Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. says he will accept President Barack Obama’s invitation to visit him at the White House along with the white police officer who arrested the Harvard professor.
Gates told the Boston Globe in an e-mail late Friday that he spoke to Obama and said he would meet with Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley. Gates said he hoped his arrest by Crowley leads to greater sensitivity on racial profiling and that it was time to “move on.”
Obama extended the invitation Friday in phone calls to the two men as he sought to calm a national debate over racial profiling.
A joint statement by three Massachusetts police unions said they appreciated the president’s “sincere interest” and added that Crowley had a friendly and meaningful conversation with Obama.