February 27, 2017 • 42 mins
Dr. Gates joins Holly to talk about history's impact on our future, Black History Month, and his upcoming PBS series "Africa's Great Civilizations."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And today
on the podcast, we have an interview with Dr Henry
Lewis Gates Jr. Dr Gates is the director of the
(00:23):
Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
He's a prolific content creator across multiple disciplines, including but
not limited to filmmaking, journalism, in literary scholarship. This is
like the most paired down version of his CV you
could possibly have. And normally we have often said like,
we don't usually do specific program programming for Black History
(00:45):
Months because we try to make Black History happen year round,
so all the year. Because people had reached out to
us and they were very interested in doing a Black
History Month related discussion, uh, and since it's the last
podcast of Black History Months, we figured why not? This
would be fantastic because he is a great interview. Yes
that as soon as we got the email. The original
(01:06):
time was the time that I was going to be
physically on an airplane, and I emailed Holly immediately and
and said, hey, I want us to do this, but
I personally cannot do it. I said, I will do it,
like it was some big burden to me, Like I
was so excited too. Yeah, we're both very obviously, we're
still very excited. So his work has won so many awards,
(01:30):
including an Emmy for PBS series The African Americans, Many
Rivers to Cross in he was awarded the National Humanities Medal,
making him the first African American recipient of that honor.
He was actually just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
last year. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He I mean,
his contributions to UH history, scholarship in African American history
(01:55):
in particular and African history cannot be oversold. And he
is currently working on a whole lot of projects. He's
in the middle of filming the fourth season of Finding
Your Roots for PBS, which is a series that explores
the genealogy and family histories of famous guests like people
that are influencers in society, and debuting tonight if you're
(02:16):
listening to this on the day we release it, is
his new series Africa's Great Civilizations, which I am incredibly,
incredibly excited about because Dr Gates visits some amazing locations
while exploring two hundred thousand years of history. I'm I
have like rabies level excitement for this, and he too well.
(02:38):
And that's one of the things that was so exciting
when we got the original email about all of this
was that that is uh an area of history that
it can be hard to research from here because the
resources available to us are kind of limited. So being
able to go directly to the source super exciting. Yeah,
and he's also promoting a T and TA twe eight
(03:00):
Days a Celebration of Black History, which is a project
that features all kinds of cool interactive content that celebrates
black history pioneers past in present, and shares the view
that we always talk about on the show that black
history doesn't need to be confined to one month of
the year. It can be celebrated year round. So for
more information on that project, which also includes cool sweep
stakes that they are running as part of that where
(03:22):
you can win a trip to the National Museum of
African American History and Culture, which sounds amazing. So you
can get more info on all of that at a
t T dot com slash twenty eight days If you
want to watch some of those really amazing videos and
take in all of the seriously wide breath content that
they have to offer there. Dr Gates is so good
(03:45):
at bringing history to life. So we're going to wrap
up this introduction of him and jump right into the interview.
You are really focused on this wonderful, full spectrum approach
to sharing Black history by both looking at the past
(04:08):
and at the future while still staying engaged in the present.
And I wonder what you think is the most important
thing that we can do as a society and as
people that are interested in history to make sure that
none of us forget the past as we're making the
big decisions that shape the future. That's a great question.
I think that's the place in America traditionally where we
(04:28):
become citizens. The place the institution most responsible for shaping
citizenship is our schools. When I went to school, I
don't know about your generation, but we had to learn
my country ticity. You know, America, the beautiful I pledged.
It leads it to the flag. And the teacher didn't
say today is citizenship Day, and I'm going to teach
(04:50):
you how to be a citizen. They just did it.
They did it every day invisibly oustmotically. It was like
the air that you breathe, and so why what's that?
Of been? Two? We need to integrate the content of
the contributions of black women and black men, both in
this country on the African continent first and then throughout
the diaspora, into the curriculum, into every subject where it's relevant,
(05:14):
so that we're not just teaching it or exclaiming it
in this wonderful month of February of the Black History Month. UM,
it needs to be there every day. Every day has
got to be Black History Month. It's got to be
part of the story that every person who sits in
the classroom gets about the subject that they're studying. What
were the black contributions, What are the contributions of gay people,
(05:36):
what are the contributions of women, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So
I see my job as providing the research and then
to translating the research that I do and my peers
fellow scholars do for a broader audience through the wonderful
venue or outlet of of PBS and and and other
(05:58):
journalistic organs like that. UM. I want to be able
to tell the story to other scholars in complex ways,
but then to break it down, make it plain, as
Malcolm would say, um, and try to make it compelling.
And that's what I'm trying to do with the new
six hour series African's Great Civilizations, which I'm so excited about.
And I'm going to ask you about that in just
(06:19):
a minute, but first I wanted to ask you a
little bit about the Finding Your Roots series that you've
worked on to the last several years. Um, okay, I
know that of course in every situation, the participants that
you are helping discover their past are often met with
moments of surprise, but I have to wonder if there
have been any moments of discovery that really caught you
(06:39):
off guard along the way. Yes, it's a great question.
We were filming season four Finding your Roots now. Um,
I'm very very excited about that, and um, I think
in one of the biggest surprises was from the hip
hop star are l O cool j Um, who is
Todd Smith, who's a very old friend of mine, and
(07:01):
Todd was very is very close, well was very close.
I'm sorry, because his grandparents were dead to his grandparents
who took his grandparents took Todd and his mother in
after Todd's parents split up, and he you know, even
in um my mom will knock you out, you know,
his first rap video, his grandmother comes down the stairs
(07:22):
at the end and says, Todd, take the garbage out.
You know, it's really funny. He's down in the basement.
But and when it turns out that lady was not
his biological grandmother, the people who raised him in whom
he loved so much and who nurtured him so deeply
and profoundly, were not his biological grandparents. His mother, it
(07:43):
turns up, was adopted and Todd did not know this,
and neither did his mother, and I had to call
him tell him, um yeah, And we found out through
DNA and then you ready for this. We found his
biological grandmother, an eighty nine year old lady who was
(08:04):
living in a nursing home, and we tracked her down
and we didn't film this because it's very private, and
we arranged for Todd's local, Jay's mother and l l
to meet um Ella's mother to meet her mother. She
had had a baby in I believe, and put her
up for adoption, and they we ranged the family and
now they're really close and well, that's a heavy that's
(08:26):
a heavy root story. I'm gonna tell you that. And
I had to call him. He goes, what what are
you talking about? You know it was he had no idea,
no inkling, no inclination, and I had to be the
one to tell him, and he goes, are you sure?
Are you sure? It's very upset. And now, of course
he's very happy that that had happened, and he one
(08:49):
of the things we learned when the morals of the
story is that families, you can have a so she
constructed family, and you can have a biological family. And
he so now he's busy just covering his biological grandmother.
And thank god, um, this happened before it was too late.
And I never anticipated this kind of thing could possibly
(09:10):
happen through finding your roots, but it did. Yeah, I
can't brother say on the street, DNA lie. I can't
imagine what it must be like for his biological grandmother
to be like, oh, by the way, you are l
cool grandmother, no man, And there he's We had dinner
about two weeks ago in l A and I met
(09:33):
his daughters and the he sell me some pictures of
the family reunion and it's amazing. And then you can
see the family resemblance. And and remember I said that
Todd was boxing in the basement. His biological grandfather was
a light heavyweight champion of the world. He was a
famous boxer and then became a boxing trainer. Go figure,
you know. And he had no idea, none, zero. That
(09:57):
is a wild story. Uh, and then wild story. We'll
mention your next big project, which I am so excited about,
which is Africa's Great Civilizations that is about to premiere
on PBS. And similarly, I have to wonder what the
most memorable or surprising discoveries were that you made while
making that series, because it is a lot of content.
