Amazing AncestORS Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. searches out unknown ancestors of well-known Americans.
A
ctors Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr., comedians Margaret Cho and Wanda Sykes and musicians John Legend and Branford Marsalis are among the celebrities whose ancestors provide the mysteries researched in Finding Your Roots, a new series from renowned cultural critic and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. The basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from is at the core of the 10-part Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr., the 12th series from Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Filmed on location across the United States, the series premieres on March 25. “Finding Your Roots will be a moving, uplifting, entertaining and enlightening experience for viewers,” says Gates. “Genealogy is more popular than ever, but it’s far more than a solitary pastime. It’s a fascinating endeavor that can drastically alter both history and the way we think of ourselves.” Continuing on the quest begun in his previous projects, African American Lives (2006), African American Lives 2 (2008) and Faces of America (2010), Gates finds new ways to, as he says, “get into the DNA of American culture.” In each hourlong episode, he takes one celebrity pair bound together by an intimate, sometimes hidden link, treks through layers of ancestral history, uncovers secrets and surprises of their family trees and shares life-altering discoveries.
Opposite page, top to bottom: actor Michelle Rodriguez, musician Branford Marsalis, cantor Angela Buchdahl and singer Harry Connick Jr.
4
March–April 2012 | nineMagazine
Guest pairings include: New Orleans jazz masters and close friends Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, whose European immigrant ancestors made very different choices nineNet.org
