But Henry Louis Gates Jr. took a slightly different path.
He did it by being charming.
A Conversation With Henry Louis Gates Jr. And at 73, hes creating more popular work than ever.
A month later, PBS is airingGospel, Gates four-hour documentary on that quintessentially American worship music.
The phone company was a small office with six operators.
They loved my father.
We never had a phone bill.
And because he had two jobs, we were the most prosperous Black family in Piedmont, West Virginia.
After Christmas we were asked to bring in our favorite new toy to school.
It took me years to realize that that was patently unfair.
When I was 13, I started buying Christmas presents for about 12 kids in the neighborhood.
It was a practice motivated by a sense of privilege and guilt.
I have replicated my fathers life, but doubled.
I have probably four jobs.
I have a seven-day work week.
And I love it.
A house that reads
The paper mill, which employed 2,500 people, let out at 3:30.
So the mill whistle would blow then, and school let out at the same time.
We would have dinner at 4 oclock.
Then my dad would go to his second job at 5 oclock and get home at 7:30.
Every evening he would read the paper and do the crossword puzzle.
He read more books in his life than Ill ever read in mine.
Flirting with God
My mother went through a very severemenopause.
One Sunday when I was 12 years old, they were taking Mom into the hospital.
And my mother told me she was going to die.
I went up to my bedroom.
On Wednesday, she came back from the hospital.
That following Saturday, I hitchhiked 5 miles away to the county seat, Keyser, West Virginia.
I walked into the service at the Black Methodist church.
The average age was, like, 95.
Theres a call to the altar if you want to give your life to Christ.
So I stood up and everybody in the church got around me.
They ask you five questions and you say I do.
It was one of the most moving things that ever happened.
