BOSTON — Black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. says he is ready to move on from his arrest by a white police officer, hoping to use the encounter to improve fairness in the criminal justice system and saying, “In the end, this is not about me at all.”
After a phone call from President Barack Obama urging calm in the aftermath of his arrest last week, Gates said he would accept Obama’s invitation to the White House for a beer with him and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley.
In a statement posted Friday on The Root, a website Gates oversees, the scholar said he told Obama he would be happy to meet with Crowley, whom Gates had accused of racial profiling.
It was a marked change in tone for Gates, who in the days following his arrest gathered up his legal team and said he was contemplating a lawsuit.
The Associated Press
