Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Dr. Gates takes the guest through history. He weaves the stories of forefathers with an eloquence that leaves the audience spellbound. The research is amazing but when Dr. Gates introduces the past to the present, it is truly magical. The profiles are beautiful and at times agonizing, but the past woven so articulately to the history of family is wonderful. It absolutely should be shown in history classes as it draws you into the eras of yesterday while letting the guests learn about occurences and activities that lead to who they are today. Brilliant work.

I didn't realize this is a show from. 2012. I found it on late night PBS. I love this slice of history. Dr. Gates is masterful.

Genealogical research is often fascinating, illuminating and addictive. But here's the thing about televising something that involves a lot of library time and reading -- you have to make it engaging. Finding Your Roots means well but it is nowhere near as fun or interesting to watch as another genealogical show, Who Do You Think You Are, currently airing on TLC. Unfortunately, it is Gates himself that is a drag on the show. He is a scholar and a professor and his sit downs with his guests come across like a dry lecture. The guests show up like good students for the lecture but they have had little or no personal involvement in the quest up to that point. And frankly some of them don't look too interested in their own stories.

I've been involved in genealogical research for many decades and I have learned some remarkable things at the hands of Professor Gates and his association with PBS. I don't want the show to disappear but I would encourage PBS to reformat it in favor of engaging both the guest and the viewer to a higher degree. They have the perfect opportunity to do that in the wake of the revelation that Gates and the show's producers covered up the facts of Ben Affleck's slave owning ancestry.

I am not that into genealogy that much. But, for me learning about the genealogy of famous people is fascinating.

On finding your roots there are usually 3 guests on each episode. Luis gates sits at a table with each guest and takes them through their genealogy. The show switches back and forth between guests.

And sometimes Luis gates jr even finds that two of the guests on the show are related or that a guest on the show is related some someone else famous.

It always interesting.

Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates is soaring high this season. The celebrity guests are awesome. The American history, the story telling, and the surprise endings are so moving. Every episode is a must watch. Science Pioneers, The Slave Trade, Beyond the Pale, Secrets & Lies, Off the Farm, Italian Roots. I can't pick a favorite because they are all so good. Keep the stories coming! I love this show.

I started to watch this a few days ago and couldn't stop watching. I laughed and I cried while learning about people I never knew existed and had no relationship to me.

Another reviewer complained that the program is not telling the whole story about slavery and our founding fathers. No historical record can tell the whole story. We get bits and pieces from various sources.

When I studied U.S. history in school ---I'm 73, as I write this ---no one mentioned that many of our founding fathers had slaves. I learned that information during the intervening years because I've read a lot of history and watched many documentaries. But for many, who don't read history, this may be new information.

I learned much myself from the episodes I watched. For example, I didn't know that freed slaves were often captured and placed back into slavery. I didn't know that some free slaves bought their relatives and had to keep them as legal slaves so they could not be put back into slavery by someone else. I also learned heartwarming stories of slave owners who freed their slaves and gave them property before the Civil War, which I assumed was extremely rare.

I was impressed at how many people were willing to give DNA samples that could possibly prove that their slave-owning ancestors fathered the children of slaves, thus completing some stories about certain branches of a family.

The one thing that everyone can take away from these episodes is that our genetic makeup is rarely pure. We are mostly a combination of ethnicities and races, and therefore racism is not only harmful but stupid. Most of us don't know where all of our ancestors began their lives and under what hardships they lived in order to make life better for their heirs. No matter where they cam from, they contributed to who we are now.