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

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Unlike most white Americans who, if they are so inclined, can search their ancestral records, identifying who among their forebears was the first to set foot on this country’s shores, most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying black men and women even their names. Yet, from that legacy of slavery, there have sprung generations who’ve struggled, thrived, and lived extraordinary lives.

For too long, African Americans’ family trees have been barren of branches, but, very recently, 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.

Those whose recovered pasts collectively form an African American “people’s history” of the United States include celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, Chris Tucker, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, and Quincy Jones; writers such as Maya Angelou and Bliss Broyard; leading thinkers such as Harvard divinity professor Peter Gomes, the Reverend T. D. Jakes, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot; and famous achievers such as astronaut Mae Jemison, media personality Tom Joyner, decathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Ebony and Jet publisher Linda Johnson Rice.

More than a work of history, In Search of Our Roots is a book of revelatory importance 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. For a reader, there is the stirring pleasure of witnessing long-forgotten struggles and triumphs–but there’s an enduring reward as well. In accompanying the nineteen contemporary achievers on their journey into the past and meeting their remarkable forebears, we come to know ourselves.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Audiobook, Justice, African American

438 pages, Hardcover

First published December 27, 2008

About the author

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating book! I have been blessed with Parents, Grandparents, and Great Grandparents who have spent a lot of time doing Genealogy work. As a result, and most likely with the help of a professional along the way, I have the names and birth dates of ancestors back to the 1300's. History has always been so much more fascinating when I can connect world events to my own family. I know I am blessed by this knowledge.

Sadly anyone of African American descent has a wall that stops any Genealogical search. When I first heard of this book by Henry Louis Gates, I knew I would want to read it. The list of famous African Americans used for this book was varied and interesting. Some were familiar to me and others were not. The stories Gates and his team were able to find about their recent ancestors (grandparents, great grandparents) were my favorite part of this book. The stories of these African Americans from the Civil War to today reminded me of a few facts I never learned in History class as a child. The Reconstruction was not a horrible miss-guided program that unfairly victimized the defeated Confederacy (yes that is what I took away from US History, and I had excellent well meaning teachings). Also, the Jim Crow era practically continued slavery in all but name. I have also come away with the knowledge that we as European Americans still carry a burden of guilt.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes Genealogy or history.

[Teri · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing read by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates surveys the lives and ancestry of nineteen African Americans tracing their roots as far back as possible utilizing written records and census data, as well as DNA data. In the same style as his PBS show Finding Your Roots, Gates interviews these nineteen people, finding out a bit about their lives before unveiling the information he and his team of genealogists have found. Each story is unique and uncovers interesting and surprising stories of struggles, hardships, and triumphs that should be of particular interest to African Americans searching for their own pasts, as well as for anyone looking to explore their heritage.

Although most of those interviewed are celebrities, some are important figures in politics, science, and media, and one is a contest winner who entered their name to be included in the project. If you are an avid viewer of Finding Your Roots, you will enjoy this book. Don't overlook the section at the end, if you are a beginner or even a novice genealogist. Gates offers advice and resources to help you on your own journey.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being African American in America is being without roots that go back further than grandparents for most. Growing up listening to so many non African American's speak of their families coming over from Ireland, England, Italy etc and knowing my African ancestral roots were stolen and brought to America without a choice is very sad. This book shows by using DNA Gates has been able to trace the biological roots back to Africa and beyond. Many were surprized to find that they had such deep European roots also.
This book makes me want to have my DNA tested to see were my people came from. Reclaiming ones past is important to all and I think especially when your past was lost for so long.

[Shawna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skip Gates and I are always in sync. I love his writing, his mind and his passion for genealogy.

[Nia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is a book that I would purchase and keep if I were actively working on my family history still. While I am pausing that work so I can write my novel, this book helps put much of that work in perspective. In particular, the two related stories from Whoopi Goldberg's family and another family later on show how getting and keeping land promised to former slaves was next to Impossible, contributing to the vast inequality we currently deal with.

