Henry Louis Gates Early Accomplishments

This article discussed the early accomplishments, documentaries, and controversies surrounding the life of Henry Louis Gates Jr. Born on September 16, 1950, in Keyser, West Virginia, Gates continued to travel and study internationally before he became in charge of Harvard’s African-American studies department. Additionally, Gates was an exceptional student who continued to excel academically, he graduated with a degree in history from Yale University in the year 1973. He continued to pursue high education at Clare College, which is a part of the University of Cambridge in England. He obtained his doctorate degree in 1979, making him the first African American to even receive a Ph.D. from this University (biography.com). In the 1980s, Gates became known as …show more content…
In addition to his MacArthur Fellowship, he was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Jefferson Lecture, inducted in 2006 to the Sons of the American Revolution and named as of TIME magazine’s “25 most influential Americans” for 2007. He also holds more than 50 honorary degrees. Controversy included Gates getting in the public eye in July 2009, when a police officer was responding to a call about a break-in at the Gates home Cambridge, Massachusetts. What actually happened was that Gates and his driver who also happened to be African- American were trying to get into the house after continuing to have difficulty with the door. Reports change on what happened next: some believe that the officer refused to say who he was and after Gates asked for his badge number and his name, while others say that Gates refused to answer the questions that the officer was asking and became aggressive after he believed that the officer was being racist. President Obama spoke on this incident he believed that the officer “acted stupidly.” This caused some criticism from the public. He has been married since 1979 to Sharon Lynn Adams with whom he has two daughters, Maude and