The citizens of his hometown have mixed reactions to his arrest.
It’s a culmination of a controversy that started when Crowley arrested Gates for disorderly conduct after police responded to a 911 call at Gates’ home.
Gates believed he was treated differently because of his race.
Gates’ attitudes were shaped by his upbringing in Piedmont, a small racially mixed town in Mineral County.
The town of Piedmont, West Virginia, sits across the Potomac River from Maryland.
More than one thousand people live here.
But at one time, more than three thousand people lived here, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a prominent Harvard professor and scholar who chronicled his experiences in Piedmont in his book, “Colored People.”
Piedmont business owner Mickey Racco remembers Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“You just knew everybody in town,” he said.
“His daddy used to go to the drugstore, and he used to come in here shopping.”
But the drugstore is gone. Now, all that’s left is a bank, a bar, and a handful of stores, including Racco’s general store which makes most of its revenue through Powerball ticket sales.
At one time, passenger trains from the B and O railroad came through the town seven or eight times a day, carrying people to Cincinnati, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia.
A paper mill employed many of the citizens, and an opera house provided entertainment with movies and theater shows several nights a week.
Now, only a few coal trains pass through every day.
Piedmont has always been a racially mixed town where blacks and whites live side by side.
Today, both races can be seen mingling with one another on the street, in the general store, and in the bar.
People here are still watching Gates closely, including Racco, who followed his arrest on the news.
“I didn’t think anything about it,” he said.
“I think it’s something the media blows everything out of proportion.”
In “Colored People,” Gates describes in detail his upbringing in Piedmont as a place where racism existed but did not dominate their lives.
He remembers a close-knit black community where their white neighbors were only “a shadowy presence.”
He describes some incidents of racism toward his family but also was very successful in his integrated school. After rising to the heights of academic success, Gates’ family says he never forgot his hometown.
At the Piedmont Library, you can find more than 30 books donated by Gates.
The writers are familiar names: Frederick Douglass, William Faulkner, and Henry James.
He also donated money to the Methodist church he attended as a youth.
Many members of Gates family still live in Piedmont, including his aunt, Alberta Coleman.
Coleman has all of his books and remembers what she felt when she heard Gates was arrested.
“I was shocked,” she said.
“These things happen, but he will be all right,” she said, “this might help to let the nation know that there is still a lot of that going on.”
Coleman looks forward to hearing about Gates’ meeting with Pres. Obama and Sgt. Crowley on Thursday.