Henry Louis Gates

Looking for a place to start researching Gates's life? This biography at the Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts pages is a great starting point. You'll also find a photo and some links there.

This is the biography page for Gates at the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he was the 2002 Jefferson Lecturer. The site also provides other valuable resources, such as an interview, some excerpts, the text of the lecture, and a bibliography.

Want to take a look at a particular aspect of Gates's working life? Okay then, click over to his homepage at Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research.

Did you know that Gates is very active in television? This is the homepage of his PBS program, Wonders of the African World. The site features links to episodes, a feedback area, and a diary by Gates.

The MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes called the “genius grant,” is currently set at $500,000, with absolutely no strings attached. You could spend it all on pizza. Gates won one in 1981. Look at the company he keeps. Who do you recognize on this list?

This essay from the Globe and Mail takes a look at the author's life while examining the topic of racial identity. What did you learn about Gates that you didn't know before reading this piece?

If you'd like to put Gates's work into a broader political context, here is a very good general article about the Civil Rights Movement. It features multimedia links and will help get you started on your research.

Read this excerpt from Colored People: A Memoir. What do you make of the title? After reading the excerpt are you prompted to read the whole work? Why or why not? Can you find out if your library has a copy from the computer you're using now?

This Frontline interview has the author discussing the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., his own work at Harvard, and class among Black Americans, among other things.

Let's turn the tables a bit. Here, Gates is the interviewer. Kofi Annan is the interviewee, and the main subject is the new global order. What different perspective did you gain as Gates changed roles in these two cases?