Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Editor-in-Chief

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is Editor-in-Chief of The Root. He is also co-founder of AfricanDNA.com, the site that powers the genealogy section of The Root.

Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is most recently the author of Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own (Crown, 2007) and the host and executive producer of the critically acclaimed PBS series "African American Lives" and "Oprah's Roots."

Gates is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field of African American and Africana Studies. An influential cultural critic, Gates has written for Time magazine, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

Gates earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. He received a B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973. The recipient of 48 honorary degrees and a 1981 MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award," Professor Gates was also named one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997, one of the "100 Most Influential Black Americans" by Ebony in 2005, received a National Humanities Medal in 1998, and in 1999 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Lynette Clemetson

Managing Editor

Lynette Clemetson came to The Root from The New York Times, where she served as a domestic correspondent covering political, social and cultural issues, often through the prism of race, identity and America's shifting demographic landscape. Before joining the New York Times, Clemetson worked as a national and international correspondent for Newsweek magazine. As a national correspondent based in Washington DC, Clemetson covered politics and social issues, with focus on demographics and ethnic identity. She wrote for numerous award-winning Newsweek cover packages including "The New Face of Race" and "The New Black Power." Clemetson, who has an MA in East Asian studies and speaks Mandarin Chinese, joined Newsweek in Hong Kong where she contributed to the magazine's award-winning coverage of the former British colony's return to Chinese rule in 1997 and covered political and social issues throughout south east Asia.

Terence Samuel

Deputy Editor

Terence Samuel is a former senior editor at U.S. News and World Report and a former New York-based national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He most recently served as the director of news programming at AOL Black Voices. He has been political columnist for the online edition of The American Prospect, where he has written mostly about Congress. From 2000 to 2005, he was the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News, where he covered the historic 50-50 Senate of 2000, the Jim Jeffords defection, the demise of Trent Lott and the dissolution of the Republican Revolution. He has appeared on PBS's Washington Week, Hardball on MSNBC, CNN International and Fox News, as well as on international media outlets including the BBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Natalie Hopkinson

Associate Editor

Before joining The Root, Natalie Hopkinson was an assignment editor in the Washington Post's Sunday commentary and debate section and a youth culture writer in the newspaper's Style section. She is co-author of "Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation." A graduate of Howard University, she holds a doctorate in journalism and public communication from the University of Maryland-College Park.