Gates’s ‘Finding Your Roots’ is beginning its fourth season - The Washington Post: It wasn’t a question of whether his ancestors had been slaves. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a son of the Old South and one of the country’s leading civil rights pioneers, knew that to be true.But what he learned about one of his enslaved ancestors, guided by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., caused him to break down and cry.
Gates says that Lewis’s story is one of the most powerful of his new PBS series, “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” The 10-part program premieres Sunday.
“Finding Your Roots” is the fourth installment of Gates’s popular franchise, in which he digs into the genealogy of famous Americans. This go-round Gates looks into the backgrounds of 25 individuals, including actors Michelle Rodriguez, Robert Downey Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson; media personalities Barbara Walters and Sanjay Gupta; religious leaders Angela Buchdahl, Yasir Qadhi and Rick Warren; and political figures Condoleezza Rice and Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. The series runs through May 20.
