Colored People by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

See the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. AHWIR webpage at http://www.shepherd.edu/ahwirweb/. Find out about Dr. Gates by clicking on the “About Gates” link. Also, look at the critical essay link on Gates’ work and the webquests, study questions, and learning resources to help you understand Colored People.

Colored People is a rich and extraordinary memoir that captures a moment in time not only for the African American community but also for all communities during a dynamic period of transition in America in the second half of the Twentieth Century. For a sense of the Civil Rights Movement during the Sixties see http://www.thekingcenter.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1955-1968). Gates skillfully portrays this unique period in American cultural life and history, by focusing on one small town in West Virginia as a microcosm for what was happening in the fifties and sixties across the American racial landscape. Piedmont, West Virginia, (http://www.city-data.com/city/Piedmont-West-Virginia.html) was Gates’ home as a child, a place where the color-lines were just beginning to crumble. As you read Colored People, notice that Gates begins his memoir by focusing on the present time and its contrast to the past: his own children’s comparative privilege and disassociation from their grandparents’ world and life as African Americans in the days of segregation is portrayed in the first chapter. Gates writes: “No, my children will never know Piedmont, never experience the magic I can still feel in the place where I learned how to be a colored boy” (4). Notice too that Gates frequently refers to the rest of the country and the world outside Piedmont as “Elsewhere” (201) or as “Everyplace Else (215). Why do you think he does this? Why was this exploration of his own roots important not only to himself but to his readers, both Black and White? Notice that one of Gates’ newest publications is Finding Oprah’s Roots and Finding Yours Too.

Gates mother and father and their respective families exerted an important influence on the young boy growing up Piedmont; as a matter of fact, Gates has said that he wrote Colored People as a tribute to his parents, specifically as a “portrait” of his mother written in the “voice” of his father. Explain the nature of Gates’ relationship with his mother and with his father; how did both influence his attitudes and character? The two families—the Colemans and the Gates—are very different; how so? Characterize the Colemans and the Gates. Note the uniqueness of Gates’ two parents and their own distinctive relationships to their families (184), and notice the complexity and difficulty of Gates’ relationship with his father (188). Why does Skip Gates change his name to “Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” from Louis Smith Gates (205-206)? What is the significance of names and naming for the African American community?

One of the fascinating things about Gates’ memoir is his candid discussion of the importance of skin color and hair texture in the African American part of Piedmont. In the insular Black community, folks are evaluated according to the degree of their hair’s “nappiness” and the lightness of their skin tone (note Gates’ description of the new Methodist preacher, Rev. Monroe, on page116). What were African American attitudes in the 1950s about such typically iconical television shows such as Amos and Andy and Leave it to Beaver? (21-22). Why did such perceptions and attitudes change after the 60s, after Dr. King was assassinated, and after the Black Power Movement ratcheted into high gear—see http://www.umich.edu/~eng499/. What did the transformation that occurred in the Black community of Piedmont signify?

One of the most remarkable things about the “colored” section of Piedmont was the closeness of the community, and all the positive (the support and sense of belonging) and negative (the gossip and judgmental attitudes) that accompanied that closeness and cohesion. Explain the significance in African American’s lives of the beauty parlor and the barbershop? Of the Kitchen? Of the Church? Of the School? How was Gates, a brilliant child and certainly the star student of his elementary and high schools, treated by his teachers? How were Gates’ generation and their attitudes about education different from many contemporary youths today? How did Gates’ older brother Rocky “pave the way,” in some respects, for the successes of his little brother? Explain the story about the eight grade Golden Horseshoe Award. When Gates earned the honor of giving the Valedictorian speech at his high school graduation, he did not deliver the canned and censored speech that Valedictorians were expected to give. What was the reaction of his teachers, particularly Miss Twigg, his senior English teacher? What was the topic of his speech?

The Colemans and certainly most folks in the Black and White communities of Piedmont equated success with property and ownership. One of the great ambitions of Pauline Coleman, Gates’ mother, was to own a home, something Henry Louis senior did not want to be encumbered with. When the boys and Mr. Gates finally purchased a home for Pauline, she declared she would not move in. Why? How did Gates finally feel about their insistence that Pauline accept the new home?

The process of “moving away” from Piedmont and the close and insular world of the Black families is a central focus of this book. For Gates, it began with integration of the schools and his discovery, through books, of a greater world beyond “the kitchen.” How did being selected to attend Peterkin affect him (147-150)? How did the news of the Watts riots and the Vietnam War continue this movement on Gates’ part toward Elsewhere? His first year at college was at Potomac State, just a few miles up the highway, but what happened there, particularly to his dream of becoming a doctor? After his summer dating a white girl, Maura Gibson, and finding out he had been put on the WV State Police list of possible detainees in the event of race riots, Skip determined it was time to move on to Elsewhere (200-210). He entered Yale University, spent a year in Africa, and finally immersed himself in the intellectual world of ideas and academy. How was this journey to Elsewhere a natural progression for young Skip Gates, particularly in terms of his iconoclastic ideas and interests and his development of a sense of mission and activism? How are literature and art important in shaping our reality, and explain why Gates felt he could better serve his people by becoming a scholar?

Finally, there is, along with the sense of gain that came with integration and bringing the larger world into the insulated microcosm of Piedmont’s “colored” community, a sense of loss. Explain Gates’ conflicted feelings at the end of the memoir?

*Shepherd University Appalachian Heritage Writers Project