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Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 11:00 AM EST
African-American Lives
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By host Tom Ashbrook:

Oprah Winfrey didn’t know. Quincy Jones didn’t know. Whoopi Goldberg didn’t know. Even Henry Louis Gates Jr. – academia’s “Captain Africa,” the man who edited the continent’s encyclopedia — didn’t know where his family, its genealogy and its genetics really traced to.

Like millions of African-Americans, their family stories, their family trees, were lost in the apocalypse of slavery. Names, lost. Countries of origin, lost. Trails of paternity lost and hijacked by slave owners.

Now, with a lot of research and new genetic science, Oprah and Whoopi and Quincy and Skip Gates and many more are discovering family trees and big surprises.

Guests:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Professor of Humanities, Harvard University.

 
 

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