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Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr. currently serves as chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University, where he is also the Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute of African-American Research. 

Skip Gates was born in 1950.  He has written extensively for many well known publications such as The New Yorker and Encyclopedia Africana. He has co-authored many books, edited and co-edited countless articles for respected publications, and authored six books himself, two of which are original works: The Signifying Monkey (1988) is a revamped version of his dissertation, and Figures in Black (1987) is a collection of essays. He is also known for rediscovering in 1983 Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859), the first African-American novel. When W.E.B. DuBois said, "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line" he was making a statement that would become Skip Gates's main focus. 

Link to the PBS site to get more detailed biographical information about Skip Gates. 

Here are some words from Skip himself. 

"Africa is the mother of civilization itself...we have our roots here. And until we know Africa, we can never truly know ourselves." 

"When Europeans came upon real ruined cities they refused to believe that they had been built by Africans. Here the past has been distorted and denied." 

"There are two things that have always haunted me: the brutality of the European traders and the stories I've heard about Africans selling other Africans into slavery." 

"Who are the Swahili? Do they belong to Africa at all? Or are they Arabs who brought their own civilization? And why, 2,000 years later, does it matter?" (PBS Site)