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

Gates Jr., Henry Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1510720707 ISBN 13: 9781510720701

Publisher: Skyhorse, 2017

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From 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.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Following up on the PBS series tracing the genealogy of 19 prominent African Americans, Gates details the long and arduous efforts given the abrupt disruption of the Middle Passage and the secrets created by illicit race mixing during and after slavery. In each chapter, he highlights the personal family history of each subject and the particular challenges of tracing the family’s roots. Photographs and personal recollections of family stories add to the fascinating detail as Gates reveals to the subjects the results of searching genealogical records and using DNA testing to find their specific African origins. Among those whose roots he traced are Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, Quincy Jones, and Peter Gomes, all of whom recall cherished family legends and intimate secrets. Gates puts each search in the broader context of African American and American history with an appreciation for the texture of the lives of ordinary people in contributing to the history of a nation and the complexity of race. The final chapter offers sound advice and insight on conducting genealogical research. Gates’ famous enthusiasm for history and African American genealogy is evident throughout this fascinating book. --Vanessa Bush

About this edition

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1510720707
• ISBN 13: 9781510720701
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448