(10:19):
It's a lot of content. It's two hundred thousand years
of African history. So we start with mitochondrial Eve, who
is our common great great great great grandmother. For all
human beings. All human beings, whether they're black, yellow, red, white, brown,
all descend from African people in the African continent. This
is an indisputable fact. Fifty eight thousand years ago, a
(10:45):
handful of anatomically modern human ancestors walked out of Africa.
So everybody is ultimately descended from an African. We're all Africans,
and I'll tell you three amazing things. Um one the
third country in the world to convert to Christianity. The
(11:06):
first was Rome, the second one was Armenian. The third
Ethiopia in three fifty a d. Before Ireland, England in
any of those places, and some of the players didn't
even exist. The Ethiopians became the king Isana became a
Christian in three fifty a d. Second amazing fact, the
richest man in the history of the world was the
(11:27):
Emperor of Moli. His name was Mansa m A n
s A Musa m U s A. He was the
Emperor of Moli, and in thirteen twenty four. He was
so rich because they had one of the world's great
sources of gold. We don't realize that most of the
gold of Europe between one thousand a d and d
came from West Africa. The Sera Desert wasn't a very
(11:50):
it was a highway, a trading highway back and forth
between across the Sahara, across the Mediterranean, up the Red Sea,
up the Nile, down the Nile. And so he had
all their gold and he made a pilgrimage in Mecca
because he's a Muslim. He did the Hajj, as it's called,
and he had so much gold when he passed through
(12:11):
Cairo it devalued. He was a given gold away and
at the value the gold market for years and years
and years. He could go to networth dot com and
check it out as according to networth dot com at
least the last time I looked. And the third thing
is every woman named Candice. Do you have any friends
named Candice? Every woman named Candice got their name. Their
(12:35):
name derives from the Nubian or Meroittic name for queen,
which is Candycki k a and d a k e.
The queen of Merriway, which was the successor kingdom to
Cushion Nubia. There continuous um kingdoms was called the Candycki
(12:55):
and Uh. In the Book of Acts in the New Testament,
Philip is walking along the road and he runs into
this um the the Candice's treasurer, who was a eunuch,
and it's called her the Queen of Ethiopia. But Ethiopia
was just the name at that time used for the
land of black people. It's just the name used for Africa.
(13:16):
But we happen to know that this man was the
treasurer for a queen called Amani Renus and Amanti Renus
in twenty BC. She dressed like a man, had one eye,
and she sister was bad. He defeated the Romans. She
defeated the Romans. Roman taken over Egypt. She took him
on in battle and defeated him. Took a statue of
(13:39):
Augustus Caesar back to her kingdom, buried in front of
her throne, so everybody came to see there, had to
see him, see her, had to step on his head.
That is one of the great queens in in history.
The candicki Amani Renus, and that is the source of
the name of every woman named Candice, whether they're black, white, red, yellow,
(14:01):
or whatever. That is your amazing Black history facts for today.
We know because we do a history podcast twice a
week that it can be really, really tricky sometimes to
get good primary source material for African history. So I'm
wondering how you structured your research to ensure that you
(14:22):
were truly capturing that African perspective. Well, we I end
um over a dozen fifteen academics, professors who are experts
of various phases of African history. No one person could
master African history because African history. Who couldn't master fifty
thou years of history or two d years? And Africa
(14:45):
is the most genetically diverse continent in the world, in
the second most linguistically diverse, So you need different kinds
of specialists. And even fifteen is not enough, but that,
you know, is the best that we could do, plus
a lot a lot more academics I interviewed, as you
will see in the film. And so what my job
is is to translate into film the great scholarly work
(15:08):
done by range of of African nous professors of African studies, black, white, male, female,
African and African American, you know whatever, whoever was doing
the best work in the field, and I put him
on camera, gave him full credit, and that's what we've done.
And then John Thornton and Lynda Haywood, who are very
prominent in the film, and they're my colleagues at BEU
(15:30):
across the river here in Massachusetts. UM, the two of them,
their husband and wife, and I are writing a companion
book to the series. UM. But the probably one of
the best books available for anyone listening is by Professor
Professor Christopher Ritt E h R E. T. And it's
(15:51):
called UM African Civilizations and it's in paperback. He's got
a new addition out now, I think at the University
of Virginia, and it's very readable and it tells the
it's called The Civilizations of Africa, A History to eight
hundred and he just publish a new edition. We will
(16:19):
include the information on Christopher Eyrett's book in our show notes,
so you will have that ready in handy if you
want to follow up on Dr Gates's advice to look
at it. And I will confess that, as we alluded
to a little earlier, I am incredibly envious of Dr
gates team of fifteen scholars of African history. Yeah. When
he was talking about the show and I asked how
they ensured that they got, you know, this, this true
(16:42):
depth of information in the African experience, he was like, well,
I have all of these people, and I was like, oh,
may we have all those people? Um, And we actually
had to stop the interview there where we just broke
because Dr Gates had to run and catch a flight.
But very fortunately he and his team we're kind enough
to work out a second session for us to keep chatting.
(17:03):
So we're going to get to that, but first we're
going to pause for a word from one of our
fantastic sponsors. Next up, Dr Gates shares stories of the
amazing travels that were part of the production of Africa's
Great civilizations and how the team selected the featured location.
(17:30):
So my next question is, uh, when you have this
amazing wealth of opportunity and potential topics to cover, how
did you select the locations that ended up being featured
on the show. Oh, that's a great question. Well, remember
I had a board of fifteen professors from all over Africans, Americans, Europeans,
(17:57):
people who were the most outstanding, some of the most
outstanding people in their field, each one excellent, representing different
time periods in different regions. Africa is so big, They're
over fifty countries and we're talking about two hundred thousand
years of African history. The early history courses. Prehistory is
based on genetics and archaeology from the um a cent
(18:20):
of human beings and their outmigration from the African continent
and fifty thousand years ago, and then genetically from mitochondrial
eve our common female ancestor two hundred thousand years ago.
We're all descended from this woman, and we're all descended
from those um small group of Africans who left the
continent at some fifty and eighty thousand years ago. But
(18:42):
when we then, when we get to Egypt, you know,
we pick it up about three thousand BC b C.
And that's five thousand years of of written history. It's
a long, long um time period to cover. So what
I did. I wrote to all these people and a
(19:02):
lot of other people, and I said, give me a
wish list. If we had all the time in the world,
what would be the most important stories that you would
think that would be essential to knowing the full history
of Africa. And I'm not talking about just subsidiary in Africa.
I'm not talking about just West Africa, South Africa. I'm
(19:24):
talking about Africa, because as you know, there was a
long tradition of acting like Egypt was some part of Europe.
I didn't have anything to do with black people. We know,
that's a lot um so and then I got lists,
oh my god, list of hundreds of hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of stories. But you know, you can only
(19:45):
tell about ten to twelve stories in a one hour
TV show. In fact, the next time you watch a documentary,
just look at your watch, and every every five six
minutes there's a news story. That's how the logic works.
There like chapters. So then I had to group them
(20:06):
by time period, so say of three thousand BC to
the Birth of Christ one period, and then from one
a D to one thousand a D. You know, we
had to do it like that. And then we also
had to figure out what we could shoot because I
made a film series about African called Wonders of the
(20:29):
African World. I went anywhere I wanted to go, including
tim Buck two and in Molly and the Great Moscot
Jenny in Molly, Um. The problem is tim buc two
dollars dominated by je Hottists, so you're forbidden from going there.
You know, no insurance company will back you. The American
government doesn't want you to go there. I mean you
(20:51):
literally cannot go um and you can't take a film
crew there, so I couldn't film there when we had
to use certain stock kind of footage. So you will
see me this time standing at the Great Mosque, the
Sanka a Mosque and Kimbuctoo, which was the site of
the great university of one of the great universities of
the African continent. So we had to um take into
(21:14):
consideration practical concerns such as that. But over that's why
I took five years. It took four years to planet
research it and planet and then one year to shoot it.
