Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. - General Discussion

[deirdra]

I don't mind the repetitiveness either and it is nice to see some of the celebrities not acting like celebrities, but real people. Skip may also focus more on people with slavery or the Holocaust in their backgrounds because those were traditionally harder to trace, since most slaves' names were not recorded in the censuses. Though over the years of seeing that many were given the last name of the owners, that and even the genealogy of the owner's family has helped trace wills etc. to track down documents that did include the slaves' names and possible places to look for them after emancipation. Recently someone's ancestor was found after following documents linked to the owner's wife's family (a wider variety of last names to search). The other surprising thing is how well the names of some of the people tortured & murdered during the Holocaust have been documented, either through Nazi records that were not destroyed, or rabbis who memorized long lists of people taken and never seen again, and wrote everything down once they got to safety.  People whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower or were descended from British royalty have an easier time finding their own roots. 

Edited April 15, 2022 by deirdra

[Yeah No]

16 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Aw, @iMonrey, I bet there are plenty of interesting stories in your ancestors' pasts.

I agree.  My husband had the same attitude then his sister found out that they were descended on one side from a small band of Huguenots that were instrumental in founding at least a couple of towns in the Hudson Valley in NY state.  We went to visit a few of their homes (now museums) in that area.  There are many branches in a tree and so many generations going back that it's statistically more likely to find something very interesting than not.  It's just a matter of finding them.  The stories about everyone with European ancestry being descended from Charlemagne aren't just fiction.

[Yeah No]

18 hours ago, deirdra said:

I don't mind the repetitiveness either and it is nice to see some of the celebrities not acting like celebrities, but real people. Skip may also focus more on people with slavery or the Holocaust in their backgrounds because those were traditionally harder to trace, since most slaves' names were not recorded in the censuses. 

That's a really good point and one that's relevant to me because my father's father was Jewish.  For a very long time I couldn't get anywhere looking online for records on my Jewish ancestors any further back than my great grandparents.  It's only recently that some relatives have spent money on research and have shared it on Ancestry.com.  I have been able to go back a couple more generations as a result.  But even if people know their ancestry, that's not the whole story.  Skip finds out interesting stories about their ancestors that you'd have to have someone very skilled uncover and that must take a lot of time, effort and money that wouldn't be easy to find or afford, even for famous people.

I have to imagine that by now some of his guests have already done some of their genealogy so he must concentrate on the difficult parts that are still mysteries to them.  And for some, like you say above, it's mostly still a mystery because it's so difficult to find.

18 hours ago, deirdra said:

People whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower or were descended from British royalty have an easier time finding their own roots. 

That's certainly true, and it gets easier all the time.  15 years ago I spent hours and hours poring over online records for several months until I finally found my great grandparents in a published genealogy that linked them back to the Mayflower.  Now that stuff is much easier to find.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Yeah No
It's poring, not "pouring".

[Sharpie66]

33 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

I agree.  My husband had the same attitude then his sister found out that they were descended on one side from a small band of Huguenots that were instrumental in founding at least a couple of towns in the Hudson Valley in NY state.  We went to visit a few of their homes (now museums) in that area.  There are many branches in a tree and so many generations going back that it's statistically more likely to find something very interesting than not.  It's just a matter of finding them.  The stories about everyone with European ancestry being descended from Charlemagne aren't just fiction.

Me, too (both French Huguenots and one Spanish), in Ulster County.

When is Who Do You Think You Are? returning to NBC? I found out that a former coworker of mine is going to be on it (she’s Nick Offerman’s aunt).

[Yeah No]

1 hour ago, Sharpie66 said:

Me, too (both French Huguenots and one Spanish), in Ulster County.

When is Who Do You Think You Are? returning to NBC? I found out that a former coworker of mine is going to be on it (she’s Nick Offerman’s aunt).

WDYTYA is returning on July 10.

This is the street, near New Paltz, NY.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot_Street_Historic_District

Ironically my husband's sister lives only a 30 minute ride from there, which made it easy for us to visit.  They saw their relatives' names mentioned while there.

[Sharpie66]

Thanks for the info!

New Paltz, Hurley, Rochester, and Kingston is where my family is from, too. I’ll probably see names I recognize from my research as well. I’ll have to check out that historic district when I get there!

[Yeah No]

5 hours ago, Yeah No said:

That's certainly true, and it gets easier all the time.  15 years ago I spent hours and hours pouring poring over online records for several months until I finally found my great grandparents in a published genealogy that linked them back to the Mayflower.  Now that stuff is much easier to find.

