Harvard Law Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Talks About His Prior Arrest During Annual Book Awards Ceremony In Cleveland
By Kathy Wray Coleman
Posted Friday, September 11, 2009
(National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News)
(Coleman is a journalist of 15 years who covered the 2008 Democratic Primary and general elections for the Call & Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black Press with distributions in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. This includes a one-on-one interview with now U.S. President Barack Obama shortly before Ohio's March 4, 2008 Democratic Primary, as well as an interview with the president on his controversial health care plan)
Harvard Law Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Thursday moderated the 74th Annual Anisfield -Wolf Book Awards Ceremony at the Cleveland Playhouse to a packed house. The event was sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation, as it has been since 1963, and drew participation from some area movers and shakers including Plain Dealer Newspaper Publisher Terry Egger, Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, and Cleveland Foundation President and CEO Ronald B. Richard.
The literary critic, educator, scholar, and author of numerous books on race relations briefly stole the spotlight from the four honorees, charming the audience with tales of encounters since his arrest this past summer by Cambridge, MA. police at his university furnished home.
“I was arrested on July 16 and I bet by July 17 all the tickets [for this event] were sold,” joked Gates, whose arrest and subsequent release without charges aroused a national discussion on racial profiling and racial tensions in America since he was taken into custody even after he allegedly proved to police that he lived in the home.
Police had claimed that a faculty neighbor alerted them of a potential break in at the Gates home while Gates, who is Black, was searching for his home door key, a claim believed by some and questioned by others.
On Thursday the Director of Harvard's W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African- American Research was poised and diplomatic as he read the profiles of the honorees with authors Louise Erdrich and Nam Lee sharing the book award for fiction, and Black writer Annette-Gordon Reed winning in the nonfiction category. Esteemed author Paule Marshall, also Black, was recognized with the life time literary achievement award.
Gates, who turns 59 on Sept. 16, reminded the audience that the ceremony, which was once dubbed “the Black Pulitzer Prize,” was founded to recognize outstanding Black writers whose works contribute to a better understanding of racial diversity in America. But in recent years and since the death of its founder, Edith Anisfield- Wolf, it has been reinvented to also include the recognition of other minorities such as Yee, who is Asian- American, and Erdrich, a Native-American and author of some 13 novels.
Gordon-Reed, a professor at law at New York University and professor of history at Rutgers University was honored for her newest book, “Hemingses of Monticello,” a literary masterpiece that examines the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and one of his female slaves, Sally Hemings. The book also garnered the Harvard University graduate the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for history and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction.
After excepting recognition for a lifetime of literary excellence Marshall, 80, reminisced about her mentor, legendary Black author and poet Langston Hughes who, among other places, lived in Cleveland, Oh. during his childhood with his mother and stepfather.
“When I was in my thirties and could not get a paragraph written he would say 'I have a book for every year you are alive,” said Marshall of Hughes, a previous recepient of the prestious award. “He could not understand slow pokes like me because during that time it was publish or perish.”
Marshall is the author of several novels including “Brown Girl,” “The Timeless People,” and “The Chosen Place.” Her most recent memoir is titled “Triangular Road.”
Anisfield-Wolf, a Cleveland poet and philanthropist, established the book awards in 1935 in honor of her late husband. She used literature to explore racial prejudice and to seek to bring calm to a world where individual and racial differences are not always embraced. At her death in 1963 she left many books to the Cleveland Public Library, and funds to the Cleveland Foundation.
Winners of the award are selecetd by a five-member panel, which includes Gates. Previous award recipients include Pulitzer Prize winning author Tony Morrison, and the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his book, “Stride Toward Freedom.”
Posted Friday, September 11, 2009
(National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News)
(Coleman is a journalist of 15 years who covered the 2008 Democratic Primary and general elections for the Call & Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black Press with distributions in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. This includes a one-on-one interview with now U.S. President Barack Obama shortly before Ohio's March 4, 2008 Democratic Primary, as well as an interview with the president on his controversial health care plan)
Harvard Law Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Thursday moderated the 74th Annual Anisfield -Wolf Book Awards Ceremony at the Cleveland Playhouse to a packed house. The event was sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation, as it has been since 1963, and drew participation from some area movers and shakers including Plain Dealer Newspaper Publisher Terry Egger, Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, and Cleveland Foundation President and CEO Ronald B. Richard.
The literary critic, educator, scholar, and author of numerous books on race relations briefly stole the spotlight from the four honorees, charming the audience with tales of encounters since his arrest this past summer by Cambridge, MA. police at his university furnished home.
“I was arrested on July 16 and I bet by July 17 all the tickets [for this event] were sold,” joked Gates, whose arrest and subsequent release without charges aroused a national discussion on racial profiling and racial tensions in America since he was taken into custody even after he allegedly proved to police that he lived in the home.
Police had claimed that a faculty neighbor alerted them of a potential break in at the Gates home while Gates, who is Black, was searching for his home door key, a claim believed by some and questioned by others.
On Thursday the Director of Harvard's W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African- American Research was poised and diplomatic as he read the profiles of the honorees with authors Louise Erdrich and Nam Lee sharing the book award for fiction, and Black writer Annette-Gordon Reed winning in the nonfiction category. Esteemed author Paule Marshall, also Black, was recognized with the life time literary achievement award.
Gates, who turns 59 on Sept. 16, reminded the audience that the ceremony, which was once dubbed “the Black Pulitzer Prize,” was founded to recognize outstanding Black writers whose works contribute to a better understanding of racial diversity in America. But in recent years and since the death of its founder, Edith Anisfield- Wolf, it has been reinvented to also include the recognition of other minorities such as Yee, who is Asian- American, and Erdrich, a Native-American and author of some 13 novels.
Gordon-Reed, a professor at law at New York University and professor of history at Rutgers University was honored for her newest book, “Hemingses of Monticello,” a literary masterpiece that examines the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and one of his female slaves, Sally Hemings. The book also garnered the Harvard University graduate the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for history and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction.
After excepting recognition for a lifetime of literary excellence Marshall, 80, reminisced about her mentor, legendary Black author and poet Langston Hughes who, among other places, lived in Cleveland, Oh. during his childhood with his mother and stepfather.
“When I was in my thirties and could not get a paragraph written he would say 'I have a book for every year you are alive,” said Marshall of Hughes, a previous recepient of the prestious award. “He could not understand slow pokes like me because during that time it was publish or perish.”
Marshall is the author of several novels including “Brown Girl,” “The Timeless People,” and “The Chosen Place.” Her most recent memoir is titled “Triangular Road.”
Anisfield-Wolf, a Cleveland poet and philanthropist, established the book awards in 1935 in honor of her late husband. She used literature to explore racial prejudice and to seek to bring calm to a world where individual and racial differences are not always embraced. At her death in 1963 she left many books to the Cleveland Public Library, and funds to the Cleveland Foundation.
Winners of the award are selecetd by a five-member panel, which includes Gates. Previous award recipients include Pulitzer Prize winning author Tony Morrison, and the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his book, “Stride Toward Freedom.”
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