Skip Gates explores the Future of Race
Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (1973, Honorary Fellow) delivered the fifth lecture in the College's series of seven 700th anniversary lectures, speaking on 'Genealogy, Genetics and the Future of Race.'
Professor Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. An Emmy, Du Pont, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and institution builder, he has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films about Black History, most recently Great Migrations (PBS, 2025). Gates鈥檚 groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, Finding Your Roots, which received a Primetime Emmy nomination, just concluded its eleventh season. His latest book, The Black Box: Writing the Race (Penguin Random House, 2024), was named one of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the Year. Most recently, he was awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal from the NAACP and was elected an Honorary Fellow by the Royal Academy of Arts in England.
During the lecture, Skip Gates shared his family history and personal journey to uncovering his roots, explained how autosomal DNA testing can identify relatives through shared DNA inherited from common ancestors, and showed moving clips from his Finding Your Roots series, including interviews with Richard Branson and civil rights leader John Lewis.
