the Pulitzer Prize board, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on a wide array of boards, including those of the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of America, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2011, his portrait, by Yuqi Wang, was hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 2023, his portrait, by Kerry James Marshall, was hung at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge. He was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in his junior year. In July 2024, he was awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.