Sorry I just had to correct my error there, I know better but somehow that got by me the first time, LOL.

1 hour ago, Sharpie66 said:

Thanks for the info!

New Paltz, Hurley, Rochester, and Kingston is where my family is from, too. I’ll probably see names I recognize from my research as well. I’ll have to check out that historic district when I get there!

Your welcome, I enjoyed it very much.  I would suggest looking into a guided tour or something like that before you go.  I seem to remember we heard about one but didn't know about it until after we went.  Maybe next time.

Interestingly my SIL didn't know she was moving so close to where she had roots when she moved there 35 years ago.  She only discovered it within the past 5 years.

Similarly I never knew I had an ancestor that was one of the founders of Hartford, CT until 7 years after I moved there.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Yeah No

[carrps]

On 4/14/2022 at 9:37 AM, Mermaid Under said:

The commercial network program Who do you think you are? (produced by Lisa Kudrow, among others) is returning to NBC for at least 1 season after spending 7 seasons on TLC.  I watched it before it went to TLC.  Similar to Finding Your Roots *everyone is a celebrity*, but  I remember it being sort of the commercial side of Finding your Roots. 

In Googling the information I found out that Regina King was also a guest last season on Who do you think you are, and that her son committed suicide in January, 2022.  

 

On 4/14/2022 at 9:42 AM, Yeah No said:

That explains why I thought this episode was a repeat.  I knew I had seen Regina King on a genealogy show before.  I had heard about WDYTYA coming back, although it is news to me about Regina's son's suicide.  How sad.  😥

I knew I'd seen Regina King's story somewhere else. I thought this was a repeat show, but I hadn't seen Lindlehof before. Guess his Swedish ancestors were boring.

 

On 4/14/2022 at 1:44 PM, Driad said:

I wish PBS would bring back Genealogy Roadshow.  The featured people were not celebrities, just people with interesting family stories.

I still remember the woman whose mother had "passed" as white, and no one ever knew. It's a haunting story.

[Lovecat]

Knowing that this episode was filmed before Regina King's son had died by suicide earlier this year, I found her musings on generational trauma to be quite poignant.  The young man had to have been struggling, to take his own life.  

Andre Leon Talley just died a month or so ago; I wonder if the show will acknowledge his passing.

[deirdra]

3 hours ago, Yeah No said:

Interestingly my SIL didn't know she was moving so close to where she had roots when she moved there 35 years ago.  She only discovered it within the past 5 years.

I once drove from Montreal to Ottawa along the Ottawa River for the first time and had a very weird sense of déjà vu. And another time walking on a street in front of a conference hotel (while visiting from 2500 miles away) the hair on the back of my neck stood up with another déjà vu in Ottawa. 20 years later I learned that I had actually driven past my gr-gr-grandfather's 1828 homestead along the Ottawa River and was only one block away from where my orphaned grandmother had lived as a child in Ottawa.  I had known that my grandmother was born and orphaned in Ottawa, but even she didn't know where she had lived. After a lot of Ancestry data collecting, StreetViewing, Find-a-Graving, I had a great trip back in 2019 to see everything with context.

3 hours ago, carrps said:

I still remember the woman whose mother had "passed" as white, and no one ever knew. It's a haunting story.

I remember that too. Once on a class trip to a museum exhibit about Sojourner Truth, my friend and I looked a one photo that looked just like my mother and then at each other, saying nothing but acknowledging the resemblance.  But alas, 40 yrs later my DNA showed no evidence of Black ancestry.

Edited April 16, 2022 by deirdra

[blueray]

8 hours ago, carrps said:

I knew I'd seen Regina King's story somewhere else. I thought this was a repeat show, but I hadn't seen Lindlehof before. Guess his Swedish ancestors were boring.

I was thinking this too. While I was interested in his Jewish roots (as that is my background). I thought it was odd how they mentioned his Swedish ancestors coming to America but never discussed what their lives were like back in Sweden. 

[photo7521]

4 hours ago, deirdra said:

I once drove from Montreal to Ottawa along the Ottawa River for the first time and had a very weird sense of déjà vu. And another time walking on a street in front of a conference hotel (while visiting from 2500 miles away) the hair on the back of my neck stood up with another déjà vu in Ottawa. 20 years later I learned that I had actually driven past my gr-gr-grandfather's 1828 homestead along the Ottawa River and was only one block away from where my orphaned grandmother had lived as a child in Ottawa.  I had known that my grandmother was born and orphaned in Ottawa, but even she didn't know where she had lived. After a lot of Ancestry data collecting, StreetViewing, Find-a-Graving, I had a great trip back in 2019 to see everything with context.