I took a sabbatical from Harvard last year and I
went to twelve countries with film crew and you know,
sometimes we slept in tents, and sometimes we slept in
(21:35):
nice hotels, and sometimes we had to use um what
used to be called old houses and and the others
shall be saying other less fancy methods, and other times
we stayed in five star hotels. Um. We went from
Nigeria and Ghana and Benin to the Soudan and the
(21:58):
Sudan the American government sent the ambassador and a security
team with us, and we camped down in a hotel,
which is all tense, um because you know, you never
knew what was going to happen, and we had seven
protection so it was complicated, and went all over South Africa, Zimbabwe,
(22:19):
Tanzania's and Zabar. It was wonderful really and for me
I've been now I think to African countries. They're over
fifty African countries, so I got a long way to go.
I hope, I hope the series is successful so I
can make more great African civilization because I love Africa
(22:40):
and I want to help and and I want this
story to be told. It's just not fair what happened
to our people. I know how trite that sounds, but
you know, in addition to being enslaved, when finally we
get rid of slavery, then comes colonialism. After eighteen eighty
four when the European nations took a big map of Africa.
(23:00):
They were in Berlin at a conference, and they cut
it up like you carve up a pizza pie and
just passed out slices to each other. And then finally
we get rid of colonialism nineteen fifty six, who Dan
becomes independent nineteen fifty seven, Ghana in nineteen sixties seventeen
African nations become independent, etcetera. But they what they did
(23:22):
was wiped out our history, so that even Africans don't
know the history of their own civilizations in in what
today are their own countries, let alone. Let's say if
you're in Nigerian what was happening in Ghana or what
was happening in South Africa. When as an African American,
as you well understand, when we look at Africa, it
(23:42):
looks like one place. Um. You know, all these little
differences between God and Nigeria and Togo and Guinea are
irrelevant to us. What we want is to know the
history of the African continent. M Why because New World
Black people are the true Pan African people. Our ancestors
came from a wide range of cultures and ethnicities, from
(24:05):
Santa Gambia down through Angola and even over to Madagascar Mozambique.
So our answers didn't come from every place. None of
our answers came from Ethiopia or the Sudan etcetera. But
they came from a wide range of countries and cultures
and created a new black people, a Pan African people.
So we are the first Pan African people. And I
(24:28):
want to tell the Pan African story. That's so excellent,
and you're right it is. Africa's history is so left
out of the history books that I'm so excited that
we're going to get to see it. Uh, And I wonder,
and you know what's what if I may. I just
want to say I didn't get a chance to say
to see less. That's why I'm glad that this program
(24:48):
is sponsored by ten. It's twenty eight days celebrating Black History.
And I want us to think of black history as
encompassing the African American variants in North America, but also
the Afro Latin and Caribbean experiences as well as the
experiences of black people on the African continent. We have
(25:10):
to think of ourselves as part of a worldwide movement
of black people, and their history is our history, and
our histories their history. I have to wonder if, in
the midst of all of this travel uh and filming,
if there was a particular location that really touched you
or moved you in some way, or just it was
your favorite. Oh man, that's like asking you to choose
(25:32):
among your children. But I tell you that when you
go to the Sudan, and many people won't go there
because um it's under Shariah law and as the President
administration is one of the countries it seeks to ban
immigration from is the Sudan. But there is a rich
(25:56):
history of Islamic civilization and culture and pres Lamic civilization
culture going back to the Kingdom of Cush, and that's
the kingdom Cush that you read about in the Bible
is the black trading partner and rival to Egypt. And
they fought with each other, they made love with each other,
they colonized each other, they traded with each other, push
(26:19):
conquered Egypt and seven fifty BC, so that there were
seven pharaohs who were absolutely black. And the archaeologist Charles
Burnet I think in the year two thousand three or
two thousand four unearthed the very statues of these brothers
with clearly African features. I mean, there's no doubt about
(26:39):
you know, people say, well, the Egyptians were more mixed
or they looked like Egyptians today these are like bad
black brothers as they stay at the barbershop. So no
no argument there. And um, they had their own pyramids
and their own continuous civilization going back from at least
three thousand BC up through at a Christian period. Listening
(27:09):
to the story of the logistics for filming Africa's great civilizations,
all I could think of was that it sounded very
intense to try to figure out what they were going
to do and how it was going to work. I'm
particularly excited, and I bet Tracy is too to see.
Great Zimbabwe featured on the show absolutely, Yeah, which we
didn't get to talk about in the interview, but it's
one that I'm really excited about since we did an
episode on it. Yeah, and the you know, I've seen
(27:32):
video footage and lots and lots of photographs of it,
but I am sure this will be incredible. Next up,
we will talk about how history, and particularly African history,
has inspired Dr Gates since he was a kid. But
first we will pause for another word from a sponsor. Okay,
(27:56):
let's hop right back into the last segment of Dr
Gates's interview, in which we're going to talk about his
inspiration and what gives him hope for the future. I
have to wonder what you what you find the most
inspiring about all of this history? What I find about
(28:18):
the first the thing that gives me the rush, even
when you just asked me that question, was that I
was a really good student. And I remember when I
was ten, that was sixty the year the Africa became independent,
and just for whatever reason, nobody could figure it out
in my household because it wasn't exactly like my family
was wearing dashikis and growing afros, you know what I mean.
(28:41):
But I became really interested in in Africa, and I
started searching and of course in our textbooks, and that
there was nothing about Africa except that our ancestors were
savages quote unquote, primitive quote unquote, waiting on Europeans to
rescue them from there. He instate, he the state, and
(29:01):
you know, make them civilized. This is a lie. This
is one of the worst lies ever told in human history.
The second, the third nation to convert to Christianity was
the Empire of Ethiopia. Rome converted first. Jesus is crucified.
Rome becomes the center of Christianity. The second nation to
convert is Armenia. The third nation is Ethiopia. In the
(29:24):
year three fifty a d long before many many places
in Europe, but long before any place except Armenian, Rome
converted to Christianity. The emperor is Zana converted to Christianity.
And when you go to Ethiopia, you realize it's been
a continuous civilization for thousands of years, and they have
(29:45):
castles and and kings and queens and bishops too, And
you know it means as of black saints and black
marries and black Jesus. Is it's beautiful, you know, it's
really moving. But also being in Nubia, the king them
of Kush, which I read about in the Bible, I
had no idea where it was, and knowing that that's
been a continuous civilization from three thousand BC. And they,
(30:10):
the elite, would bury themselves, have themselves buried in pyramids
which are still there in the desert. They developed a
written language. Europeans said that our ancests in Africa didn't
have writing. That's not true. They had their own language
called Merowittic, which no one has even been able to
decipher yet there's still with all our computer technologies, they're
(30:31):
still trying trying to translate m meroitic Um into English
and they can't do it, but they'll crack it one day.
That uh. And also the fact that these African kingdoms
they traded with Europe, They sent delegations to Europe, they
had embassies in Europe. Um, the myth of our ancestors
(30:54):
being cut off was until um Stanley found the Livingstone.
You know, Dr Livingston, I presume we all know that
story is just wrong. Africans were trading across the continent
with each other, and they were trading with the larger world.
You have to see the Sahara Desert, the Nile River,
(31:16):
the Red Sea, Indian Ocean as highways. And our ancestors
were just as curious about what was on the other
side of the sea, or as the song went, when
we were kids, on the other side of the mountain,
as Europeans or Asians were. The king of the Emperor
of Great Zimbabwe in the thirteenth century dined off porcelain
(31:38):
plates made in China. Now, how did those plates get
from trade? And you know, because people traded. They traded.
What's some some astronaut drop him out of this guy.
They traded with the Chinese, they traded with Indians, and
so we have. Africa was a cosmopolitan place from time immemorial.
(32:03):
But Europeans created a fiction of our ancestors as being stupid, ugly, dumb,
savage heathen. You picked the negative adjective and it was
applied to our ancestors. And they did it to justify slavery.
