From AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES (2006) through the first season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS (2012), Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.
Joining Gates in this new season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS will be a diverse group of guests, including Oscar winner Ben Affleck, award winning journalist Anderson Cooper, tennis great Billie Jean King, legendary author Stephen King, multi-platinum selling rapper Nas, and many more. With these guests and others, Gates continues his quest to understand our collective American identity, bringing to life the family histories of African American, Asian, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Latin American guests alike.
Share Your Story
Every family has a unique genealogical journey, just waiting to be unlocked. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. asks you to share your own story!
Over 10 episodes (Tuesdays, September 23 - November 26, 2014), the series will reveal rich family stories, tracing back to the subjects’ ancestors arrival on America’s shores, and beyond: deep into the history of their countries of origin. Each hour will highlight three guests bound together by an intimate, sometimes hidden link, as Gates treks through layers of ancestral history, uncovers secrets and surprises of their family trees and shares life-altering discoveries.
Episode Eight: "The British Are Coming" airs Tuesday, November 11 at 8 p.m. - Sally Field learns that she descends from William Bradford, who arrived on the Mayflower and helped his fellow Puritans establish their new lives in colonial America. Her ancestors sided with the British crown during the war for independence and paid the ultimate price. Deepak Chopra’s family made a similar gamble while living under harsh British rule in India — his grandparents pledged their loyalty to the British in hopes of achieving a higher place in society, and his father chose to fight alongside British soldiers during WWII. Sting’s ancestors, who fueled Great Britain’s world dominance during the Pax Britannica by building its merchant ships and working in its coal mines, toiled under unbearable working conditions and Dickensian poverty.
NEXT WEEK: Episode Nine: "Ancient Roots" features Tina Fey, David Sedaris and George Stephanopoulos.
Past episodes are available for online viewing. FINDING YOUR ROOTS is on Facebook, and you can follow @HenryLouisGates on Twitter.
Sally Field's Loyalist Ancestor
"With the help of Henry Louis Gates
Deepak Chopra's Ancestral Pilgrimage
"Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels to the holy Ganges River
The Key to Sting's Ancestral Journey
"Using newly discovered records
Share Your Story Prompt
"Henry Louis Gates