I remember that too. Once on a class trip to a museum exhibit about Sojourner Truth, my friend and I looked a one photo that looked just like my mother and then at each other, saying nothing but acknowledging the resemblance.  But alas, 40 yrs later my DNA showed no evidence of Black ancestry.

Maybe someone Black has similar European ancestry, which could possibly mean that your ancestor either owned or had intimate relations with an enslaved person.

As someone who has watched this program and the English and American versions of WDYTYA, I find the search for ancestors and their stories fascinating. I also think that the questions Dr. Gates keeps asking are not only designed to gauge the subject's internal feelings about their personal history, but to remind us (the viewer) to be empathetic because we all have stories that are unknown and untold. I think the reason why some of us feel this is repetitive is because we think that we know our own history, and it's probably more interesting than what we see on this show. Remember we can all learn something from history, even the boring parts.

The US is a young nation and like any young person, we think we know everything, and we are quick to throw away anything that is older and does not interest us. I would love to see this series and others like this be part of the history curriculum in our schools. It would open up discussions about who we are and how our Nation came to be and how we can continue to change and grow. But with the present sensitives about hurting children's feeling with the mere mention of slavery, segregation, the holocaust. etc., I don't see that happening.

[Sharpie66]

2 hours ago, photo7521 said:

Maybe someone Black has similar European ancestry, which could possibly mean that your ancestor either owned or had intimate relations with an enslaved person.

As someone who has watched this program and the English and American versions of WDYTYA, I find the search for ancestors and their stories fascinating. I also think that the questions Dr. Gates keeps asking are not only designed to gauge the subject's internal feelings about their personal history, but to remind us (the viewer) to be empathetic because we all have stories that are unknown and untold. I think the reason why some of us feel this is repetitive is because we think that we know our own history, and it's probably more interesting than what we see on this show. Remember we can all learn something from history, even the boring parts.

The US is a young nation and like any young person, we think we know everything, and we are quick to throw away anything that is older and does not interest us. I would love to see this series and others like this be part of the history curriculum in our schools. It would open up discussions about who we are and how our Nation came to be and how we can continue to change and grow. But with the present sensitives about hurting children's feeling with the mere mention of slavery, segregation, the holocaust. etc., I don't see that happening.

That’s one of the main things I love about this show and genealogy in general! I’m a lifelong history buff, so doing my research and finding links to different aspects of history has been wonderful. (I’m considering starting a YouTube channel for videos tying in my ancestors to stories in history, such as slave ship captains, Barbary coast corsairs, the Dutch surrender of New Netherland to the Brits, the Shakers, Indian Mounds, and early 20th century spiritualism.) 

Learning new stories of history on this show and tying it to personal connections is a great example of what teachers could do to get students hooked on history. I wish that companies like Ancestry would have teacher accounts so that students can start researching their own families. It would teach them researching techniques and the importance of primary sources. If they don’t want to research their families, something as simple as assigning an edition of a historical newspaper and having them analyze the content, highlighting interesting stories and advertisements. All of this shows that history isn’t just names and dates, but it’s people and their lives.

[shapeshifter]

6 hours ago, blueray said:

I was thinking this too. While I was interested in his Jewish roots (as that is my background). I thought it was odd how they mentioned his Swedish ancestors coming to America but never discussed what their lives were like back in Sweden. 

Yes, Lindlehoff’s Swedish ancestors’ stories might have made a good counterpoint to those of his Jewish forebearers—–perhaps drawing in viewers who might be “tired” of yet another Holocaust story, like some upthread mentioned. But that would have probably required featuring him alone, and I sensed that Regina King, Damon Lindlehoff, and HLG Jr. all wanted to feature the diversity and camaraderie of the Watchmen series creators   
–—as well as plug the series a bit because of its value as highly stylized historical fiction. 

6 hours ago, photo7521 said:

. . . I would love to see this series and others like this be part of the history curriculum in our schools. . . .

I agree that episodes of FYR –—as well as the Watchmen series–— could be used in the classroom to excite students about history.  

Edited April 17, 2022 by shapeshifter

[carrps]

11 hours ago, photo7521 said:

As someone who has watched this program and the English and American versions of WDYTYA, I find the search for ancestors and their stories fascinating.

I happened to see Olivia Colman's WHYTYA on youtube, and she found she had an Indian great-grandmother -- two or three times great -- I can't remember now. She had no idea. At all.

[deirdra]

12 hours ago, photo7521 said:

I also think that the questions Dr. Gates keeps asking are not only designed to gauge the subject's internal feelings about their personal history, but to remind us (the viewer) to be empathetic because we all have stories that are unknown and untold.

Also, "how does this make you feel?" is an open-ended question that allows the guest to bring up or not mention whatever they want and can lead in a direction that HLG wasn't expecting, but he does a good job going with whatever he is given. It also captures their first reaction to the news. If he asked more specific questions, they might clam up or have no answer. Silence is awkward. If he asked "do you feel ashamed like Ben Affleck that your ancestor owned slaves?" they might walk off set and never come back.

Edited April 17, 2022 by deirdra

[PRgal]

Speaking of documents which were destroyed, I wonder how many documents were during the Cultural Revolution.  It’s possible there are branches of family which people like me might not be able to trace.  Even though there are people who lived through that time period who are alive today.  It’s possibly worse for those of Korean descent, especially if their roots trace back to what’s now North Korea. 

[buttersister]

Quote

Watching them discover that this was a fact and making a definitive connection to ancestors who endured never gets old IMO. 

IMO, too. As Tolstoy wrote, all happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So the nuances of enslaved ancestors or those who were murdered in the Holocaust--along with any hardships many, many immigrants from all over experienced--is what keeps me watching. Also, I think that the stories get more interesting the more vested a viewer is in a celebrity Prof. Gates studies.

 

[Driad]

Prof. Gates is tracing the lineage of three survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.  The results will be on Finding Your Roots.  Article.

[12catcrazy]

I was a bit disappointed with last night's episode.  The only one of the three I was familiar with was Andre Leon Talley and there was very little on him.  I had read his memoir and he had a very interesting life, although he came off as somewhat bitter in the memoir.   He started his career back in the days when there was still a lot of class in the world of fashion and things changed.   He also seemed to feel that losing his looks (he had been a very handsome man when he was younger) also hastened the end of his career.   I guess that one can more easily get bitten by the sharks in shallow waters.  

As for the two women, I didn't find either's ancestors all that interesting, other than the pastor being accused of witchcraft and then him blaming his wife.  Ah, the good old days when times were rotten...

I was also envious of Erin Burnett in how she kind of stumbled into her career.  Some people really have the luck to be in the right place at the right time or know the right people.   For a person who had no background in journalism, she certainly lucked out there.  

[iMonrey]

Amy Carlson, Andre Leon Talley and Erin Burnett.

Who are three people I have never heard of ever, Alex.

OK - I have heard of Erin Burnett before, but I wouldn't have been able to pick her out of a lineup if my life depended on it.

I agree with 12catcrazy, boring episode. I have a hard time getting invested when it's people I don't know.

[deirdra]

I enjoyed the rapport all three had with Skip Gates, but I watch for the genealogy, not celebrity. 

[Driad]

15 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Who are three people I have never heard of ever, Alex.

Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?  [/Cheers]

I don't care if I have ever heard of the people, as long as the stories are interesting, but these were too similar to others that have been covered before.  Also episodes with three guests tend to be shallow.  I would strongly prefer to see one or two guests (non-celebrities fine) with interesting stories that we have not heard before.  

They had an actor on (I forget who) who had been told his father was a Japanese dancer, but the father's life was much more complicated.  I liked that one.

[deirdra]

4 minutes ago, Driad said:

They had an actor on (I forget who) who had been told his father was a Japanese dancer, but the father's life was much more complicated.  I liked that one.

I think that was comedian/actor/musician/writer/producer Fred Armisen, who always thought his grandfather was Japanese, but turned out to be Korean. 

[Yeah No]

I actually thought this week's episode was more interesting than last week's but it still didn't rise to the level of last season, which I thought was very good.

He seems to like to pick people in journalism or the arts like TV and theatre, so someone in fashion journalism would be right up his street.  Unfortunately a lot of them aren't people I know or care much about.  Most of the recent TV stars he's had on are from shows I don't watch so I wouldn't know them despite supposedly having a long and illustrious career. 

I didn't realize that Andre Talley died in January of this year until I googled him.  I don't remember seeing any note to that effect at the end of the episode unless I missed it.  I was sorry to hear that, he seemed like an interesting person (who I never heard of until this episode).  Too bad I wasn't that interested in his family story.

I often feel that Gates chooses people that fit into a certain category that I might not have the most burning interest in and for some reason it comes off as snobby.  I can't really articulate it any better than that.  But like others have said, if their family history is interesting I can look beyond not knowing or caring too much about them.  And some of those people have actually been people I know and like.  So it's complicated, lol.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Yeah No

[Suzn]

I liked this episode, but it would have been better to limit it to two people.  It's funny, but I guessed that Amy Carlson's ancestors were from Sweden - the name was probably a good clue.  The Swedish history was interesting and fresh.

I was familiar with Andre Leon Talley and knew that he had died recently and it was mentioned in the end credits.

I don't need to know the people featured.  A little more variety would be welcome though.

[shapeshifter]

On 4/20/2022 at 1:29 PM, 12catcrazy said:

the pastor being accused of witchcraft and then him blaming his wife. 

Assuming it was the father's decision for his wife to take the blame for the folk remedy/witchcraft, I wonder if he implicated her to prevent his kids growing up without a father--which makes me wonder if it might have been the wife's idea for her to take the blame.
In order to even have an educated guess about the husband and wife's strategy, we would need to know the likelihood of the mother  and/or father knowing that they would both be punished but survive if she took the blame, and the likelihood of the father being killed if she did not.

 

I know André Leon Talley from America's Next Top Model back in the mid 2000s when a best friend of my youngest daughter was on the show (and won the season--so I had to keep watching the entire season).  
In comparison to others on the show in the past, he was relatively blasé in his response to HLG Jr.'s "how does it make you feel" about his enslaved ancestors. I wonder if he had to adopt that attitude to work in fashion when he was young.
I wonder if his WWI ancestor is entitled to a posthumous reward?

Erin Burnett Amy Carlson was a regular on Blue Bloods when my parents watched it religiously. 

Edited April 23, 2022 by shapeshifter

[12catcrazy]

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

 

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

 
In comparison to others on the show in the past, he was relatively blasé in his response to HLG Jr.'s "how does it make you feel" about his enslaved ancestors. I wonder if he had to adopt that attitude to work in fashion when he was young.
I wonder if his WWI ancestor is entitled to a posthumous reward?

 

My guess is was because of his age.  He was 10 years older than me and I can still remember the civil rights marches on the nightly news and seeing black protesters have fire hoses turned on them.  He grew up in the segregated South in his grandmother's home so he probably heard plenty from the old folks.   Black people at that point may not have been slaves but they still had a precarious lot in life.  Look at a white person the wrong way and God knows what could happen to you.  His grandmother was a grown woman in 1920s America and that period of time saw a big growth in the KKK.  

Most of the black guests on FYR have been younger people who didn't grow up having to drink from a different water fountain or in fear of being lynched, so they are that much farther from the experience of slavery and Jim Crow  than an older southern black man like Andre Leon Talley, 

[sempervivum]

On 4/20/2022 at 12:29 PM, 12catcrazy said:

He also seemed to feel that losing his looks (he had been a very handsome man when he was younger) also hastened the end of his career. 

I was astonished to see the state of his teeth! His bottom teeth seemed to be entirely composed of tartar😬

Yes, these were very bland subjects and not very interesting histories. 

[carolibra]

On 4/21/2022 at 10:30 AM, shapeshifter said:

Erin Burnett was a regular on Blue Bloods when my parents watched it religiously. 

Amy Carlson was the regular on Blue Bloods. Interesting that it was never mentioned.

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, carolibra said:

Amy Carlson was the regular on Blue Bloods. Interesting that it was never mentioned.

Whoops! I realized I was running late when posting that, and then didn’t check it. Thank you for the correction, @carolibra! 
Fixing it now.

[Vanderboom]

I liked that this episode had different twists, but I don't like the 3-guest format. Accused witches, post-slavery family reunification, limited divorce that made headlines . . . HLG should have let these stories breathe. I'd like to hear more about the process, but I guess the producers feel that that information would bore the audience?

[Driad]

Book The Burning: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

Harvard pledges $100 million to research, redresses its role in slavery: 'We bear a moral responsibility'

[Driad]

https://cronkite.asu.edu/news/2022/henry-louis-gates-jr-gives-behind-the-scenes-look-at-popular-pbs-show-during-qa/

[bybrandy]

Gates said he has had to tell people their father wasn't their father.  That's heavy.   

