Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. He is the creator of the docuseries Finding Your Roots and is currently developing a new series, Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History. (August 2025)

Suddenly, Jamaica

Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American literature.

August 21, 2025 issue

Finding My Roots

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.

September 29, 2023

The Constitution & the Slave Trade

April 7, 2022 issue

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified chattel slavery.

December 16, 2021 issue

How Societies Go Backward

November 19, 2020 issue

‘There’s One Humanity or There Isn’t’

On Trump, the Nobel Prize, racism in America, writers in Nigeria, and more

March 21, 2019 issue

Granta’s Best

October 17, 1996 issue

Letter

Ian Jack

Choosing the Best

October 31, 1996 issue