They did it to justify colonialism, to say, look, we're
(32:24):
doing these people's favor. And often you know, casting a
spursion on our people by saying some of bird cannibals,
I mean, really, please come on that. And now our job,
the job of those of us were part of the
Black Studies revolution, And I started Yale sixty nine, which
is the year that, except for San Francisco State would
(32:45):
start in sixty eight, Black studies are born in nine.
And now all these years later, people like me, my
colleagues and are in a position to tell the story
not only to each other, to other scholars, and to
journalists like you, but to students and even to integrate
the curricula from pre k kindergarten, junior high in high school,
(33:08):
because that's how you what we call naturalize the story.
You know, we need the story of our ancestors on
both sides of the Atlantic, in Africa, in the Caribbean,
Latin America, and in North America to be integrated into
the history of civilization, so that are all kids would
know that the first iron technology in the world was
(33:29):
developed by black people in African eight BC. The second
earliest invention of ceramic technology twelve thousand years ago in Africa,
three thousand years before the Middle East, four thousand years
before Europe only China is is older and cotton textile
weaving developed in the Sudan in five thousand BC as
early as it did in India. I remember learning the
(33:53):
history of each of those technologies. Back in the day,
Africa was nowhere in sight man. Nobody even drew putting
Africans on a list of technological innovators. So we have
to tell the truth. And you know, there's a tendency
sometime among our people to do toothings one to exaggerate
what we did, or to leave out the bad stuff,
(34:15):
like the African elites roll in the slave trade. You
can't do that. Have to tell the story with warts
and all, because our ancestors just as complicated, just as
human as any other people. You know, there were good
people and bad people, and some people did great things
and some people did some mean things, and we have
to tell the full story. Um taka Zulu became the
(34:38):
great leader of the Zulu people. Um, well, someone was
on the throne before him. He was illegitimate. Well let's
just say his half brother happened to a bit assassinated
to make room for Takazul. Now, I know all of us,
at one point another one to kill our brothers, but
he did. It makes the story interesting, That makes the
(35:02):
human being much more complicated, more fascinating. And the last question,
and then I will let you go. H We are,
of course in a really tumultuous time. Bigotry is kind
of front and center in the public conversation. So I
have to wonder if there is something from the past
that you draw on to give you hope for the future.
Oh yeah, when um, um, the greatest period of black
(35:25):
freedom before the Civil Rights here, after the passage of
the Well sixty four the passage of the Civil Rights Act,
and sixty five the Voting Rights Act. Historically, before that,
the greatest period was reconstruction, as you know. But reconstruction
only lasted ten years, and in eighteen seventy seven the
Hayes Tilden Compromise ended reconstruction. So I think many of
(35:49):
us feel a little bit like say Frederick Douglas Um
felt when he realized that Jim Crow Dejerre segregation was
being re what was being imposed on the United States
in an attempt to strip away all the rights that
black people had gained from the end of the Civil
War in eighteen sixty five to the end of reconstruction
(36:10):
and near the end of his great, long and noble
and glorious life. A journalist asked Frederick Douglas, what message
would you leave for black people in the future, What
what words of wisdom? You know what? Douglas said, I'm
gonna leave them with three words. Agitate, Agitate, agitate, And
(36:31):
that's what we have to do. I love the fact
that the town halls are erupting all over the country,
the Women's March with all these millions of activists UM
coming out to protest, the challenge to the right of
a woman to control our body, the threats to voting
rights UM, the unlawful deportation of immigrants, the banning of
(36:53):
the sort of Islamophobia that is being generated, which is
just disgusting, you know, and any of us love freedom
and and who love the UM you know, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. We all have to stand and
stand against the enophobias, stand against Islamophobias, stand against discrimination
(37:14):
against our trans um, our trans fellow citizens, and we
have to stand against anti Semitism. We have to stand
against um um any form of discrimination that we cannot
let the rights. You see. I was on the view
yesterday and it occurred to me, I said, you know,
(37:35):
under Barack Obama, we thought that the millennium had come.
We went to sleep, We thought that that nothing could change,
and Barack Obama's administration seemed like a thousand years ago now,
and so we have to organize and know that we're
we're in a battle, and it's another civil rights movement,
and that's where we have to put our minds. I
(38:06):
so deeply love the passion and excitement that Dr Gates
just exudes when he talks about Africa's rich history and
how important it really is to get that history into
the conversation of global history. Yes, for that reason, I
am so so excited about Africa's great civilizations, which, as
we said earlier, if you're listening to this podcast on
the day that we released it, it starts tonight February
(38:28):
nine pm eight Central on PBS. And so so much
thanks to Dr Gates for making the time to talk
to Holly two different times. Yes, I'm very very grateful.
We would have we would have been really stretching to
try to make an episode out of just that first segment.
So yeah, well, and I I love his work so much.
I have relied on it for numerous episodes. If you
(38:50):
look in our show notes, you will find many many
references to things that he has written and talks that
he has given. So thank you, so so much, Dr
Gates for being on our show and for taking the
time talk to Holly. Yeah, it was amazing. So now
we can hop right into listener mail. And it's a
listener mail that's so sweet. I love, love love it.
It's it's one of my current favorites. I know I
(39:12):
say that all the time, but we get a lot
of good stuff. Uh So this one is from our
listener Stacy, and she writes, Dear Holly. When I found
out a fellow teacher was going to Hong Kong, the
first question I asked was are you going to Disney,
explaining that if he went, he had to bring home
a souvenir from Mystic Manner so that I could send
it to a podcaster who I had or involved, explaining
podcast Disney obsession and what exactly Mystic Manner was all
(39:35):
worth it because he came through with this little fellow.
This is Lord Mystics, mischievous monkey Albert, who unleashes the
mayhem of a magic music box and he is very
happy to be living with you. Now, this is the
cutest thing ever. Mystic manner is one of my bucket
list items because it looks so gorgeous and the track
system is super fascinating. Uh, and it's just luscious and
it has a Danny Elfman soundtrack, So I super want
(39:57):
to go get on that ride. But in the mean time,
I have this adorable little Albert. But it is so sweet.
It is incredibly cute. It's painfully cute. So I will
post a picture of that on our social as well.
She goes on, thank you for countless hours of intelligent
and thoughtful content. Please let Tracy know that if the
perfect thing ever presents itself, I will gladly send it
along to her as well. Until then, you both have
(40:18):
my gratitude for being the amazing, brilliant, brilliant friends I
keep tucked in my pocket while walking the dog, doing
the dishes, waiting in lines, and other mundane life tasks.
Your company enriches my days and also makes me look
like a super smarty pants in the teacher's lounge when
I pull out obscure info from past episodes. Stacy, and
thank you so much. This is so sweet and so thoughtful,
and I'm so touched that gift traveled halfway around the
(40:40):
world just to get to me because of your mock
nations and maneuvering. That was incredibly thoughtful and sweet and
I love it. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so via email at History podcast at how stu
works dot com. You can also reach us across the
spectrum of social media as missed in History, so that's
on Twitter, as at missed in History, Facebook dot com,
(41:02):
slash missed in History, missed in History, dot tumbler dot com,
pinterest dot com slash missed in History, and Instagram at
missed in History. If you would like to research a
little bit of your own interests, you can go to
our parents site, which is how Stuff Works. Type in
almost anything in the search bar and you're going to
come up with so much content you will be busy
and entertained for a long time. You can visit me
(41:24):
and Tracy at missed in history dot com, where you
can find episodes along with show notes of all of
the episodes we've worked on together. And we're making a
little change right now where we used to publish show
notes and episodes separately. Now they're going to be merged
into one page. Just f y I. If you go
looking uh and you can also find a back catalog
of every episode of the show that has ever existed
(41:45):
in any of the previous host incarnations, from the beginning
all the way to present day. So we encourage you
please come and visit us at missed in history dot
com and our parents site, how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And today
on the podcast, we have an interview with Dr Henry
Lewis Gates Jr. Dr Gates is the director of the
(00:23):
Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
He's a prolific content creator across multiple disciplines, including but
not limited to filmmaking, journalism, in literary scholarship. This is
like the most paired down version of his CV you
could possibly have. And normally we have often said like,
we don't usually do specific program programming for Black History
(00:45):
Months because we try to make Black History happen year round,
so all the year. Because people had reached out to
us and they were very interested in doing a Black
History Month related discussion, uh, and since it's the last
podcast of Black History Months, we figured why not? This
would be fantastic because he is a great interview. Yes
that as soon as we got the email. The original
(01:06):
time was the time that I was going to be
physically on an airplane, and I emailed Holly immediately and
and said, hey, I want us to do this, but
I personally cannot do it. I said, I will do it,
like it was some big burden to me, Like I
was so excited too. Yeah, we're both very obviously, we're
still very excited. So his work has won so many awards,
(01:30):
including an Emmy for PBS series The African Americans, Many
Rivers to Cross in he was awarded the National Humanities Medal,
making him the first African American recipient of that honor.
