Henry Louis Gates

Dr. Henry Louis Gates has transformed Harvard’s Afro-American Studies Department into a thriving and respected center by adding such scholars as William Julius Wilson and Cornell West to the program. In his spare time, he is author and editor of numerous publications. His critical studies of African-American oral and literary traditions have had a broad impact on literary theorists and Afro-American Studies Scholars. BOOKS: FIGURES IN BLACK: WORDS, SIGNS AND THE “RACIAL SELF”; THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACK MAN. He has edited several anthologies including the Oxford-Schomburg Library of Ninetheenth Century Black Women writers and the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. In this keynote speech, honoring Dr. Earl J. Ball III beginning his third decade of leadership at the William Penn Charter School, Dr. Gates explores possible solutions to the Race and Class problems facing us today. Be first he mentions some of the writers that influenced his young life.