153 Quotes by Henry Louis Gates

No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The coast of Acapulco was a black city in the 1870s. And the Veracruz Coast on the gulf of Mexico and the Costa Chica, south of Acapulco are traditional black lands.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience,

Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth - more than any other American President.

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history.

We can't all work in the inner city. And, I don't even think that it is incumbent upon an African-American intellectual to be concerned in their work with problems of race and class. It's just one of the things, that we here at the DuBois Institute, are concerned about.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in history to imagine that he could become president, who was able to make other Americans believe it as well. Other than that, he is a centrist, just like I try to be. He's been bridging divisions his whole life.

Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology.