The Black Box
Writing the Race
A New York Times Notable Book
“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” — Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste
“This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.”
—The New York Times
A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with one another, over…
$27.99
March 18, 2025Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored numerous books, including most recently Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow and The Black Church, and has created more than twenty documentary films, including his groundbreaking genealogy series Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and an NAACP Image Award. This series and his PBS documentary series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War were both honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award.…
The Black Box
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit
Noliwe Rooks; curated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Night Flyer
Tiya Miles; curated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Black Church
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Stony the Road
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Our Nig
Harriet E. Wilson
In Search of Our Roots
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Finding Oprah's Roots
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Future of the Race
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Colored People
Henry Louis Gates, Jr