Professor Gates Charms at Newark Library Gala

For Harvard Professor and noted lecturer Henry Louis Gates Jr., speaking to the audience at the Newark Library gala this week was like talking to a room of old friends.

The noted lecturer and host of the PBS series "Faces of America" and "Finding Your Roots" charmed, teased, and warmed his audience Wednesday and described visiting Newark in the early 1970s while an undergraduate at Yale.

"Amiri Baraka was organizing black students all over the Ivy League and the nation," he recalled. Gates said he and other African-American students from Yale came to Newark to campaign for then-mayoral candidate Ken Gibson.

Gates, a Harvard professor and published author, said in 1970, he drove a 1969 Mustang and wore a dashiki and a large afro, and was proud to be a part of Gibson's election because Gibson was the first African-American mayor to be elected in a major Northeastern city.

Gates was the keynote speaker at the gala, which celebrated the 125th birthday of the Newark Library. Also recognized during the evening was Timothy J. Crist, head of the library's board of trustees; Wilma Grey, director of the library; Claudia Granados, library trustee, and Mayor Cory A. Booker.

Gates, who talked about his friendship with both Crist and Booker,used his speech to talk about a series of television shows he developed for PBS that traces the ancestry of famous African-Americans, and other celebrities. The show began with "African American Lives" and grew to include two more shows - "Faces of America" and "Finding Your Roots."

Gates said the idea for the shows came from his own curiosity about his personal ancestry, but in the ensuing years, he's seen Booker and other celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, also trace their family history.

"I combined this passion I had with this new science of genetics," he explained, adding that he learned he had a mixed caucasion and African-American heritage. Then he expanded the television show and included hte profiles of: Harry Connick Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Tina Turner, Meryl Streep, Eva Longoria, and Mario Batali, among others.

Through a long and personal narrative about searching for his family's origins, Gates made the point that in all of the cases of the African Americans who have traced their ancestry -  they have roots in slaves who were brought to America and a mixture of caucasion and African-American ancestry.

"You never know where this search is going to lead," he said of the genetic testing done for celebrities on his televison shows. He said he's developed a database at Harvard and wants to encourage further geneological searches. Gates said his goal is to  empower people with the knowledge of their ancestry and also encourage students to pursue science.

He said besides knowing their own countries of origin, contemporary scholars can also learn about the history of slavery, the historical evidence of African American people and caucasion people having children together, and their own rich personal history. Gates said during his search he learned he had a relative who fought in the American Revolution.

Gates, who finished with a warm round of applause, said he hopes to "change the attitudes of black and brown kids about learning."