Gates, Henry Louis (1950– )

US academic and social activist. A scholar of African-American studies, he has republished such forgotten works as Our Nig (1859) by Harriet E Wilson (c.1828–c.1863), the earliest known novel by a black American. He published The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988; American Book Award).

Gates was born in Keyser, West Virginia. He was the first black American to get a PhD from Cambridge University, England, for a thesis on attitudes to black American and African culture in the 18th century. He received the MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ award for his work on literary theory in 1981. In 1991 he was made professor of humanities and chair of the department of Afro-American studies at Harvard University. He is a proponent of increasing the number of black-studies courses in colleges in the USA in order to raise public awareness of the cultural achievements of black Americans. Other publications include Colored People: A Memoir (1994).