He was actually just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
last year. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He I mean,
his contributions to UH history, scholarship in African American history
(01:55):
in particular and African history cannot be oversold. And he
is currently working on a whole lot of projects. He's
in the middle of filming the fourth season of Finding
Your Roots for PBS, which is a series that explores
the genealogy and family histories of famous guests like people
that are influencers in society, and debuting tonight if you're
(02:16):
listening to this on the day we release it, is
his new series Africa's Great Civilizations, which I am incredibly,
incredibly excited about because Dr Gates visits some amazing locations
while exploring two hundred thousand years of history. I'm I
have like rabies level excitement for this, and he too well.
(02:38):
And that's one of the things that was so exciting
when we got the original email about all of this
was that that is uh an area of history that
it can be hard to research from here because the
resources available to us are kind of limited. So being
able to go directly to the source super exciting. Yeah,
and he's also promoting a T and TA twe eight
(03:00):
Days a Celebration of Black History, which is a project
that features all kinds of cool interactive content that celebrates
black history pioneers past in present, and shares the view
that we always talk about on the show that black
history doesn't need to be confined to one month of
the year. It can be celebrated year round. So for
more information on that project, which also includes cool sweep
stakes that they are running as part of that where
(03:22):
you can win a trip to the National Museum of
African American History and Culture, which sounds amazing. So you
can get more info on all of that at a
t T dot com slash twenty eight days If you
want to watch some of those really amazing videos and
take in all of the seriously wide breath content that
they have to offer there. Dr Gates is so good
(03:45):
at bringing history to life. So we're going to wrap
up this introduction of him and jump right into the interview.
You are really focused on this wonderful, full spectrum approach
to sharing Black history by both looking at the past
(04:08):
and at the future while still staying engaged in the present.
And I wonder what you think is the most important
thing that we can do as a society and as
people that are interested in history to make sure that
none of us forget the past as we're making the
big decisions that shape the future. That's a great question.
I think that's the place in America traditionally where we
(04:28):
become citizens. The place the institution most responsible for shaping
citizenship is our schools. When I went to school, I
don't know about your generation, but we had to learn
my country ticity. You know, America, the beautiful I pledged.
It leads it to the flag. And the teacher didn't
say today is citizenship Day, and I'm going to teach
(04:50):
you how to be a citizen. They just did it.
They did it every day invisibly oustmotically. It was like
the air that you breathe, and so why what's that?
Of been? Two? We need to integrate the content of
the contributions of black women and black men, both in
this country on the African continent first and then throughout
the diaspora, into the curriculum, into every subject where it's relevant,
(05:14):
so that we're not just teaching it or exclaiming it
in this wonderful month of February of the Black History Month. UM,
it needs to be there every day. Every day has
got to be Black History Month. It's got to be
part of the story that every person who sits in
the classroom gets about the subject that they're studying. What
were the black contributions, What are the contributions of gay people,
(05:36):
what are the contributions of women, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So
I see my job as providing the research and then
to translating the research that I do and my peers
fellow scholars do for a broader audience through the wonderful
venue or outlet of of PBS and and and other
(05:58):
journalistic organs like that. UM. I want to be able
to tell the story to other scholars in complex ways,
but then to break it down, make it plain, as
Malcolm would say, um, and try to make it compelling.
And that's what I'm trying to do with the new
six hour series African's Great Civilizations, which I'm so excited about.
And I'm going to ask you about that in just
(06:19):
a minute, but first I wanted to ask you a
little bit about the Finding Your Roots series that you've
worked on to the last several years. Um, okay, I
know that of course in every situation, the participants that
you are helping discover their past are often met with
moments of surprise, but I have to wonder if there
have been any moments of discovery that really caught you
(06:39):
off guard along the way. Yes, it's a great question.
We were filming season four Finding your Roots now. Um,
I'm very very excited about that, and um, I think
in one of the biggest surprises was from the hip
hop star are l O cool j Um, who is
Todd Smith, who's a very old friend of mine, and
(07:01):
Todd was very is very close, well was very close.
I'm sorry, because his grandparents were dead to his grandparents
who took his grandparents took Todd and his mother in
after Todd's parents split up, and he you know, even
in um my mom will knock you out, you know,
his first rap video, his grandmother comes down the stairs
(07:22):
at the end and says, Todd, take the garbage out.
You know, it's really funny. He's down in the basement.
But and when it turns out that lady was not
his biological grandmother, the people who raised him in whom
he loved so much and who nurtured him so deeply
and profoundly, were not his biological grandparents. His mother, it
(07:43):
turns up, was adopted and Todd did not know this,
and neither did his mother, and I had to call
him tell him, um yeah, And we found out through
DNA and then you ready for this. We found his
biological grandmother, an eighty nine year old lady who was
(08:04):
living in a nursing home, and we tracked her down
and we didn't film this because it's very private, and
we arranged for Todd's local, Jay's mother and l l
to meet um Ella's mother to meet her mother. She
had had a baby in I believe, and put her
up for adoption, and they we ranged the family and
now they're really close and well, that's a heavy that's
(08:26):
a heavy root story. I'm gonna tell you that. And
I had to call him. He goes, what what are
you talking about? You know it was he had no idea,
no inkling, no inclination, and I had to be the
one to tell him, and he goes, are you sure?
Are you sure? It's very upset. And now, of course
he's very happy that that had happened, and he one
(08:49):
of the things we learned when the morals of the
story is that families, you can have a so she
constructed family, and you can have a biological family. And
he so now he's busy just covering his biological grandmother.
And thank god, um, this happened before it was too late.
And I never anticipated this kind of thing could possibly
(09:10):
happen through finding your roots, but it did. Yeah, I
can't brother say on the street, DNA lie. I can't
imagine what it must be like for his biological grandmother
to be like, oh, by the way, you are l
cool grandmother, no man, And there he's We had dinner
about two weeks ago in l A and I met
(09:33):
his daughters and the he sell me some pictures of
the family reunion and it's amazing. And then you can
see the family resemblance. And and remember I said that
Todd was boxing in the basement. His biological grandfather was
a light heavyweight champion of the world. He was a
famous boxer and then became a boxing trainer. Go figure,
you know. And he had no idea, none, zero. That
(09:57):
is a wild story. Uh, and then wild story. We'll
mention your next big project, which I am so excited about,
which is Africa's Great Civilizations that is about to premiere
on PBS. And similarly, I have to wonder what the
most memorable or surprising discoveries were that you made while
making that series, because it is a lot of content.
(10:19):
It's a lot of content. It's two hundred thousand years
of African history. So we start with mitochondrial Eve, who
is our common great great great great grandmother. For all
human beings. All human beings, whether they're black, yellow, red, white, brown,
all descend from African people in the African continent. This
is an indisputable fact. Fifty eight thousand years ago, a
(10:45):
handful of anatomically modern human ancestors walked out of Africa.
