NEW YORK — For 11 seasons, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has sat across from his guests on the popular PBS series “Finding Your Roots” and led them through secrets in their family tree. On Tuesday, it’s his turn.
The Harvard scholar learns a long-buried puzzle about his great-great grandmother, Jane Gates, information which scrambles his ancestry and opens up a new branch that goes back to Ireland.
“I was moved to tears,” Gates tells The Associated Press ahead of the airing. “I used to pass her grave at the Gates’ plot in Rose Hill Cemetery and I would say, ‘Grandma, I’m going to out you. I’m going to tell the world your secret.’”
“Finding Your Roots” is PBS’s most-watched program on linear TV and the most-streamed non-drama program. Season 10 reached nearly 18 million people across linear and digital platforms and also received its first Emmy nomination.
“The two subliminal messages of ’Finding Your Roots,’ which are needed more urgently today than ever, is that what has made America great is that we’re a nation of immigrants,” says Gates. “And secondly, at the level of the genome, despite our apparent physical differences, we’re 99.99% the same.”
Season 11 has featured Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, Melanie Lynskey, chef Jose Andres, Sharon Stone and Amanda Seyfried, who learned why her paternal third-great-grandfather was murdered.
Gates shares the last episode with Laurence Fishburne, who learns the identity of his biological father. It turns out both men adored jazz, which delighted Dyllan McGee, who helped create and produce “Finding Your Roots.”
“It underscored how family connections can shape us, even unknowingly, and made me wonder if reconnecting with our past somehow affirms the significance of our own stories by showing us how much each individual on our tree shapes us even when we don’t know it,” she says.
The series started in 2006 under the title “African American Lives,” conceived by Gates in the middle of the night in his bathroom. He invited prominent Black celebrities and traced their family trees into slavery. When the paper trail ran out, they would use DNA to see which ethnic group they were from in Africa.
Challenged by a viewer to open the show to non-Black celebrities, Gates agreed and the series was renamed “Faces of America,” which had to be changed again after the name was taken. Along the way, Gates had a crash course in DNA.
“For a guy with a PhD in English literature, I think I can do pretty well on the AP genetics exam,” he says, before proving it with a thorough explanation of autosomal DNA.
Over the years, the show has delivered fascinating results, like when Natalie Morales discovered she’s related to one of the legendary pirates of the Caribbean and when former “Saturday Night Live” star Andy Samberg found his biological grandmother and grandfather. It revealed that RuPaul and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker are cousins, as are Meryl Streep and Eva Longoria.
Guests have included former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, designer Diane von Furstenberg and “Game of Thrones” author George R. R. Martin.
“I always tell my guests that you’re not responsible for the crazy things your ancestors did. I don’t care what they did. Guilt is not inheritable,” Gates says. “You have to understand how the people functioned in the past without judging them.”
He and his team — particularly genetic genealogist CeCe Moore — have found that traditional family stories passed down through the generations are often filled with a few lies, often to cover up bad behavior.
“I call it where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The stories are never accurate, but they’re often close,” says Gates. “There is a kernel of truth there.”
It took researchers four years to resolve the mystery of who was Gates’ great-great grandfather, the man who impregnated Jane Gates. The story she told about her children’s father turned out to be not correct.
The researchers show him an 1888 obituary for her and a 1839 ad for her sale. Gates comments that he’s seen a thousand bill of sales like it, but this hit differently. At the end, he looks again at a photo of Jane Gates. “I see a lot of pain in those eyes and now I know why.”
“Something changed for him that day,” says McGee. “I remember him calling me after the reveal saying, ‘That was the best day of my life!’ It was such a treat for the entire team to be able to give him the gift of a missing link in his family history that he has given hundreds of our guests.”
Gates is a huge advocate that everyone should have their family tree traced and pushes back against the idea that digging up the past is divisive.
“I believe that knowing about our ancestors is fundamental to knowing about ourselves,” he says. “The only way to deal with the past is to know about the past.”
“In terms of people who would pretend that the past is irrelevant and we need to look forward, William Faulkner wrote, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past,’” Gates adds. “It’s still with us, shaping both who we are and the society and our norms under which we function.”
