Gates african-american history books

In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past (Paperback)

Host of PBS's Finding Your Roots and famed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examines African-American immigration and ancestry through the lineage of famous Black Americans.

Unlike most white Americans who can search their ancestral records, identifying who among their forebears was the first to step foot on this country’s shores, most African Americans encounter a series of daunting obstacles when trying to trace their family’s past. Slavery brutally negated identity, denying black men and women even their names. But from that legacy of slavery have sprung generations who’ve struggled, thrived, and lived extraordinary lives.

For too long, African Americans’ family trees have been barren of branches, but advanced genetic testing techniques, combined with archival research, have begun to fill in the gaps. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes nineteen extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through U.S. history and back to Africa.

Dr. Gates brings to life the recovered pasts of:
  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Whoopi Goldberg
  • Chris Rock
  • Tina Turner
  • Maya Angelou
  • Peter Gomes
  • Mae Jemison
  • Quincy Jones
  • Morgan Freeman
  • Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
  • Tom Joyner
  • Benjamin Carson
  • T.D. Jakes
  • Linda Johnson Rice
  • Kathleen Henderson
  • Jackie Joyner-Kersee
  • Don Cheadle
  • Bliss Broyard
  • Chris Tucker


More than a work of history, In Search of Our Rootsis an important book that, for the first time, brings to light the lives of ordinary men and women who, by courageous example, blazed a path for their famous descendants. In accompanying the nineteen contemporary achievers on their journey into the past and meeting their remarkable forebears, we come to know ourselves.
  • Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy,
  • The Classic Slave Narratives-paperback.

    • The African-American Century

    One hundred original profiles of the most influential African Americans of the twentieth century.

    Without Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, we would not have jazz. Without Toni Morrison or Ralph Ellison, we would miss some of our greatest novels. Without Dr. King or Thurgood Marshall, we would be deprived of political breakthroughs that affirm and strengthen our democracy. Here, two of the leading African American scholars of our day, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West, show us why the twentieth century was the African American century, as they offer their personal picks of the African American figures who did the most to shape our world.

    This colorful collection of personalities includes much-loved figures such as scientist George Washington Carver, contemporary favorites such as comedian Richard Pryor and novelist Alice Walker, and even less-well-known people such as aviator Bessie Coleman. Gates and West also recognize the achievements of controversial figures such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and rap artist Tupac Shakur. Lively, accessible, and illustrated throughout, The African American Century is a celebration of black achievement and a tribute to the black struggle for freedom in America that will inspire readers for years to come.

  • The Norton Anthology of African American

    • Books by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

    Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
    by
    4.16 avg rating — 3,989 ratings — published 2019 — 7 editions
    The Classic Slave Narratives-paperback
    by
    4.33 avg rating — 3,180 ratings — published 1987 — 19 editions
    The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
    by
    4.38 avg rating — 1,238 ratings — published 1996 — 33 editions
    The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
    by
    4.08 avg rating — 1,210 ratings — published 2021 — 9 editions
    Colored People: A Memoir
    by
    4.12 avg rating — 1,090 ratings — published 1994 — 21 editions
    Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow
    by
    3.99 avg rating — 704 ratings — published 2019 — 8 editions
    The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism
    by
    4.01 avg rating — 452 ratings — published 1988 — 11 editions
    The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers
    by
    3.95 avg rating — 456 ratings — published 2003 — 11 editions
    100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
    by
    4.29 avg rating — 320 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions
    The Black Box: Writing the Race
    by
    4.25 avg rating — 298 ratings — 8 editions
    Black in Latin America
    by
    4.28 avg rating — 287 ratings — published 2011 — 15 editions
    The Future of the Race
    by
    3.81 avg rating — 232 ratings — published 1996 — 9 editions
    And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK
    by
    4.40 avg rating — 176 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions
    Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008
    by
    4.51 avg rating — 170 ratings — published 2011 — 9 editions
    The Annotated African
      Gates african-american history books


  • The Black Church: This Is

    • Henry Louis Gates Jr.


    Born

    in Keyser, WV, The United States

    September 16, 1950


    Website

    http://www.aaas.fas.harvard.edu/directory/facul...


    Twitter

    HenryLouisGates


    Genre

    Literature & Fiction, African American Studies, History


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    Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies....more



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