The Richard Payne Lecture and Award in Faith, Justice, and Health Care highlights and honors academic, clinical, and lay leaders who in their work and research embody the late Dr. Payne’s spirit of caring for the whole person.
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General Audience
About the Speaker
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. An Emmy, duPont, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and literary scholar, he has published numerous books and produced acclaimed documentaries on Black history, including Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History (PBS, 2026). He also hosts and produces PBS's Finding Your Roots, now in production for its 13th season. His latest book, The Black Box: Writing the Race (2024), was named one of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the Year.
A native of Piedmont, West Virginia, Gates has received numerous honorary degrees and was a member of the first class of MacArthur Fellows in 1981. In 1998, he became the first African American scholar to receive the National Humanities Medal. His discovery of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts transformed the study of early African American literature.
A former chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, Gates is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received numerous honors, including the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, the PEN Audible Literary Service Award, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal.