Please join us all in the book tent where we will be signing books and please join me in thanking the panelists. [applause] that concludes live coverage of the 2013 texas book festival from austin. Thanks for joining us. If you would like to get scheduling and Program Updates from book tv, go to booktv. Org or collis andre utter at book tv is our trigger handle and also our facebook address, facebook. Com booktv. If you missed any of todays events, everything that you see today will air in its entirety tonight at midnight. You are watching book tv on cspan2. In october of 2006, Henry Louis Gates described the creation of the africana the encyclopedia of the african and africanamerican experience which includes over 3,000 articles. You can watch this one hour and a ten Minute Program next on book tv. 2013 marks book tvs anniversary that debuted on september 12th, 1998. Professor gates probably doesnt need an introduction to an audience of boston. But hes had an interesting history and i want to share a little bit of it with you. He is a summa cum laude the graduate of yale and received his m. A. And ph be from cambridge university. In 1981 he received the Macarthur Foundation genius grant to read and after teaching at yale, cornell and duke, he arrived in harvard at 1991. In 1998 he received a National Humanities metal and in 1999 was elected the American Academy of arts and letters. He is currently w. Ev aa is professor of the humanities and chair of the department of african and africanamerican studies and director of the of w. E. B. Du bois institute for african and africanamerican research. Hes written a number of books on both history and literary criticism, one of which won the 1989 american book award ha what do they suspect that professor gates has appeared his picture and pornography have appeared in media around the world. But this month he appeared in something that i think will be unique in his long curriculum. This is the w. E. B. Imus which is the monthly newsletter of the industry. And he has a fullpage picture and description of tonights lector so you are reaching many audiences. [applause] thank you what for that very kind introduction. My mind is blown from the fact of the line in this directory. [laughter] i am glad that i know about it and that im still alive. Thank you so much for coming out this evening and for inviting me what. The reason im here and they asked me if i would come. Ive been to the library a million times. I like to walk through here the but i have no idea. I mean i knew that Terrie Jacobs was buried there but until i got this marvelous brochure on africanamerican heritage trail at the cemetery, i frankly had no idea how many distinguished africanamericans are buried there. Harry did jacobs, his brother, george lewis, josephine st. Pierre, peter baez, joshua loth bowens smith, William Henry lewis, Benjamin Franklin roberts and as bill said, planas barnett morgan. For me from the time i was a little kid i grew up in the hills of West Virginia on the Potomac River basically it is a village that everybody that, gets mad when i call the village. I dont know the definition of a village is but it is a small town will and was an irish italian paper mill town and a handful of black people much of them related to me or my cousins in but for some reason at an early age i was born in 1950 i became with what we called native history. I could spot the word negro. It just was an affinity but i was raised to be a doctor by my mother mother. When i was with my mom i was premed and when i was with my dad, i was pretty small but i had a burning passion for africanamerican and African Studies and i used to encounter names. It was very difficult. It was difficult even to encounter these things but what i did, there was a certain majesty and resonance to the name. I wanted to know of them will. I think the secular equivalent when you master the tradition of your people and to dedicate your life to passing that tradition of those traditions on and that was the calling that i believe that i had. I was premed up to the age of 25 then went off to the university of cambridge and even then, i was a graduate student i was taking premed courses on the side because i was so guilty about letting my mother down. My brother is five years older than i am and he is the chief of surgery at the hospital and he was the dean of the dental school for a year, very successful person he kind of satisfied the medical requirement and my mother, when we would go home for Christmas Holidays for thanksgiving or easter someone would call my brother and asked for dr. Gates. They should just be professors. If someone says is dr. Gates there my mother says which one do you want. [laughter] i say okay you can cut that out. But i finally told them when i was 25 that i wasnt going to be doctor and ibis terrified. When shes as we just want you to be happy and decided to the doctor anyway will. When i found out that she asked me to come and i found out all of these i had been walking through the cemetery today i had been here 15 years at harvard and first and lived in lexington and in cambridge and i walked past all these African Americans and i didnt know what. It made the cemetery even more special, and i hope one of the things we can do englander nd and fifer get just reminded me at the end of my talk i would hope that maybe we could collaborate in the institute at harvard and the cemetery so we could do a virtual tour of the africanamerican sites and maybe even contribute to that one. I think it would be a great thing for black history and a great thing for boston. [applause] but now im going to take you on a little light starting in 1909 with my hero w. E. B. Du bois which is why i