Henry Louis Gates

This season viewers will discover the surprising ancestral stories of 28 fascinating guests, including Carmelo Anthony, Ava DuVernay, Téa Leoni, Ana Navarro, Bernie Sanders, Questlove, and Christopher Walken.

Experience the aftermath of the Civil War — a bewildering, exhilarating and terrifying time. African Americans who had played a crucial role in the war now grapple with the terms and implications of Reconstruction and their hard-won freedom.

See African Americans in the 1900s using artistic expression against revisionist history and racism.

Larry David discovers his German heritage by way of ancestors who settled in Mobile, Alabama in the mid-19th century — including one who became a slaveholding Confederate; Bernie Sanders gains greater understanding of his father’s dangerous childhood in Austrian Galicia during World War I. Both guests discover what happened to the family members who were still in Europe during the Holocaust.

The third hour in the series marks an era of great commercial and manufacturing growth throughout several regions on the continent. It begins with the revolutionary transformation of North and West Africa. On the shores of the Sahara Desert, farmers, traders, warriors and nomads turned this region into the crossroads of some of history’s most advanced, and wealthiest, civilizations. Intricate networks of long distance trade would link up productive...

Host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. introduces viewers to the African continent through a series of expansive views and myth-busting revelations. His six-hour exploration of the African past begins at the origins of human existence. Through anthropological and scientific discoveries viewers learn that Africa is the genetic home of all currently living humanity.

The series’ fifth hour examines the tremendous changes wrought in Africa by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, flowing out of the new era of European exploration in the New World that had begun in 1492 and reached a crucial point in the 16th century. For centuries, Eastern Africa, West Africa and Northern Africa had all been tied deeply into long-distance commercial networks linking across the Eastern Hemisphere. However, the European discovery of...

Discover how the Black Church expanded its reach to address social inequality and minister to those in need, from the Jim Crow South to the heroic phase of the civil rights movement and the Black Church’s role in the present.

Uncover family mysteries about two legends of hip hop, Sean Combs and LL Cool J, through the use of DNA technology that reveals information that shakes their very foundations.

Discover how actress Julianna Marguiles, author Azar Nafisi and chef Lidia Bastianich are bound together by their ancestors’ singular and deeply human desire to preserve their most cherished traditions.