So everybody is ultimately descended from an African. We're all Africans,
and I'll tell you three amazing things. Um one the
third country in the world to convert to Christianity. The
(11:06):
first was Rome, the second one was Armenian. The third
Ethiopia in three fifty a d. Before Ireland, England in
any of those places, and some of the players didn't
even exist. The Ethiopians became the king Isana became a
Christian in three fifty a d. Second amazing fact, the
richest man in the history of the world was the
(11:27):
Emperor of Moli. His name was Mansa m A n
s A Musa m U s A. He was the
Emperor of Moli, and in thirteen twenty four. He was
so rich because they had one of the world's great
sources of gold. We don't realize that most of the
gold of Europe between one thousand a d and d
came from West Africa. The Sera Desert wasn't a very
(11:50):
it was a highway, a trading highway back and forth
between across the Sahara, across the Mediterranean, up the Red Sea,
up the Nile, down the Nile. And so he had
all their gold and he made a pilgrimage in Mecca
because he's a Muslim. He did the Hajj, as it's called,
and he had so much gold when he passed through
(12:11):
Cairo it devalued. He was a given gold away and
at the value the gold market for years and years
and years. He could go to networth dot com and
check it out as according to networth dot com at
least the last time I looked. And the third thing
is every woman named Candice. Do you have any friends
named Candice? Every woman named Candice got their name. Their
(12:35):
name derives from the Nubian or Meroittic name for queen,
which is Candycki k a and d a k e.
The queen of Merriway, which was the successor kingdom to
Cushion Nubia. There continuous um kingdoms was called the Candycki
(12:55):
and Uh. In the Book of Acts in the New Testament,
Philip is walking along the road and he runs into
this um the the Candice's treasurer, who was a eunuch,
and it's called her the Queen of Ethiopia. But Ethiopia
was just the name at that time used for the
land of black people. It's just the name used for Africa.
(13:16):
But we happen to know that this man was the
treasurer for a queen called Amani Renus and Amanti Renus
in twenty BC. She dressed like a man, had one eye,
and she sister was bad. He defeated the Romans. She
defeated the Romans. Roman taken over Egypt. She took him
on in battle and defeated him. Took a statue of
(13:39):
Augustus Caesar back to her kingdom, buried in front of
her throne, so everybody came to see there, had to
see him, see her, had to step on his head.
That is one of the great queens in in history.
The candicki Amani Renus, and that is the source of
the name of every woman named Candice, whether they're black, white, red, yellow,
(14:01):
or whatever. That is your amazing Black history facts for today.
We know because we do a history podcast twice a
week that it can be really, really tricky sometimes to
get good primary source material for African history. So I'm
wondering how you structured your research to ensure that you
(14:22):
were truly capturing that African perspective. Well, we I end
um over a dozen fifteen academics, professors who are experts
of various phases of African history. No one person could
master African history because African history. Who couldn't master fifty
thou years of history or two d years? And Africa
(14:45):
is the most genetically diverse continent in the world, in
the second most linguistically diverse, So you need different kinds
of specialists. And even fifteen is not enough, but that,
you know, is the best that we could do, plus
a lot a lot more academics I interviewed, as you
will see in the film. And so what my job
is is to translate into film the great scholarly work
(15:08):
done by range of of African nous professors of African studies, black, white, male, female,
African and African American, you know whatever, whoever was doing
the best work in the field, and I put him
on camera, gave him full credit, and that's what we've done.
And then John Thornton and Lynda Haywood, who are very
prominent in the film, and they're my colleagues at BEU
(15:30):
across the river here in Massachusetts. UM, the two of them,
their husband and wife, and I are writing a companion
book to the series. UM. But the probably one of
the best books available for anyone listening is by Professor
Professor Christopher Ritt E h R E. T. And it's
(15:51):
called UM African Civilizations and it's in paperback. He's got
a new addition out now, I think at the University
of Virginia, and it's very readable and it tells the
it's called The Civilizations of Africa, A History to eight
hundred and he just publish a new edition. We will
(16:19):
include the information on Christopher Eyrett's book in our show notes,
so you will have that ready in handy if you
want to follow up on Dr Gates's advice to look
at it. And I will confess that, as we alluded
to a little earlier, I am incredibly envious of Dr
gates team of fifteen scholars of African history. Yeah. When
he was talking about the show and I asked how
they ensured that they got, you know, this, this true
(16:42):
depth of information in the African experience, he was like, well,
I have all of these people, and I was like, oh,
may we have all those people? Um, And we actually
had to stop the interview there where we just broke
because Dr Gates had to run and catch a flight.
But very fortunately he and his team we're kind enough
to work out a second session for us to keep chatting.
(17:03):
So we're going to get to that, but first we're
going to pause for a word from one of our
fantastic sponsors. Next up, Dr Gates shares stories of the
amazing travels that were part of the production of Africa's
Great civilizations and how the team selected the featured location.
(17:30):
So my next question is, uh, when you have this
amazing wealth of opportunity and potential topics to cover, how
did you select the locations that ended up being featured
on the show. Oh, that's a great question. Well, remember
I had a board of fifteen professors from all over Africans, Americans, Europeans,
(17:57):
people who were the most outstanding, some of the most
outstanding people in their field, each one excellent, representing different
time periods in different regions. Africa is so big, They're
over fifty countries and we're talking about two hundred thousand
years of African history. The early history courses. Prehistory is
based on genetics and archaeology from the um a cent
(18:20):
of human beings and their outmigration from the African continent
and fifty thousand years ago, and then genetically from mitochondrial
eve our common female ancestor two hundred thousand years ago.
We're all descended from this woman, and we're all descended
from those um small group of Africans who left the
continent at some fifty and eighty thousand years ago. But
(18:42):
when we then, when we get to Egypt, you know,
we pick it up about three thousand BC b C.
And that's five thousand years of of written history. It's
a long, long um time period to cover. So what
I did. I wrote to all these people and a
(19:02):
lot of other people, and I said, give me a
wish list. If we had all the time in the world,
what would be the most important stories that you would
think that would be essential to knowing the full history
of Africa. And I'm not talking about just subsidiary in Africa.
I'm not talking about just West Africa, South Africa. I'm
(19:24):
talking about Africa, because as you know, there was a
long tradition of acting like Egypt was some part of Europe.
I didn't have anything to do with black people. We know,
that's a lot um so and then I got lists,
oh my god, list of hundreds of hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of stories. But you know, you can only
(19:45):
tell about ten to twelve stories in a one hour
TV show. In fact, the next time you watch a documentary,
just look at your watch, and every every five six
minutes there's a news story. That's how the logic works.
There like chapters. So then I had to group them
(20:06):
by time period, so say of three thousand BC to
the Birth of Christ one period, and then from one
a D to one thousand a D. You know, we
had to do it like that. And then we also
had to figure out what we could shoot because I
made a film series about African called Wonders of the
(20:29):
African World. I went anywhere I wanted to go, including
tim Buck two and in Molly and the Great Moscot
Jenny in Molly, Um. The problem is tim buc two
dollars dominated by je Hottists, so you're forbidden from going there.
You know, no insurance company will back you. The American
government doesn't want you to go there. I mean you
(20:51):
literally cannot go um and you can't take a film
crew there, so I couldn't film there when we had
to use certain stock kind of footage. So you will
see me this time standing at the Great Mosque, the
Sanka a Mosque and Kimbuctoo, which was the site of
the great university of one of the great universities of
the African continent. So we had to um take into
(21:14):
consideration practical concerns such as that. But over that's why
I took five years. It took four years to planet
research it and planet and then one year to shoot it.