slandered, and morgans name because you know i have the honor i dont deserve it i have the honor of being a professor of the humanities at harvard. The department is dumb enough to make it professor i am smart enough to accept because he was my hero. In 1909, w. E. B. De boies, the greatest africanamerican intellectual in the world woke up one day seemingly out of the blue and announced that he had a vision. He had a dream in his sleep. The antiblack racism and the editing of the comprehensive encyclopedia about the entire black world, the equivalent of the black Encyclopedia Britannica. He was a genius. He could have had the idea just on his own but it just so happened that we know the encyclopedia was published in 1907 and w. E. B. Aa is salles the good press jewish people got because of the existence of the encyclopedia. I am convinced that thats why he thought of this idea. He was a stark but he didnt have any money. Why did i say he was a star . He graduated in 18 eda from historic kleeb lack university. He grew up of course in Great Barrington west of the state, not exactly the center of africanamerican culture but he really wanted to go to harvard and they told him no. There was a strong number. The first man was Richard Graner in 1877 have only been a couple. So they said go to frisk and prove yourself. So he went to fiske and he was the star and graduated, the bachelors degree in 1888 and applied to harvard again. They let him and as an advanced undergraduate as a junior and in 1890, he took the degree as we call it at harvard from 1891 were becoming the first to investors degree in any subject and he studied history. And 1890s to he went off to the university of berlin to do graduate work. Why did he want to do that . He wanted to do that because they were busy inventing a new subject and that subject was called sociology and it didnt exist in the United States. He didnt want to be the father of africanamerican sociology. He wanted to be the father of american sociology so he went to berlin and said the first time he felt like a human being and not liking negro human being. Even to limit of a german woman. It was in that nature that he had. It was funded by the fund that was under the direction of the former president rutherford b. Hayes. He had to control them and begged them, argue with them and insult them, threaten them to fund them to get a ph. D. In berlin because they set this later found out for vocational and education for negros. They didnt think they could get a ph. D. They said at the end of the civil war wide as a negro want to get a ph. D. . He should be like booker t. Washington and dedicate his life to training and negros in the vocational arts and sciences. But wect de boies we have this correspondence by the greatest historian between. And finally they capitulated and gave fallujah and he went off to berlin. But to get a ph. D. , needed to live there for three years to satisfy the residency requirement. And thus leader fine what intrigued him for a third year. So an enormous disappointment and a great bitterness to the return to cambridge and in 1895, became the first africanamerican to take a ph. D. In history or any subject from harvard. In 1896 he embarked on the first sociological study of a black neighborhood in the United States. He got a job at the university of pennsylvania as a lecturer to do a survey in the black community that it was so racist at that time ladies and gentlemen the wouldnt even put his name in the catalog. They wouldnt give any in office. They had to do all this research himself i think even measured the size they had in philadelphia. But in 1899 this early and study was published under the title philadelphia negro. The first sociological study of an africanamerican community. In 1900 he wrote a sentence that turned out to be for the 20th century and that sentence was this the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line and that certainly turned out to be the case. In 1903 he probably said looker was hailed as a classic before the ink was dry and that was what became the bible for the intellectuals then and remains the bible for africanamerican intellectuals today. In 1905 he cofounded an Organization Called the Niagara Movement that set itself up to fight the more conservative accommodationist policies the great educator booker t. Washington. And in 1909 that was called the Niagara Movement and in 1909 was called the naacp and we all know the naacp but he was the only executive. Think of a black Organization Today giving it wasnt and that was the year that he had this dream, this vision and he could elaborate African Americans from racism if only he could publish a compendium of scientific knowledge as he put it, scientific knowledge about the negro, the negro in africa or as it were the africa and african or the negro in the new world war. In 1910 he became the editor of the crisis magazine which was then and remains to this day the official naacp that in 1909 he had this idea and wrote to these great scholars around the world he wrote to sir Harry Johnston at oxford and some of his harvard professors he wrote to the great William James for whom he studied philosophy at Emmerson Hall in harvard. James of course is the father of american psychology the psychology like sociology didnt exist as a discipline at that time. He read the critique with george as he says in his autobiography in an upper room at harvard. The great historian of reconstruction directed the dissertation of the suppression of the slave trade and he wrote to all of these people and to president eliot himself with all these people wrote back ladies and gentlemen and said they would be pleased, the wouldbe honor to be on the board of editors