There are also many parallels between those stories and that of my own great-great-grandfather Wayne Anthony Manzilla, murdered in Oklahoma in 1907, for being a black educator, as a professor, as well as his farm which was also a land grant.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nophoto-f-25x33 If there is anything that binds people of all races and cultures together, it’s the need for roots, to know where we come from and above all who we come from. We sense, somehow, that as in the normal course of nature, who we are and become springs from who our parents and ancestors were.

For African Americans, it is more difficult than for most to trace their family history...particularly back into the slavery years, much less prior to that. Mr. Gates proposed, as a project, to compile everything he and his researchers could find about the genealogy and even genetic history of a number of incredibly famous African Americans and see what it told him, and them, about family, about race, about the legacies we inherit and all the ways family forms us all. (He was obviously quite familiar with the family history resources of the church and made a point of telling people how they could get in contact with church family history centers.)

Mr. Gates often digresses into discussions of slavery, racial discrimination, the state of race relations in the United States, and the experiences and perspectives of his subjects in regards to issues of race. I don’t think it merits a full four stars, just that it’s closer to the 4 end of than the 3 end. Still, I think it was valuable in helping me to understand better how the stresses of slavery and later segregation have impacted black families and why many black families in the United States continue to struggle. (For so many years, so many weren’t allowed to hold their families together. Then, after slavery ended, the older generations stayed largely silent about their past, as if they were ashamed. They worked so very hard to try to make a living for themselves and their families in the midst of segregation and prejudice, but the younger generations struggled, perhaps without some of the guidance they needed.) You have to admire the courage and character and stories of so many people the author had the chance to share with their famous posterity. Most importantly, it rekindled my fascination with my own family history. How much is there that I don’t know about my ancestors? Where they lived? How they lived? Their great joys and their great sorrows? It’s not just dates...it’s what we learn about who our ancestors were and what was important to them and how they weathered their challenges. It’s an incredible inheritance that has been passed down to each of us through generations of hardship and hard work.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I might have rated this book a little higher had I not already seen the PBS programs on which it was based -- it's quite good, it was just that a lot of the information wasn't new to me. Gates, with the aid of genealogists and DNA testing, explored the family histories of such well-known African-Americans as Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Chris Rock, and Don Cheadle, among others. In almost every case, he hit the well-known "brick wall" sometime before 1870, the first census taken after Emancipation. Before that, it's very difficult to be sure about slave identities. Many of the people Gates worked with had some impressive stories in their family trees -- stories they had never heard (for example, an ancestor of comedian Chris Rock was a state legislator in South Carolina during Reconstruction). After exhausting the genealogical possibilities of the documentary record, each of the subjects had DNA testing, revealing the percentage of their DNA that came from African, European, Asian and Native American ancestors, and suggesting the parts of Africa from which the African ancestors came. The television programs actually did a better job of explaining the possibilities and limits of DNA testing than the book.

Reading this book made me feel very fortunate that, as a genealogist, my one African-American ancestor had a first and last name as early as 1785, because he was free and lived in the District of Maine. The book would be interesting even to people with no African-American roots because of its insights into black culture and U.S. history, its description of genealogical method, and the interesting people who were interviewed.

[Tanna Rothert]

I read the book “In Search Of Our Roots”, by Henry Louis Gates. The book is based off of 19 individual stories of African Americans trying to reclaim their past. The novel stands out from any other book I’ve read because of its inspirational strength brought in each chapter. The novel includes many stories from known names to “normal” citizens. A known name like Oprah Winfrey, to a not so known Morgan Freeman.
My opinion on this novel is very inspirational. I believe Henry wrote this novel to knowledge his readers on retracing their roots, finding out where they’re from. In the novel most of the stories related back to a slave history. The book expresses the difficulties on how hard it is to retrace your roots, especially in the years of slavery.
I believe the theme of this book is being whole. Being whole to me is the knowledge of knowing where you’re from. Further past your grandparents and great-grandparents. Being whole is knowing your ethnicity, where your ancestors grew up, where they immigrated to, basically back to as far as you can imagine. While reading this book it encouraged me to look further into myself. Turns out I learned a lot about my ancestors and where they came from.
I would encourage people to read this book! I enjoyed it more than I imagined, being that history is my least favorite subject! I believe anyone is able to read this book with the right maturity level and knowledge to relate back into the novel. That being said I think the style of this book is maturity. This novel encouraged me to look further into my roots as all 19 of the African Americans did.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book partly because it is so important (for all of us to understand American history through this lens) and because the stories in it were so interesting. The book was produced in conjunction with a PBS TV series (the series is well watching, especially if you don't have the time or patience for a long book). Henry Louis Gates worked with genealogists and scientists to reconstruct family trees for the titular 19 people, and then presents the stories in the context of African roots, slavery, reconstruction, and the great northern migration. Many of the individuals profiled are household names (Oprah, Whoopie Goldberg, Chris Rock) and others are less well known. Each individual history is fascinating. While most family records can only be traced back as far as one or two generations of enslaved ancestors (or less), DNA testing can determine the admixture of origin (e.g., what % of your DNA comes from Africa, Europe, Native America or Asia) and in some cases maternal/paternal lineage (tracing back the female or male lines and matching against a database of current DNA distribution), so that a particular region or people of Africa are identified as ancestors.

