Henry Louis Gates Jr. goes from the host to guest in PBS ” Finding Your Roots’

For 11 seasons Henry Louis Gates Jr. He sat opposite his guests in the popular PBS series “Finding Your Roots” and led them through secrets in a family tree. His activate Tuesday.

Scholar from Harvard learns an extended -term puzzle about his great -grandmother, Jane Gates, information that assaults his ancestors and opens a brand new unit that returns to Ireland.

“I was transferred to tears,” says Gates Associated Press before broadcasting. “I used to pass her grave to the gates of the gates at the Rose Hill cemetery and I would say:” Grandma, I’m going to overtake you. I’ll tell the world what secret. “

“Finding Your Roots” is the most-watched PBS program on line TV and the mostly saved non-draft program. Season 10 reached almost 18 million people on line and digital platforms, and likewise received the first nomination to Emma.

“Two subliminal messages” Finding Your Roots “, which are needed more urgently than ever, is that what made America the great is that we are an immigrant nation,” says Gates. “Secondly, at the genome level, despite our apparent physical differences, we are 99.99% in the same way.”

Season secrets 11

In season 11, Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, Melanie Lynskey, chef Jose Andres, Sharon Stone and Amanda Seyfried, who learned why her fatherly third work was murdered was murdered.

Gates shares the last episode with Laurence Fishburne, who learns the identity of his biological father. It seems that each men loved jazz, who delighted Dylllan McGee, who helped to create and produce “finding your roots.”

“This emphasized how family connections can shape us, and even unconsciously, and made me wonder if the re -connection with our past confirms the importance of our own stories in some way, showing how much every person in our trees shapes us, even if we don’t know,” he says.

How did it start

The series began in 2006 entitled “African American Lives”, invented by Gates in the middle of the night in his bathroom. He invited outstanding black celebrities and traced their family trees in slavery. When the paper trail ended, they used DNA to see which ethnic group they got here from in Africa.

Gates agreed that the challenge for the viewer about the opening of the program of non-black celebrities agreed, and the series was renamed the “faces of America”, which had to be modified again after the name was adopted. Along the way, Gates had an emergency course in DNA.

“For a guy with a doctorate in English literature, I think I can do quite well at the AP Genetics exam,” he says before he would prove it with a radical explanation of the autosomal DNA.

Over the years, the series brought fascinating results, for instance when Natalie Morales discovered that she was related to one among the legendary pirates of the Caribbean, and when there was the star “Saturnay Night Live” Andy Samberg found her biological grandmother and grandfather. Revealed that Rupaul i US Senator Cory Booker They are cousins, identical to Meryl Streep Eva Longoria.

Guests were former marshal of the American home Paul Ryan, director of the National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, designer Diane von Furstenberg and the writer of “Game of Thrones” George RR Martin.

“I always tell my guests that you are not responsible for crazy things that your ancestors did. I don’t care what they did. The fault is not inherited,” says Gates. “You must understand how people functioned in the past without judging them.”

Kernel Truth

He and his team – especially the genetic genealogist Cece Moore – found that traditional family stories passed on by generations are sometimes crammed with several lies, often to hide bad behavior.

“I call it where there is smoke, there is fire. Stories are never accurate, but they are often close,” says Gates. “There is a nucleus of truth.”

The researchers took 4 years to solve the mystery of the one who was the great -grandfather of Gates, a person who impregnated Jane Gates. The story she told about her kid’s father turned out to be incorrect.

Scientists show him an obituary in 1888 for her and promoting from 1839 for selling her. Gates comments that he saw a thousand sales accounts, nevertheless it struck in another way. Finally, he looks at the photo of Jane Gates again. “I see a lot of pain in these eyes and now I know why.”

“Something has changed that day,” says McGee. “I remember how he called me after revealing, saying:” It was the best day in my life! “For the whole team it was such a feast that she could give him a missing link in the history of his family that he gave hundreds of our guests. “

Gates is an important lawyer that everybody should trace the family tree and moves away against the concept that digging the past is dividing.

“I think that knowledge about our ancestors is of fundamental importance for knowledge about ourselves,” he says. “Knowledge about the past is the only way to deal with the past.”

“When it comes to people who would pretend that the past is irrelevant and we must look to the future, William Faulkner wrote:” The past isn’t dead. It’s not even a past ” – adds Gates. “He continues to be with us, shaping each who we’re, in addition to the society and our standards in which we operate.”