Henry Louis Gates Bio Wiki Age Wife Finding Your Roots PBS Books and Net Worth
Henry Louis Gates is an American literary critic, historian, professor, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Henry serves as a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. Since 2012 Henry has been the host of the television series Finding Your Roots on PBS. It combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and genetics historic research.
Henry was born on September 16, 1950, in Keyser, West Virginia,United States. He is71 years old.
He is a man of average stature and stands at a height of 5 ft 8 in (Approx. 1.72 m).
He was born in Keyser, West Virginia to his parentsGates Sr., andPauline Augusta. Henry grew up in neighboring Piedmont. His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses.
Henry is currently married to historianDr.Marial Iglesias Utset. He was previously married toSharon Lynn Adamsin 1979. The two share two daughters togetherLizaandMaggie. They divorced in 1999.
He graduated from Piedmont High School in 1968. Later, Henry attended Potomac State College of West Virginia University before transferring to Yale University. He graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in history and Phi Beta Kappa membership.
The first African American to be awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Henry sailed on Queen Elizabeth 2 for England and the University of Cambridge, where he studied English literature at Clare College and earned his Ph.D.
Elizabeth is in her twenties and suffered a severe stroke in May 2010. After an evening at a bachelorette party, she woke up with what she thought was a hangover. Elizabeth had suffered a stroke, her mind irreparably harmed. An X-ray showed a bright portion that revealed just how much of her brain tissue was destroyed.
She was not able to speak, read or write and her comprehension was impaired. Before her stroke, Elizabeth worked as a writer for the popular website “The Daily Beast. Just four months after her stroke, she went back home and work too.
Since 2012 Henry has hosted a PBS TV series, called Finding Your Roots. The second season of the series, featuring 30 prominent guests across 10 episodes, with Henry as the narrator, interviewer, and genealogical investigator, aired on PBS in fall 2014. The show’s third season was postponed after it was discovered that actor Ben Affleck had persuaded Henry to omit information about his slave-owning ancestors. Finding Your Roots resumed in January 2016.
After his 2003 NEH lecture, Henry published in the same year a book entitled The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, about the early African-American poet. His other books include:
Who’s Black and Why 2022 Figures in Black 1987 Finding Oprah’s Roots 2007 In Search of Our Roots 2009 Stony the Road 2019 The Black Church 2021 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro 2017
Through research, Henry learned that his family descended in part from the Yoruba people of West Africa. He also learned that he has 50% European ancestry, including Irish forebears. Henry identifies as Black.
He has been involved in the following films:
Watchmen 2019 Reconstruction 2019 Africa’s Great Civilizations 2017 Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise 2016 The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross 2013 Black in Latin America 2011 Faces of America 2010 Looking for Lincoln 2009
Henry wrote, executive, produced and hosted a critically acclaimed six-part PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. It traced 500 years of African-American history to the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. The series earned the 2013 Peabody Award and an NAACP Image Award.
In 2020, Henry received an Alfred I. DuPont–Columbia University Award for his PBS documentary series, “Reconstruction: America after the Civil War”. In 2020, he earned an NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction, for his book Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. The book became also named one of The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2019” and one of Time Magazine’s “100 Must-Read Books of 2019”.
He earns his wealth from his career, therefore, he has amassed a fortune over the years. Henry’s estimated net worth is $1 million.
Henry is an American literary critic, historian, professor, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