and that one person, you might have guessed was president elliott at harvard who said he was much too busy turning basically this finishing school into a grand Cosmopolitan Center of International Graduate learning. Much too busy learning that to participate in a board of editors for an encyclopedia project but he wanted to give him to bits of advice. Terse he said do not ignore the presence of the significance of the islamic religion and culture in subsaharan africa. It took me years to realize that, ladies and gentlemen as embarrassed as i am to say that and that was present eliot in 1909 which is quite astonishing. I have respect for him as a considerable figure in education to i have to say went up when i discovered this letter in the archives of Harvard University. But the second bit of information that he gave to him which as you will see in a few mets turned out to be prophetic with this. Dont come he told him and more on this project unless you have the money. So, as i said he went on that year to find of the naacp in your letter he was heading the crisis and was too busy to edit this encyclopedia besides he didnt have any money so he put the idea on the shelf. Cut to 1931. On the upper side of East New York if rich man will goes to bed one might minding his own business and he wakes up, gets so excited he rushes down to his office of the association that still exists as a philanthropy down in washington and he assembled his staff and said he had a dream. He had a vision and you know that vision was . The most efficacious way to fight antiblack racism would be the editing of the comprehensive encyclopedia about the entire black world. He called this encyclopedia the encyclopedia of the negro and on november 20 of, 1931 he held a meeting in the Carnegie Library on the campus of the university and he invited all of these great scholars of the race. But he didnt invite w. E. B. Du bois and he didnt invite carter. You all know who Carter Woodson was even if you dont know. Carter woodson was the second africanamerican to take a ph. D. From harvard. Thats not what you know him. You know him because in 1926 he founded something called negro history week and in the 60s it became in the 50s became negro History Month and it became black History Month and in the 70s afroamerican History Month and in the east African AmericanHistory Month and in 20 years later it would be neo nubian History Month. [laughter] were the only people who would change our name every generation. I love jesse jackson. Hes a friend of mine. This is a joke every time he gets in trouble he has a press conference and we change our name. I think somebody jim joost from Harvard Business school. Some of the business Harvard School should do a survey of how much it costs the africanamericans to terrible that stationery and destroy the signs of a time we changed our name. The egyptians have been the egyptians for 5,000 years. The Chinese People have been chinese for 5,000 years. This is one africanamerican whos going to go to his grief as an africanamerican. I am not changing my name never again. But he did invite Carter Woodson and he didnt invite w. E. B. Du bois. Now have the honor as i said of being a professor at harvard. But harold bloom is a friend that i admire and he has a saying his very theatrical and he teaches a great poetry class at yale he finds a way to interweave into one of his lectures each year the following sentence. They say we shouldnt speak ill. They say we shouldnt speak ill of the dead and they look at the students and say but if we dont, who will . One. They were the most arrogant on the face of the earth. He slept in a three piece suit. [laughter] what at times of intense intimacy he allowed his second wife to call him by his first name which was doctor. The kids today say whos your daddy and he said who is your doctor to be if he heard about this meeting and he went crazy he said how dare you have this meeting without me . I am the negro. He was mortified. He went on to say whats more come in useful the idea for me. I had this idea in 1909 and i called the encyclopedia effort encyclopedia africana. He had stationery announcing the project and enclosed in the letter and they said he was mortified. So he wrote du boise an apologist profusely and he begged him to forget him first and then begged him to come to the second meeting of the board of editors on the campus of Harvard University which was convened and chinley first, 1932 again in the Carnegie Library university. And at that meeting, reluctantly at the last minute he allowed himself to be persuaded to attend. And at that meeting, surprise, surprise, he unanimously was elected editor of the encyclopedia of the project a capacity held with a great distinction between 1932 and 1946. After 1944, he had a lot more time to devote to the project because he was fired from his position at the magazine were. He always had enemies on the board will. They hated each other. He wrote an essay on the field and function of the colleges. He said since it appeared to be receding. Remember its 1934 the Great Depression and he had been trying to get a federal antione jindal passed in the congress with what he said since the gulf coast of the movement appeared to be receding perhaps it would be of the negro to develop scope because separate social and the educational institutions until the dream of integration could occur and that ran counter to the a theology of the naacp so they fired them in the wording after 1934 he threw himself into trying to get this project off the ground and the general the education board. Nobody would give him any money for this trip listing editing an encyclopedia when people at soup kitchens and bread lines were to