Centofanti Symposium Presents Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Youngstown State University’s Centofanti Symposium featuring Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be held on Thursday, November 7 at 7:00pm at Stambaugh Auditorium. Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and journalist, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an acclaimed cultural critic and institution builder. Louis Gates, Jr. is an acclaimed cultural critic and institution builder.

Professor Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Among his dozens of books are New York Times bestsellers Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow and The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song.

He has also produced and hosted an array of documentary films. The Black Church (PBS) and Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches (HBO), which he executive produced. His latest history series for PBS is Making Black America: Through the Grapevine. Finding Your Roots, Gates’s groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series on PBS. Professor Gates has received countless awards and honors, including a George Polk Award for his social commentary in The New York Times, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Chicago Tribune Literary Award for lifetime achievement, and the prestigious Gold Medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences.

His filmmaking has received Emmy, Peabody, and NAACP Image Awards, as well as an Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award. Professor Gates serves on the boards of many notable institutions, including: the New York Public Library, the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

Lecture is free but tickets are required. Reserve tickets on the Stambaugh Auditorium website – a first-come, first-served basis, limited to 4 per person.