Henry Louis Gates Jr. On Finding White People's Surprising Black Roots

someone made a joke that I am probably the most DNA tested black man in the history of of the world and the most genealogically analyzed and that's of course because of uh finding Roots which as you well know um I I got the idea back in in the year 2000 really in part because the introduction that you made to Dr Rick K who analyzed my DNA and then three years later in 2003 I formulated the whole idea that became um FY Roots we started filming in 2004 and I'm I only did Black guest then and now it's morphed into find your roots and we do you know everybody and Latifa in 1860 they are listed by name in the census so what does that mean that means they weren't slaves that means you descend from free nro do you know we have four and a half million people who watch Finding Your Roots every we I I'm so fascinated when I watch the show and you all these all these um white actors who black people already thought might have had black in them and you reveal that they have African Roots well it's U it's quite a shock to people Carly Simon is a good friend so I would look at her lips it's kind of like MC Jagger lips I look at those lips and I said damn I got to do that DNA so it turns out I was right her grandmother pretended to to be the child of the king of Spain and a Moroccan slave she was a black woman from Cuba so interested about that you know if you look at um an an Instagram and Tik Tok and everybody's looking at you know cliets of of you talking to her and saying she's the most the blackest white person you ever had on any show and all the black people in the comments were like we've been knowing this for years my mother used to say she's I I believe she has black in her Johnny cass's wife you know uh passing as Italian um but but her family was black and you know these are people highly admixed you know what we used to call mulatos Clint Black the country music singer was 3% black the biggest surprise recently was the actor Joe manganelo yes and Joe Mangano's was from Boston his father and his father always got darker in the summer than his his um his siblings and people would make you know you know those kind of jokes about it Joe's grandmother liked to play the numbers and she would go to this this pool hall which was owned by these three black guys and it turned out when we did his DNA I had to call him and I say Joe you are definitely descended from a black great-grandfather and he had to call his father and tell him that his father's mother uh his grandmother had had an affair with a black man and we found his identity in fact we finally nailed down his we knew it was one of the Three Brothers I can't believe your timing we nailed down the which of the brothers it was yesterday what just yesterday and we're gonna do a sequel with Joe manganello and show to show how CC Moore pieced together over the last two years since we aired this episode how she found which of the three brothers it was

Channel: The Root

Views: 451,309

Keywords: the root, henry louis gates jr, henry louis gates jr finding your roots, henry louis gates jr interview

Id: RgaYcDPkgkc

Length: 3min 25sec (205 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024