These stories are so moving, and it is so important to understand these individual histories to better grasp the legacy of slavery in the US today. I highly recommend this book.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

We’ve been really enjoying Professor Gates’ current PBS series “Finding Your Roots” so this was both familiar and full of new, interesting ideas. This work, based on two early documentaries that predate the current series, presents the family histories and genetic heritage of 19 individuals, most celebrities. What stood out the most to me is a point that Gates himself makes a number of times throughout this work – that while there are common themes, there is no one story of the African-American experience. While some histories were bare details or familiar stories of oppression and abuse, there were many tales from the past of relationships across color lines that continued long after the end of slavery, family lines of free people of color dating from nearly before America was America, and even a history intertwined with that of the Chickasaw tribe and the trail of tears. I found each of these histories fascinating and learning these individual experiences really helped give me a much broader sense of American history and how deeply intermeshed the genetic threads of race are in all of us. Great “listen” and well worth my time!

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. At first, I was most interested about the family histories of the celebrities. But after you read a few chapters, you realize what you are really getting is a glimpse into the many realities of African-Americans in the 1800's & 1900's. Some whose families had always been free, some whose families were generations of slaves. I learned more about the Great Migration. It was fascinating to see how different people's family legacies supported, encouraged, and inspired them. And definitely made me want to do some further genealogical research in my own family (and in Darryl's family too - wondering what I would find!). At the end, there were just too many chapters, and I skipped a couple. Thankfully, I went back and read the chapter on Bliss Brown (I think that's the name). Fascinating story.

[Jenny Shipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book!! I heard it on tape, a wonderful reader. But mostly, I just loved the stories and what I learned. It is thrilling, moving and just great. Let's see, he takes Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman, Whoopee Goldburg and 16 other wonderful African American people, so many that I didn't know and now know so much about, and he beautifully and simply and movingly talks about family, and how you look back and why and I learned to have such a rich, multifaceted picture of African American history in America and Africa. It is a great listen and probably a really great read. I recommend it to everybody. If you can, try to get it on Audible, It is read by Dominic Hoffman, I believe. I really got my brain and hear opened up. Enjoy, everybody!

[Richard Harden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unknown, unrecorded episodes from the African-American experience are discovered and presented here through the tracing of the genealogy of nineteen African-Americans, many of whom are household names. This book is well worth reading for the wealth of information uncovered, not just for African-Americans, but for everyone.

Take your time with this book. Give yourself the time to read and review each of the entries, to think about what you learned, to internalize the lessons about American, African and African-American history. If you're interested in genealogy, there is plenty here as well.

[Vilo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The companion book to the TV series where a team of researchers present a well-known African-American with their family tree. Fascinating stories of ancestors who were ordinary people, the sort of people who would have remained unknown to history if not being researched as part of a family history. The book therefore reveals the complexities beyond the broad outlines of American history. One chapter is the family history of a completely ordinary contemporary woman. Her ancestors had some of the most amazing stories of all. The book provides more insight into human relationships, the will to survive and thrive and what can be overcome than a literary novel.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had seen the documentary series that Henry Gates did a few years ago and was fascinated and horrified at the same time. This book is the written version of his research.

