Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Jennifer Burton

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. The Black Church (PBS) and Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches (HBO), which he executive produced, each received Emmy nominations. In January 2024, Finding Your Roots, Gates’s groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, returned for its tenth season on PBS. His most recent history series for PBS, Gospel, premiered in February 2024.

Photo credit: Peter Simon

Jennifer Burton

Jennifer Burton is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego. Along with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Burton edited the 31-volume series African-American Women Writers, 1910-1940, and was the volume editor for The Prize Plays and Other One-Acts: Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence, Marita Bonner, and Others. She also contributed to The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, and Great American Women. Her essays, fiction, and plays have appeared in publications from the Buffalo News to the Southeast Review.