BOSTON
Black scholar Dr. Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates Jr. is accusing a Massachusetts police department of racism after he was arrested while trying to get into his locked home near Harvard University.
Police say they were called to the home in the afternoon of July 16 after a woman reported seeing a man try to pry open the front door.
Police also say that they ordered the man to identify himself and that Gates refused. According to a police report, Gates then called the officer a racist and said, “This is what happens to Black men in America.”
Police declined to comment Monday. Gates referred comment to his lawyer, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, who did not immediately return a call.
Gates is the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
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