I am very, very interested in genealogy and have traced a branch of my family back to the 1400's. This book traces the ancestor's of 19 African Americans. Think about it, how far back do you think they were able to go? To slavery and dead ends. How very sad and terrible.

This is a fascinating book and I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Mona · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "Our" in "...Our Roots" refers to African-Americans, but any American could find this interesting, as it discusses many roots into our collective history. There are a few common narratives when discussing the period of slavery in the US. In this book, many other actualities are discussed. There is also a great section in the end with an emphasis on African-Americans, but which anyone interested in their own family historycan use, regarding the many data sources available for genealogical research and helpful hints on how to get the most out of these resources.

[Josephine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you like genealogy? Do you like reading history that you, likely, didn't learn in school? Do you enjoy reading about lives of famous people? If you answered yes to any of those questions you'll love this book. Don't let the size daunt you, it's an amazingly quick read. Gates pulls together each person as a chapter and ends the book with links and books which can help the reader find their own roots. Even for the reader who doesn't have African American roots, there are good resources included. For the African American, he collected the best resources to help research family trees.

[Alexander Kwok · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seemed to follow the same path as roots, except examined not only the lives of famous celebrities in brief, but also went farther than normal ancestral records to using DNA testing. Includes commentary from celebrities to mirror a such conversation concerning the results and their feelings.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great genealogy read. Interesting that all of African Americans in the book want to know where their black ancestors came from in Africa, but not necessarily their white ancestor. Also gave DNA rsults as to % of each ethnicity

[5katya5 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fascinating and just so interesting to see what those interviewed knew or had been told about their roots; and what they didn't know - then to see the biological and on the ground research revealed and shared with them. Loved this book.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

So fascinating!

[Ratforce]

For an examination of the practical uses of DNA testing in genealogy, try these accounts of prominent African Americans using the technology to illuminate their lost family histories.

[Tracy Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting how all these African American people regained the strength to change their fate and ended up on top! Awesome story!

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting

[Debbie]

in reading blood, this book was mentioned.

[Sabra · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were too many stories and I started to get very very bored with the redundancies. Also, the over reliance on DNA ancestry was just sad. My parents have thrown hundreds of dollars away on those tests. Read the bottom, “results are only near 50% accurate.” Take a guess at who gets to determine “accuracy”. The companies themselves. They are unregulated too. Also, they don’t share their data with one another. All provide various results just depending on which company I choose and take samples from modern day populations. The results aren’t sound, just expensive, time wasting fun that probably hurts people with their inaccurate and misleading results. Also, mormons are all over geneaology (following the old, white man made commandment to baptize their dead into mormonism) and so it can be hard to engage in family history searches without financially supporting this ridiculously wealthy corporation. It’s really hard trying not to contribute to wealthy corporations who exploit people to make money in today’s world. I also don’t like them having my family history because I don’t want them adding the names of my dead family into their church/corporate/pseudo-religious rosters via temple baptisms.

[Will Plunkett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never considered the vital significance of the 1870 US Census before (first time slaves were rightfully included as human beings on that every-decade tabulation). Each entry could be read independently, or in order of each person's birth as it was constructed. It's amazing what we as people learn when we didn't even know what it was we didn't know (this will always be the value of printed documents/books, over search-for-only-what-you-type-in online sources). Wonderful research, and well-written analysis and descriptions.

[Rowland Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

African-American Genealogy and History

This is a thorough and engaging view of African-American history as explored through the genealogy of key black figures and celebrities. The stories are intriguing and are used as a base for looking at the migrations of the African-American population both from Africa and within the United States. A lot of information here in an easily digestible form. Well worth the time for anyone interested in African-American history or genealogy.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The audio version is excellent, I have listened to it multiple times. This is one of the most worthwhile books I've ever read/heard. What a loss to all the people that have no idea what real American history is and the catastrophic, indecent failure the nation has done to millions of human beings.

[Karan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Subject matter is great, but Gates’ writing style is so bland and pedestrian - it’s like he’s trying to make these great stories as dull as possible. Four stars for substance, negative two stars for painfully plodding writing.