Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and author of numerous works of criticism, including Figures in Black and The Signifying Monkey, winner of the American Book Award. As the writer and producer of the acclaimed two-part PBS documentary African American Lives, Gates explored the histories of many prominent African Americans. With In Search of Our Roots, he sheds new light on these American lives, through the Civil Rights movement, the dark era of slavery, and back to Africa.