-My next guest is
an Emmy and Peabody winner who hosts
"Finding Your Roots" on PBS. You must watch this. He is also the host
and executive producer of "The Black Church: This Is
Our Story, This is Our Song." It's available now on PBS.org
and the PBS app, and there's a companion book for
the series, which is out now. Here he is,
Henry Louis Gates Jr. It is so nice to meet you. Thank you for being on our show. Do you prefer being called
Dr. Gates or Henry? -No, no, you can't call me
Dr. Gates, 'cause if you had a heart attack
and we're on an airplane, you're just gonna die. I don't have that kind --
I'm a PhD. Everybody calls me Skip. When my mother was carrying me,
she was reading a book, and the protagonist's name
was Skip. And so I've been Skip, Skipper,
Skippy my whole life. -I love the name Skip.
Alright, perfect. Then I will call you Skip.
You can call me Jimmy. -Okay, Jimmy. -This is our first time meeting,
but I'm a fan of yours. I know Questlove was on
your show "Finding Your Roots" a few years ago, and he had
an incredible experience. -Oh, my. It's one of
our most dramatic episodes. Questlove is the only
African-American who knows the name of the ship
that his enslaved ancestors were brought to America on. Look, everybody since Alex Haley
has wanted to know, everybody black
has wanted to know where they were from in Africa. He knows where they were from and the ship that they
were brought here on. He's sui generis. He's the only person I know of
whom that's true. It was a deeply moving
experience for both of us. -I heard that
"Finding Your Roots" led you to appearing in a couple of
episodes of "Watchmen" on HBO. How did that happen? -Well, I kept getting letters
from this guy named Damon Lindelof, right?
-Yeah. -And I had no idea who he was. And I just --
you know, I'm too busy. We're filming "Finding
Your Roots" all the time. And he said, "I'm making a show
called 'The Watchmen.'" I didn't know anything
about the series, and he said,
"I have to put you in it." And I was thinking, "For what? You know, you want
a Harvard professor in it?" He goes,
"No, no, just meet with me." So I invited him to dinner. And he said, "Look, I saw your
series 'Many Rivers to Cross,'" which has a scene about
the demolition of the black Wall Street, the
Tulsa, Oklahoma, riots in 1921. And he said, "We are going to
make the Tulsa riots the key to this story, and then
someone has got to give people DNA tests to see
if they're descended from anyone who was killed
in the Tulsa riots, and, if so,
they get reparations. So we're going to cast you as
the Secretary of the Treasury, and you're going to --
because of reparations, and you're going to
give them DNA tests." And I had no idea how big
"The Watchmen" was. I have received more fan mail
from that little appearance in "The Watchmen" than anything
I've ever done before. -Yeah.
-So it was a great honor. -But you also have
another great series. This is a documentary called
"The Black Church" about the history of
the black church in America. -Yeah. I wanted to make
this series because -- You remember the murders
at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston when the guy named
Dylann Roof went in. It was a Wednesday night
prayer meeting, and he prayed with
these nine people, including
Reverend Clementa Pinckney, for an hour,
and then he killed them. He killed nine of the people
who were gathered there. And I did the last interview
with Reverend Clementa Pinckney for "Many Rivers to Cross," and so it affected me
profoundly and personally. And I started doing research
on this church. It turns out that
Mother Emanuel AME Church was ground zero for black power
during Reconstruction when the Civil War ended. There was a black AME minister
in Brooklyn named Richard Harvey Cain, and he moved to Charleston
and rebuilt the church. The church had been torn down
completely by white racists in 1822 because there was
a slave insurrection there. A man named Denmark Vesey,
who actually had won the lottery and bought his own freedom,
if you can believe that, and then he and some of his
friends were accused of planning a slave insurrection in 1822, and they completely demolished
the church. In 1865, Richard Harvey Cain
comes back, rebuilds the church. And, Jimmy, he hires
Denmark Vesey's son to be the architect
to rebuild the church. -What?!
-Yeah, and you can't beat that. So Richard Harvey Cain
starts a newspaper and then runs for office,
and he was elected to Congress. He's one of the 16 black men
elected to the Senate and the House of Representatives
during Reconstruction. So the church was a center for
every conceivable institution that black people built. So, really, I wanted to tell
this story in honor of Reverend Clementa Pinckney
and the eight other people who were murdered by
Dylann Roof. -What an amazing story. It's called "The Black Church: This Is Our Story,
This Is Our Song." I do also want to mention that Oprah gets a little credit
for the title of this? -Big time. I was having an argument with
Stacey Holman, our series producer,
and she wanted to call it "The Black Church:
How We Got Over" after -- There's a black hymn. ♪ How I got over ♪ -Yeah, beautiful.
-And I love it, but I also love
"Blessed Assurance," which is almost an anthem
for black churches. And one of its refrains is "this
is my story, this is my song." So I thought it would be perfect
to change it to "This Is Our Story,
This Is Our Song." So I said,
"Okay, I know how to resolve it. I know one person who knows
a little bit about marketing. Her name is Oprah Winfrey." So I sent Oprah an e-mail. The next morning
I turn my cellphone on, and there's a voicemail message. And I hit the button,
and it was Oprah. And what I heard was... ♪ This is our story,
this is our song ♪ I called Stacey and said --
I played it. I said, "The state rests." -That is wild.
It is a fantastic series. You do a great job.
I want to show a clip. Here is a look at
"The Black Church." -I think the black church
was the thing we were totally in charge of. We didn't have
any external forces that had to give us permission. Whatever we wanted to do,
it was up to us. It was ours. -In the first decade
after the Civil War, thousands of black churches
sprouted throughout the South to unify and uplift a community that had been divided
and degraded in bondage. -My thanks to
Henry Louis Gates Jr. I call him Skip. An encore of parts three
and four of "The Black Church" air tomorrow night on PBS. You got to watch this, folks.
It's so good. The entire series is available
on PBS.org and the PBS app. His book "The Black Church"
is also available now. Thank you so much
for coming on, and, please, tell your daughter I said hello,
will you? -Thanks for having me on
your show, and I promise I will.