I took a sabbatical from Harvard last year and I
went to twelve countries with film crew and you know,
sometimes we slept in tents, and sometimes we slept in
(21:35):
nice hotels, and sometimes we had to use um what
used to be called old houses and and the others
shall be saying other less fancy methods, and other times
we stayed in five star hotels. Um. We went from
Nigeria and Ghana and Benin to the Soudan and the
(21:58):
Sudan the American government sent the ambassador and a security
team with us, and we camped down in a hotel,
which is all tense, um because you know, you never
knew what was going to happen, and we had seven
protection so it was complicated, and went all over South Africa, Zimbabwe,
(22:19):
Tanzania's and Zabar. It was wonderful really and for me
I've been now I think to African countries. They're over
fifty African countries, so I got a long way to go.
I hope, I hope the series is successful so I
can make more great African civilization because I love Africa
(22:40):
and I want to help and and I want this
story to be told. It's just not fair what happened
to our people. I know how trite that sounds, but
you know, in addition to being enslaved, when finally we
get rid of slavery, then comes colonialism. After eighteen eighty
four when the European nations took a big map of Africa.
(23:00):
They were in Berlin at a conference, and they cut
it up like you carve up a pizza pie and
just passed out slices to each other. And then finally
we get rid of colonialism nineteen fifty six, who Dan
becomes independent nineteen fifty seven, Ghana in nineteen sixties seventeen
African nations become independent, etcetera. But they what they did
(23:22):
was wiped out our history, so that even Africans don't
know the history of their own civilizations in in what
today are their own countries, let alone. Let's say if
you're in Nigerian what was happening in Ghana or what
was happening in South Africa. When as an African American,
as you well understand, when we look at Africa, it
(23:42):
looks like one place. Um. You know, all these little
differences between God and Nigeria and Togo and Guinea are
irrelevant to us. What we want is to know the
history of the African continent. M Why because New World
Black people are the true Pan African people. Our ancestors
came from a wide range of cultures and ethnicities, from
(24:05):
Santa Gambia down through Angola and even over to Madagascar Mozambique.
So our answers didn't come from every place. None of
our answers came from Ethiopia or the Sudan etcetera. But
they came from a wide range of countries and cultures
and created a new black people, a Pan African people.
So we are the first Pan African people. And I
(24:28):
want to tell the Pan African story. That's so excellent,
and you're right it is. Africa's history is so left
out of the history books that I'm so excited that
we're going to get to see it. Uh, And I wonder,
and you know what's what if I may. I just
want to say I didn't get a chance to say
to see less. That's why I'm glad that this program
(24:48):
is sponsored by ten. It's twenty eight days celebrating Black History.
And I want us to think of black history as
encompassing the African American variants in North America, but also
the Afro Latin and Caribbean experiences as well as the
experiences of black people on the African continent. We have
(25:10):
to think of ourselves as part of a worldwide movement
of black people, and their history is our history, and
our histories their history. I have to wonder if, in
the midst of all of this travel uh and filming,
if there was a particular location that really touched you
or moved you in some way, or just it was
your favorite. Oh man, that's like asking you to choose
(25:32):
among your children. But I tell you that when you
go to the Sudan, and many people won't go there
because um it's under Shariah law and as the President
administration is one of the countries it seeks to ban
immigration from is the Sudan. But there is a rich
(25:56):
history of Islamic civilization and culture and pres Lamic civilization
culture going back to the Kingdom of Cush, and that's
the kingdom Cush that you read about in the Bible
is the black trading partner and rival to Egypt. And
they fought with each other, they made love with each other,
they colonized each other, they traded with each other, push
(26:19):
conquered Egypt and seven fifty BC, so that there were
seven pharaohs who were absolutely black. And the archaeologist Charles
Burnet I think in the year two thousand three or
two thousand four unearthed the very statues of these brothers
with clearly African features. I mean, there's no doubt about
(26:39):
you know, people say, well, the Egyptians were more mixed
or they looked like Egyptians today these are like bad
black brothers as they stay at the barbershop. So no
no argument there. And um, they had their own pyramids
and their own continuous civilization going back from at least
three thousand BC up through at a Christian period. Listening
(27:09):
to the story of the logistics for filming Africa's great civilizations,
all I could think of was that it sounded very
intense to try to figure out what they were going
to do and how it was going to work. I'm
particularly excited, and I bet Tracy is too to see.
Great Zimbabwe featured on the show absolutely, Yeah, which we
didn't get to talk about in the interview, but it's
one that I'm really excited about since we did an
episode on it. Yeah, and the you know, I've seen
(27:32):
video footage and lots and lots of photographs of it,
but I am sure this will be incredible. Next up,
we will talk about how history, and particularly African history,
has inspired Dr Gates since he was a kid. But
first we will pause for another word from a sponsor. Okay,
(27:56):
let's hop right back into the last segment of Dr
Gates's interview, in which we're going to talk about his
inspiration and what gives him hope for the future. I
have to wonder what you what you find the most
inspiring about all of this history? What I find about
(28:18):
the first the thing that gives me the rush, even
when you just asked me that question, was that I
was a really good student. And I remember when I
was ten, that was sixty the year the Africa became independent,
and just for whatever reason, nobody could figure it out
in my household because it wasn't exactly like my family
was wearing dashikis and growing afros, you know what I mean.
(28:41):
But I became really interested in in Africa, and I
started searching and of course in our textbooks, and that
there was nothing about Africa except that our ancestors were
savages quote unquote, primitive quote unquote, waiting on Europeans to
rescue them from there. He instate, he the state, and
(29:01):
you know, make them civilized. This is a lie. This
is one of the worst lies ever told in human history.
The second, the third nation to convert to Christianity was
the Empire of Ethiopia. Rome converted first. Jesus is crucified.
Rome becomes the center of Christianity. The second nation to
convert is Armenia. The third nation is Ethiopia. In the
(29:24):
year three fifty a d long before many many places
in Europe, but long before any place except Armenian, Rome
converted to Christianity. The emperor is Zana converted to Christianity.
And when you go to Ethiopia, you realize it's been
a continuous civilization for thousands of years, and they have
(29:45):
castles and and kings and queens and bishops too, And
you know it means as of black saints and black
marries and black Jesus. Is it's beautiful, you know, it's
really moving. But also being in Nubia, the king them
of Kush, which I read about in the Bible, I
had no idea where it was, and knowing that that's
been a continuous civilization from three thousand BC. And they,
(30:10):
the elite, would bury themselves, have themselves buried in pyramids
which are still there in the desert. They developed a
written language. Europeans said that our ancests in Africa didn't
have writing. That's not true. They had their own language
called Merowittic, which no one has even been able to
decipher yet there's still with all our computer technologies, they're
(30:31):
still trying trying to translate m meroitic Um into English
and they can't do it, but they'll crack it one day.
That uh. And also the fact that these African kingdoms
they traded with Europe, They sent delegations to Europe, they
had embassies in Europe. Um, the myth of our ancestors
(30:54):
being cut off was until um Stanley found the Livingstone.
You know, Dr Livingston, I presume we all know that
story is just wrong. Africans were trading across the continent
with each other, and they were trading with the larger world.
You have to see the Sahara Desert, the Nile River,
(31:16):
the Red Sea, Indian Ocean as highways. And our ancestors
were just as curious about what was on the other
side of the sea, or as the song went, when
we were kids, on the other side of the mountain,
as Europeans or Asians were. The king of the Emperor
of Great Zimbabwe in the thirteenth century dined off porcelain
(31:38):
plates made in China. Now, how did those plates get
from trade? And you know, because people traded. They traded.
What's some some astronaut drop him out of this guy.
They traded with the Chinese, they traded with Indians, and
so we have. Africa was a cosmopolitan place from time immemorial.
(32:03):
But Europeans created a fiction of our ancestors as being stupid, ugly, dumb,
savage heathen. You picked the negative adjective and it was
applied to our ancestors. And they did it to justify slavery.
