Henry Louis Gates—The Blessing of 'Knowing' Your Roots

Henry Louis Gates Jr. may not be as instantly recognizable as the stars who appear on his show Finding Your Roots, but that doesn’t mean fans don’t fuss over him. “One time a guy said, ‘Excuse me, Dr. Gates. I don’t like your politics, but I love your show. Can I have a selfie?’” the Harvard professor says over the phone from his Cambridge, Mass., home, of one airport encounter. “I said, ‘Yes, sir. That’ll be fine.’ ”

 It’s a testament to the appeal of Finding Your Roots, Gates’s PBS docuseries that over 10 seasons has welcomed celebrity guests and uncovered their family trees, often with surprising results. Thanks to the beloved show, Edward Norton learned that he and Julia Roberts are genetic cousins, Kerry Washington discovered she was conceived through a sperm donor, and Viola Davis found out that she’s related

to Anita Hill. This season, now airing, Gates, 73, reveals to Bob Odenkirk that he has ties to King Charles III and Nathan Lane. “That’s one of my favorites,” says Gates, who also recently debuted Gospel, a four-hour PBS docuseries exploring Black spirituality, and an accompanying special, Gospel Live!

Growing up in Piedmont, W.Va., Gates’s mother, Pauline, was a master seamstress, and his father, Henry, bookended days working at a paper mill with an evening job as a part-time janitor at the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. “We were working-class, but we were the most prosperous Black family in our town,” he recalls. “We had the nicest house, and I always had my own bedroom, my own bookcase, books, new textbooks and clothes. I didn’t know we were poor until I went to Yale and took a sociology class.”

Growing up he wasn’t exposed to much diversity at school. “I had one Black teacher in 12 years,” he says. In fifth grade he took a world history course that opened his eyes to the events of ancient Babylon, Egypt and Greece. “It was fabulous,” he says. As he got older, he recalls, “there was no question that [my brother and I] were going to college.”

Though Gates’s parents dreamed that he would become a doctor (his brother is an oral surgeon), he switched to an American political history major at Yale and earned his Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Cambridge. But questions about his own history always gnawed at him. Finding Your Roots was partly inspired by his creation of his first family tree in 1960. “I was 9,” he recalls. “I did it the day after we buried my father’s father, Edward St. Lawrence Gates. And he looked like a White man. He was so white, we called him Casper behind his back.”

Shortly afterward Gates found a clue about his lineage inside his grandfather’s tattered scrapbook, which contained his great-great-grandmother’s 1888 obituary. It hailed her as an “estimable colored woman” and midwife freed from slavery in 1864. That night, notebook in hand, he determinedly interviewed his parents. “I was trying to figure out how could somebody with my color, the shape of my nose, my lips, my hair texture—how could a guy with straight hair and white skin be my grandfather?” he says. “And how in the world was I related to a slave and a midwife?” When the groundbreaking miniseries Roots premiered in 1977, it reignited Gates’s longing to trace his own roots, a quest that continued in 1994 as he traveled across 3,000 miles of East Africa while taping a documentary with his then 14- and 12-year-old daughters (Liza, now 43, and Maggie, 41, with his first wife, Sharon Lynn Adams).

In 2000 Gates had a fateful meeting with Rick Kittles, a renowned Black geneticist. “I went into orbit when I found out that DNA could be used to trace your ancestry back 500 years,” he says. A few years later his “secret dream” of hosting a documentary series would become a reality after the concept of a TV show unraveling Black Americans’ roots hit him. “I was standing in the bathroom with tears running down my face, because I knew it was a good idea,” he says.

The miniseries African American Lives launched in 2006 with guests including Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman and Chris Tucker, and it evolved into Finding Your Roots, which launched in 2012.

The show has “dramatically morphed” over its 10 seasons, drawing a wide range of celebrities. Some revelations have been welcome, such as Andy Samberg finding out the identity of his grandmother in season 5, which had been previously unknown to his mother, who was adopted as an infant. Others have been less so, including Ben Affleck’s discovery that he was descended from slave owners, a detail that was omitted from his episode at the actor’s request (he later apologized). “When you spit in that test tube, you never know what’s going to pop out,” says Gates.

Finding Your Roots has grown so much in popularity that viewers have asked Gates for the opportunity to have their own genealogies explored. Because of that, three noncelebrity guests will appear this season. “It turns out that the stories of noncelebrities are just as riveting, just as emotional and just as challenging,” Gates says.

At home he and his wife, Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset, share a deep love of history. “She’s funny, smart and reads everything that I write and draft,” he says of the Cuban historian. “She’s a beautiful person, and I adore her.”

 A recent high point for the literary and history professor arrived when his granddaughter Ellie, 9, discovered he would guest-star as himself in an episode of The Simpsons. “She sent me a text message with a photograph of [herself with] her mouth open and her arms spread, saying ‘What?!’ ” he says with a laugh. “So finally, I earned some cred with my granddaughter.”

In April, Gates plans on attending a family reunion in Cumberland, Md., where Finding Your Roots’ genetic genealogist CeCe Moore will finally reveal the identity of his White great-great-grandfather. “My great-grandfather, born in 1859, died in 1945, and he had no idea what the name of his father was,” he says. “But CeCe is going to reveal his identity at long last. And then I’m going to go up to my great-great-grandmother’s grave and say, ‘Grandma, you could run, but you can’t hide!’”