“There is no purity of race; it doesn’t exist,” author and Harvard University Prof. Henry Louis “Skip” Gate Jr. told an audience of more than 500 people at Northwestern Thursday.
Gates talked about the myths of race and the benefits of researching genealogy and ancestry in his speech “Exploring Our Roots: Genealogy, Genetics, and African American History” in the Ryan Family Auditorium at the Technological Institute. The director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, producer of multiple PBS documentaries and author of several books on genealogy and history spoke for the 2011 Leon Forrest Lecture.
Gates gained accidental notoriety in July 2009 when police arrested him after neighbors reported a man breaking into Gates’ house. The man was Gates, who he could not find a key and had to break into his own house. Gates reportedly blamed his arrest on racial profiling. His arrest resulted in controversy about race relations in America and police activity and led to the “beer summit” between Gates, Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley and President Barack Obama.
Gates said he uses genetic testing and document research to trace African Americans back to their original African tribes. He has specialized in celebrity genealogy and helped celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman and Mae Jemison trace their ancestries.
All African Americans have ancestors that are not African, he said.
Gates debunked what he called the three myths of African American genealogy: that some African Americans descend from princesses of the Igbo African tribe who used their beauty to avoid slavery; some African Americans have ancestors who were never slaves; and some African Americans have high cheekbones and straight hair because they have Native American ancestors.
Almost all African Americans descend from slaves, and none have an Igbo princess ancestor, Gates said. Over 99 percent of African American ancestors had migrated to America by 1820, before slavery was abolished, Gates said.
Only five percent of African Americans have a significant amount of Native American genetic markers and 58 percent have a significant amount of white genetic markers, he said. One-third of all African American men have European Y-chromosme DNA , and Gates himself has a 50 percent European ancestry, he said.
“One-third of (African American men in the audience) have a white great, great, great grandfather, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Gates said, laughing.
Gates told the story of Oprah Winfrey’s ancestor, Constantine Winfrey, who obtained 88 acres of land after making a deal with a white man to pick 3,200 pounds of clean cotton in two years.
One of Morgan Freeman’s female ancestors lived, had children and was buried with her white overseer, Gates said.
Research has shown some free black ancestors owned slaves themselves, Gates said.
Gates, who has taken two genealogy classes, said his interest for genealogy began when he was 9 years old. After his grandfather’s funeral, Gates’ father showed him the obituary of his great grandmother, who was a slave and had children with a white man, but would not name who, Gates said. Later that year, Gates said he bought a composition notebook and began interviewing his parents about their family trees.
SESP sophomore Kirsten Kennedy said Gates’ speech inspired her to look more into her ancestry.
“A lot of us don’t really delve deeper into our roots beyond what we know,” she said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s beneficial to know where we came from.”
Gates’ speech was “fascinating” and “sharp,” Howard Voeks said. The 65-year-old retired attorney was a neighbor of Leon Forrest’s, and said Gates reminded him of a character from one of Forrest’s novels.
The speech was originally scheduled for a smaller room, but President Morton Schapiro, who was in the audience and hosted Gates for dinner at his home after the speech, said a larger room was needed, according to Estelle Ure, the coordinator of special events at Weinberg.
Gates said he wants to implement new educational programs that allow students to learn about their genealogy.
“My hope is that we can restore so many of our children who have lost their way, and use this new way of science not to take our people back to the future,” Gates said, “but to take them black to the future.”