They did it to justify colonialism, to say, look, we're
(32:24):
doing these people's favor. And often you know, casting a
spursion on our people by saying some of bird cannibals,
I mean, really, please come on that. And now our job,
the job of those of us were part of the
Black Studies revolution, And I started Yale sixty nine, which
is the year that, except for San Francisco State would
(32:45):
start in sixty eight, Black studies are born in nine.
And now all these years later, people like me, my
colleagues and are in a position to tell the story
not only to each other, to other scholars, and to
journalists like you, but to students and even to integrate
the curricula from pre k kindergarten, junior high in high school,
(33:08):
because that's how you what we call naturalize the story.
You know, we need the story of our ancestors on
both sides of the Atlantic, in Africa, in the Caribbean,
Latin America, and in North America to be integrated into
the history of civilization, so that are all kids would
know that the first iron technology in the world was
(33:29):
developed by black people in African eight BC. The second
earliest invention of ceramic technology twelve thousand years ago in Africa,
three thousand years before the Middle East, four thousand years
before Europe only China is is older and cotton textile
weaving developed in the Sudan in five thousand BC as
early as it did in India. I remember learning the
(33:53):
history of each of those technologies. Back in the day,
Africa was nowhere in sight man. Nobody even drew putting
Africans on a list of technological innovators. So we have
to tell the truth. And you know, there's a tendency
sometime among our people to do toothings one to exaggerate
what we did, or to leave out the bad stuff,
(34:15):
like the African elites roll in the slave trade. You
can't do that. Have to tell the story with warts
and all, because our ancestors just as complicated, just as
human as any other people. You know, there were good
people and bad people, and some people did great things
and some people did some mean things, and we have
to tell the full story. Um taka Zulu became the
(34:38):
great leader of the Zulu people. Um, well, someone was
on the throne before him. He was illegitimate. Well let's
just say his half brother happened to a bit assassinated
to make room for Takazul. Now, I know all of us,
at one point another one to kill our brothers, but
he did. It makes the story interesting, That makes the
(35:02):
human being much more complicated, more fascinating. And the last question,
and then I will let you go. H We are,
of course in a really tumultuous time. Bigotry is kind
of front and center in the public conversation. So I
have to wonder if there is something from the past
that you draw on to give you hope for the future.
Oh yeah, when um, um, the greatest period of black
(35:25):
freedom before the Civil Rights here, after the passage of
the Well sixty four the passage of the Civil Rights Act,
and sixty five the Voting Rights Act. Historically, before that,
the greatest period was reconstruction, as you know. But reconstruction
only lasted ten years, and in eighteen seventy seven the
Hayes Tilden Compromise ended reconstruction. So I think many of
(35:49):
us feel a little bit like say Frederick Douglas Um
felt when he realized that Jim Crow Dejerre segregation was
being re what was being imposed on the United States
in an attempt to strip away all the rights that
black people had gained from the end of the Civil
War in eighteen sixty five to the end of reconstruction
(36:10):
and near the end of his great, long and noble
and glorious life. A journalist asked Frederick Douglas, what message
would you leave for black people in the future, What
what words of wisdom? You know what? Douglas said, I'm
gonna leave them with three words. Agitate, Agitate, agitate, And
(36:31):
that's what we have to do. I love the fact
that the town halls are erupting all over the country,
the Women's March with all these millions of activists UM
coming out to protest, the challenge to the right of
a woman to control our body, the threats to voting
rights UM, the unlawful deportation of immigrants, the banning of
(36:53):
the sort of Islamophobia that is being generated, which is
just disgusting, you know, and any of us love freedom
and and who love the UM you know, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. We all have to stand and
stand against the enophobias, stand against Islamophobias, stand against discrimination
(37:14):
against our trans um, our trans fellow citizens, and we
have to stand against anti Semitism. We have to stand
against um um any form of discrimination that we cannot
let the rights. You see. I was on the view
yesterday and it occurred to me, I said, you know,
(37:35):
under Barack Obama, we thought that the millennium had come.
We went to sleep, We thought that that nothing could change,
and Barack Obama's administration seemed like a thousand years ago now,
and so we have to organize and know that we're
we're in a battle, and it's another civil rights movement,
and that's where we have to put our minds. I
(38:06):
so deeply love the passion and excitement that Dr Gates
just exudes when he talks about Africa's rich history and
how important it really is to get that history into
the conversation of global history. Yes, for that reason, I
am so so excited about Africa's great civilizations, which, as
we said earlier, if you're listening to this podcast on
the day that we released it, it starts tonight February
(38:28):
nine pm eight Central on PBS. And so so much
thanks to Dr Gates for making the time to talk
to Holly two different times. Yes, I'm very very grateful.
We would have we would have been really stretching to
try to make an episode out of just that first segment.
So yeah, well, and I I love his work so much.
I have relied on it for numerous episodes. If you
(38:50):
look in our show notes, you will find many many
references to things that he has written and talks that
he has given. So thank you, so so much, Dr
Gates for being on our show and for taking the
time talk to Holly. Yeah, it was amazing. So now
we can hop right into listener mail. And it's a
listener mail that's so sweet. I love, love love it.
It's it's one of my current favorites. I know I
(39:12):
say that all the time, but we get a lot
of good stuff. Uh So this one is from our
listener Stacy, and she writes, Dear Holly. When I found
out a fellow teacher was going to Hong Kong, the
first question I asked was are you going to Disney,
explaining that if he went, he had to bring home
a souvenir from Mystic Manner so that I could send
it to a podcaster who I had or involved, explaining
podcast Disney obsession and what exactly Mystic Manner was all
(39:35):
worth it because he came through with this little fellow.
This is Lord Mystics, mischievous monkey Albert, who unleashes the
mayhem of a magic music box and he is very
happy to be living with you. Now, this is the
cutest thing ever. Mystic manner is one of my bucket
list items because it looks so gorgeous and the track
system is super fascinating. Uh, and it's just luscious and
it has a Danny Elfman soundtrack, So I super want
(39:57):
to go get on that ride. But in the mean time,
I have this adorable little Albert. But it is so sweet.
It is incredibly cute. It's painfully cute. So I will
post a picture of that on our social as well.
She goes on, thank you for countless hours of intelligent
and thoughtful content. Please let Tracy know that if the
perfect thing ever presents itself, I will gladly send it
along to her as well. Until then, you both have
(40:18):
my gratitude for being the amazing, brilliant, brilliant friends I
keep tucked in my pocket while walking the dog, doing
the dishes, waiting in lines, and other mundane life tasks.
Your company enriches my days and also makes me look
like a super smarty pants in the teacher's lounge when
I pull out obscure info from past episodes. Stacy, and
thank you so much. This is so sweet and so thoughtful,
and I'm so touched that gift traveled halfway around the
(40:40):
world just to get to me because of your mock
nations and maneuvering. That was incredibly thoughtful and sweet and
I love it. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so via email at History podcast at how stu
works dot com. You can also reach us across the
spectrum of social media as missed in History, so that's
on Twitter, as at missed in History, Facebook dot com,
(41:02):
slash missed in History, missed in History, dot tumbler dot com,
pinterest dot com slash missed in History, and Instagram at
missed in History. If you would like to research a
little bit of your own interests, you can go to
our parents site, which is how Stuff Works. Type in
almost anything in the search bar and you're going to
come up with so much content you will be busy
and entertained for a long time. You can visit me
(41:24):
and Tracy at missed in history dot com, where you
can find episodes along with show notes of all of
the episodes we've worked on together. And we're making a
little change right now where we used to publish show
notes and episodes separately. Now they're going to be merged
into one page. Just f y I. If you go
looking uh and you can also find a back catalog
of every episode of the show that has ever existed
(41:45):
in any of the previous host incarnations, from the beginning
all the way to present day. So we encourage you
please come and visit us at missed in history dot
com and our parents site, how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com.
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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