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Famed African American Harvard professor now seeks his Irish roots

Henry Gates was involved in famous arrest case with Boston cop James Crowley

CATHY HAYES,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 7:36 AM

Updated Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 12:06 PM

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Professor Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates Jr

Photo by AP

Famed Harvard University Professor Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates Jr. got a major surprise when he started researching his own ancestry - in his paternal line he discovered he's as Irish as Irish can be.

Now Gates has set about solving another mystery - just who exactly is his great-great grandfather? It is likely he was a slave owner of Irish heritage.

Gates made world headlines in 2009 when he accused an Irish American cop James Crowley of racism in 2009 after Crowley arrested him for trying to break into his own apartment. Eventually President Obama became involved and met the two men for a famous ‘beer summit’ where they became friends.

The Gates family history can be traced back to Jane Gates, a slave who was born in 1819 and had five children, taking the name and identity of their father with her to the grave.
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Scotch-Irish will no longer be included in official US census figures- POLL

How I finally found my long lost Irish ancestors
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'All Jane told the kids was that they all had the same father,' Gates said in a report in the Boston Herald. 'I have a picture of Jane Gates and her sons and they all look white, including my great-grandfather, Edward Gates, who was born December 1857 in Maryland. I’m looking to find my great-great-grandfather and I hope to find him using DNA analysis.'

After conducting his own research, Gates now believes that an Irish descendant of Niall of Nine Hostages fathered all five of Jane’s children.

"Hoping to help solve this troubling mystery. Family legend had it that the father of Jane’s children was a slave owner outside of Cumberland, Maryland, named Samuel Brady. I had my y-DNA tested. The results astonished everyone, including me: my y-DNA haplotype is R1b1b2ala2f2, also known as 'the Ui Neil Haplotype.' At least 8 percent of all the men in Ireland share this same haplotype, and all of us descend from one man, a king named Niall of the Nine Hostages, who lived in Ireland around 500 A.D."

The y-DNA was passed down to Gates' grandfather Edward Lawrence Gates and Gates inherited it from own his father, Henry Louis Gates Sr. 'On my paternal line, in other words, we are as Irish as Irish can get,' writes Gates.

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IrelandNorth | Jan 20, 2012, 06:19 AM EST

Niall! The real nine hostages were the nine counties of the province of Ulster, (subsequently reduced to the six counties of 'Northern' (?) Ireland), so as to manufacture consent for part of Ireland being held as ransom against Ireland as a whole pulling out of the 'United' Kingdom. Anyway guys. Huamanity's geneaology is retraceable to a fossils of a female skeleton found on the central African savannah some time ago So we're all really pasty-faced Africans. Geronimo was right: "White man speak with fork tongue."

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faberm1 | Jan 19, 2012, 07:19 PM EST

@George: Go raibh mile maith agat. Tá an ceart agat! Rinne mé botún.

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joycean | Jan 19, 2012, 10:33 AM EST

Now why would anyone want to know that their grest-great grandfather was a serial rapist and have that presented on a television documentary?

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joycean | Jan 18, 2012, 08:07 PM EST

I think what makes this a "troubling mystery" is that Gates's relationship to Niall's scion is through a master-slave relationship. Since Jane wasn't a free woman, it is very likely this wasn't a consentual relationship.

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Tooreenagrena | Jan 18, 2012, 07:58 PM EST

'As Irish as Irish can be' I think he means because of Niall.

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jamieLM | Jan 18, 2012, 06:33 PM EST

One great, great grandfather and Gates says he's as "Irish as Irish can get." Oh, really? I don't think so. Talk about exaggerating. I'd never say that about myself and I have many more documented Irish ancestors than Gates does. I think Gates has a big ego.

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JQuigley | Jan 18, 2012, 03:47 PM EST

Ethinic and racial sponging, cloying and parasitical positioning wantonly "needed" for personal comfort-identity is a ludacrous farce with minimal reality. However, specious and mundane triviality can be spewed forth in today's culturally deprived society. No less by an academic whose porous "career" is on the edge, than by any breathing organism. The contention to such self-serving/seeking voices should be inherent rejection postulated on one's freedom to disregard showboaters and those in desparate need of attention and headlines.

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teadoir | Jan 18, 2012, 03:37 PM EST

give me a break....this website is getting worse than the National Enquirer

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joycean | Jan 18, 2012, 02:35 PM EST

It isn't unusual for African-Americans to have white blood; most do. It also isn't unusual for American Indians, especially the Eastern tribes. In fact, some American Indian tribes have disappeared, but their DNA shows up in white Americans.

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durtymurphy | Jan 18, 2012, 02:02 PM EST

He's as Irish as Irish can be'?? Did the author get paid for writing this bollocks?. I find lending creedence and page space to this, way more insulting than those T-shirts or the drunken hoardes falling about the streets of Hoboken. Whose next, Rodney King or Herman Cain. Please install some kind if IQ test before letting these people loose with a pen, or have a topless 'Page Three' section like the rest of the gutter press. Thanks.

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GeorgeDillon | Jan 18, 2012, 12:12 PM EST

faber!: "Anois, caithfidh tú an nGaeilge a fhoghlaim a labhairt". Not quite, it's an Ghaeilge.

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jrose6500 | Jan 18, 2012, 12:10 PM EST

This guys an ass. If no one had bothered to call the cops if someone was breaking into his house, he would have cried racism. He should be grateful that the police took the time to make sure he was the homeowner. I would have told him and Obama to stick their beer up their asses.

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GeorgeDillon | Jan 18, 2012, 12:10 PM EST

Great. I welcome Prof Gates into our extended family. I too am an O'Neill from a couple generations back on my mother's side. In fact I am a distant cousin of Sonny O'Neill, a name that will be recognized by those familiar with the history of the Irish Civil War.

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Monsoonman | Jan 18, 2012, 11:56 AM EST

It baffles me why we institutionalize racist prevaricators who perpetuate victimhood. We even give them fancy titles and degrees in their field. Tenured, they are free to brainwash generation after generation with the, "it isn't fair mentality". Instead of teaching a worthhwhile craft to young people for which they can go out into the world and be productive. He teaches a culture that can only exist in the artificial world of academia and fuels the victim mentality in America. We are hanging ourselves with our own rope.

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donal1951 | Jan 18, 2012, 09:54 AM EST

I also am researching my family histories, both my father's family in Ireland, and my mother's family in Vermont. My paternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather are the most difficult to track. Sadly, I waited too long in one sense in that many of the people who had first-hand information have passed on. Despite serious political differences, I wish Professor Gates the best in finding his missing ancestors.

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