Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar and author Henry Louis Gates Jr. will present the 2026 Tresolini Lecture in Law at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, at the Zoellner Arts Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, will present “Finding Your Roots: Genealogy, Genetics, and African-American History.” The talk shares its title with his groundbreaking PBS genealogy television series, now in its 12th season.

“Dr. Gates’ pioneering work at the intersection of history, genealogy, and African American studies has transformed how we understand our collective American story,” said Brian Fife, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science. “We are honored to welcome a scholar of his immense caliber to campus for this year’s Tresolini Lecture, and we look forward to an inspiring conversation that will deeply engage our students, faculty, and local community.”

Gates’ six-part PBS documentary series, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,” which he wrote, executive produced and hosted, won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program — Long Form. The series also earned a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and an NAACP Image Award.

Gates has received 58 honorary degrees and numerous honors. In 1981, he was named to the first class of MacArthur Fellows, receiving one of the foundation’s “genius grants.” In 1998, he became the first Black scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He was named to Time’s “25 Most Influential Americans” list in 1997, Ebony’s “Power 150” list in 2009, and Ebony’s “Power 100” list in 2010 and 2012. In 2001, he discovered the manuscript for “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” considered the first novel written by an enslaved Black woman. In July 2024, he was awarded the NAACP’s prestigious Spingarn Medal.

A former chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, Gates is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He serves on numerous boards, including the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of America and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Portraits of Gates hang in two major institutions: one painted by Yuqi Wang was hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2011, and another by Kerry James Marshall was installed at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge in 2023.

A native of Piedmont, West Virginia, Gates earned a bachelor's degree in history, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973. He earned a master's degree and doctorate in English literature from Clare College at Cambridge University in 1979, where he is an honorary fellow. He was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society during his junior year of college.

The Rocco J. Tresolini Lectureship in Law was established in 1978 in memory of Rocco Tresolini, a distinguished Lehigh teacher and scholar. Born March 17, 1920, in Dolgeville, New York, Tresolini served as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1946. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Hartwick College in 1942, and a master’s degree and doctorate from Syracuse University in 1947 and 1949, respectively.

Tresolini joined the Lehigh faculty in 1949, advancing from assistant professor to full professor in the Department of History and Government. When the department split in 1962, he became the first chair of the new Department of Government, serving until his death in 1967. In 1964, he received Lehigh’s Hillman Faculty Award.