In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Overview

Unlike most white Americans who can search their ancestral records, identifying who among their forebears was the first to step foot on this country’s shores, most African Americans encounter a series of daunting obstacles when trying to trace their family’s past. Slavery brutally negated identity, denying black men and women even their names. But from that legacy of slavery have sprung generations who’ve struggled, thrived, and lived extraordinary lives.

For too long, African Americans’ family trees have been barren of branches, but advanced genetic testing techniques, combined with archival research, have begun to fill in the gaps. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes nineteen extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through U.S. history and back to Africa.

Dr. Gates brings to life the recovered pasts of:

Oprah Winfrey
Whoopi Goldberg
Chris Rock
Tina Turner
Maya Angelou
Peter Gomes
Mae Jemison
Quincy Jones
Morgan Freeman
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Tom Joyner
Benjamin Carson
T.D. Jakes
Linda Johnson Rice
Kathleen Henderson
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Don Cheadle
Bliss Broyard
Chris Tucker

More than a work of history, In Search of Our Roots is an important book that, for the first time, brings to light the lives of ordinary men and women who, by courageous example, blazed a path for their famous descendants. In accompanying the nineteen contemporary achievers on their journey into the past and meeting their remarkable forebears, we come to know ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510720701
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author or co-author of twenty-one books and has created fifteen documentary films, including Finding Your Roots, his groundbreaking genealogy series on PBS.

Read an Excerpt

Maya Angelou April 4, 1928
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "In Search of Our Roots"
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Copyright © 2009 Henry Louis Gates.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Family Matters 1

Prefatory Notes on the African Slave Trade 15

Maya Angelou 23

Quincy Jones 41

Morgan Freeman 58

Tina Turner 80

Peter J. Gomes 104

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot 130

Tom Joyner 153

Benjamin Carson 179

Oprah Winfrey 200

Whoopi Goldberg 225

Mae Jemison 242

T. D. Jakes 260

Linda Johnson Rice 287

Kathleen Henderson 308

Jackie Joyner-Kersee 325

Don Cheadle 344

Chris Rock 361

Bliss Broyard 380

Chris Tucker 397

How To Trace Your Own Roots 415

Acknowledgments 425

Index 427

Editorial Reviews

Gates’ famous enthusiasm for history and African American genealogy is evident throughout this fascinating book.” —Booklist

"Bright, inquisitive take on the multifarious murky stories and relationships that make up the history of a dispossessed people." —Kirkus

“Gates’ famous enthusiasm for history and African American genealogy is evident throughout this fascinating book.” —Booklist

"Bright, inquisitive take on the multifarious murky stories and relationships that make up the history of a dispossessed people." —Kirkus

From the Publisher

In this companion book to a two-part PBS series, Gates (Colored People) combines rigorous historical research with DNA analysis to recreate the family trees of African-American celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones, as well as intellectuals, authors, comedians, musicians and athletes. Most of the subjects knew very little about ancestors as recent as grandparents, to say nothing of the information DNA results provided about their African and European ancestry. Gates connects gaps in ancestral knowledge to the fundamental evil of the American slave era, when slave owners and sellers purposely "robbed black human beings of... all aspects of civilization that make a human being 'human': names, birth dates, family ties." Though the book relies too heavily on the notion that knowing one's ancestry leads to a better understanding of aspects of one's own personality, Gates proves in case after case that the past brings itself to bear on the present. In Chris Rock's case, had he known he had a 19th-century ancestor who had served as a South Carolina legislator, "it might have taken away the inevitability that I was going to be nothing." (Jan.)

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Publishers Weekly

Harvard historian Gates argues that family history has a special place in African American culture, in part because the American institution of slavery allowed for the creation of precious few records of African Americans' lives. By detailing individuals' stories, he writes, we may tell an important part of the larger American story. In these genealogies, Gates uses the search for the family history of 19 notable African Americans to form a narrative that goes beyond family lore. He illuminates the technical challenges of tracing African Americans' roots, but he also shares his famous subjects' memories and reflections about their families' reticence in discussing slavery or telling ancestors' stories about it. These elements combine in an intelligent narrative that will be accessible even to those who aren't genealogists. A closing chapter introduces some of the tools and methods for African American genealogical research, with bibliographic sources. This book is an able companion to the PBS series Gates hosted, but it stands on its own as well. Essential for genealogy collections; recommended for all public and high school libraries.
—Emily-Jane Dawson

Library Journal

Chatty companion volume to the landmark PBS documentary African American Lives. The folksy persona displayed onscreen by the two-part program's writer/producer was a decided change of pace for gadfly public intellectual Gates (director, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute/Harvard Univ.; America Behind the Color Line, 2004, etc.), whose scholarly work can be starchy. Often going by his nickname "Skip," Gates led celebrity guests like Maya Angelou, Quincy Jones and Morgan Freeman through their family history, with an impressive team of genealogists and DNA scientists helping to clear up many mysteries. That same engaging tone emanates from this book, which covers all 19 people profiled on the show and adds a chapter on "How to Trace Your Own Roots." It's the rare African-American family that can track any relative back past the 19th century, and none of Gates's guests knew nearly as much about their family as they would have liked. ("I just want to know exactly what happened, whatever it is," was a common statement.) There's not a dull story in these pages. Tina Turner found out she was actually one-third white: "So that's why I love Europe," she quipped. Reverend Peter J. Gomes learned that his Cape Verdean background included several Jewish ancestors. Don Cheadle's ancestors were owned, not by whites, but by Native Americans. Long-held family myths were dispelled by hard genealogical or genetic data, often prompting very emotional responses, but the historical truths that replaced them were sometimes even more fascinating. Like the documentary, the book aims to be as approachable as possible-Gates's frequent use of "we" is a nicely familial touch-but there are times when this stance becomesrepetitive and bland, despite the intrinsically intriguing material. In the end, though, Gates achieves his goal: to produce a Roots for the 21st century. Bright, inquisitive take on the multifarious murky stories and relationships that make up the history of a dispossessed people. Author tour to Washington D.C., New York, Boston

Kirkus Reviews