I was a little bit looking for skeletons in the family tree when I did my own DNA but I was also pretty positive that I was who my parents told me I was..   And I am.   For at least 3 generations.  And then things actually do get a bit dodgy on my father's paternal line but seriously, it is absurd how much of my known family tree has been confirmed by DNA.   

Make some trouble fam.  

 

[deirdra]

3 hours ago, bybrandy said:

Gates said he has had to tell people their father wasn't their father.  That's heavy.   

My half-aunt found out that her father wasn't her father but was pleased to find out that my grandfather was her father, since she knew and adored him as a child. She was 78 when she got her DNA results back and anyone who would have known anything was long gone, so we had to reconstruct everything from DNA and proximity. She literally lived on the other side of the tracks from my father & grandparents. Grandpa was apparently the life of the party, but died when I was an infant. He & her mother knew they were her parents, but never told her and we don't know if my grandmother, father or uncle ever knew.

[Driad]

From "60 Minutes" -- How an Air Force veteran discovered his new house was the seat of a plantation where his ancestors were enslaved

[Driad]

On some show, an adoptee had always thought his ancestry was mostly African, but DNA showed he was mostly South Asian.  Was that this show?  Who was the person?

[deirdra]

17 hours ago, Driad said:

On some show, an adoptee had always thought his ancestry was mostly African, but DNA showed he was mostly South Asian.  Was that this show?  Who was the person?

I remember that episode, but not the person's name.  It reminded me of Keenen Ivory Wayans's appearance on FYR where his father's roots were traced to Madagascar with some South Asian influence. It appears that there must have been a lot more boat/raft travel between South Asia and eastern Africa than we knew of.  I found this particularly interesting because I know two women, one from Somalia and one from India, who look like twins even though they can both trace their ancestors in their birth countries back more than 4 generations.

[Lugal]

2 hours ago, deirdra said:

It reminded me of Keenen Ivory Wayans's appearance on FYR where his father's roots were traced to Madagascar with some South Asian influence. It appears that there must have been a lot more boat/raft travel between South Asia and eastern Africa than we knew of.

Madagascar was actually settled from probably Borneo 1500 years ago or so.  The Malagasy language is closer related to Indonesian than any language in Africa.

[Driad]

Article on Ketanji Brown Jackson's family history.

[ProudMary]

First batch. More S9 guests to be revealed tomorrow. 

[Yeah No]

Wow I know all of them except for Tony Gonzalez (not much of a football fan) and Jamie Chung.  Excellent!

[ProudMary]

Season 9 trailer.

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, ProudMary said:

Season 9 trailer.

I really love this:

• [VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR] You know, you die twice. 
  You die when your body dies and then you die the last time somebody says your name. So I'm gonna make sure that I keep them alive.

[Driad]

A Q&A With the Finding Your Roots Research Team

[Driad]

Utah Lab Working On Tulsa Race Massacre Investigation Says People Are Turning In DNA, Family History

[marina to]

On 5/16/2022 at 11:13 AM, Driad said:

From "60 Minutes" -- How an Air Force veteran discovered his new house was the seat of a plantation where his ancestors were enslaved

That's an amazing story.

[Mermaid Under]

Quote

"Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr." Season Nine Premieres January 3, 2023
Jim Acosta, Carol Burnett, Jamie Chung, Brian Cox, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Angela Davis, Viola Davis, David Duchovny, Tony Gonzalez, Jeh Johnson, Van Jones, Richard Kind, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Manganiello, Tamera Mowry, Niecy Nash, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts and Danny Trejo are all on tap.

Carol Burnett - I'm looking forward to her.   Julia Roberts I might skip.  I think she still doesn't get along with her brother Erik, so I wonder if they will even mention him.   And what is the point of having Tamera Mowry without her sister? 

Since they usually have two or three guests per episode, and try desperately to tie in some theme for all of them, I'm looking forward to seeing who gets grouped with who and why.

[Blergh]

On 10/14/2022 at 6:47 AM, Mermaid Under said:

Carol Burnett - I'm looking forward to her.  

Same here! Although since she (and her late daughter Carrie Hamilton) did  a lot of research into her lively maternal grandmother's hidden earlier life, I wonder if Dr. Gates will explore some of the other branches of Miss Burnett's family tree.