The stars learn their roots

With his

African American Lives 2,

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has found just the right place to nestle African American history between scholarship and drama.

This four-part PBS series, which debuts tomorrow night with the first two episodes and concludes Feb. 13 with the remaining two, combines genealogical research and cutting-edge analysis to help a group of well-known African Americans, including Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, Maya Angelou and Don Cheadle, trace their roots to Africa and Europe.

Their curiosity swells and ripens before the truth comes oozing out, whether they, or we, like the taste or not.

We know them as performers, but in this illuminating series, we see these stars taken aback, unprepared for what they learn about their genetic history.

The genetic codes, shipping records and family Bibles filled in gaps and told many different stories of love, rape and slavery, weaving a complex fabric of enlightenment for me, an African American.

I was shocked at some of the revelations; other times I was moved to a sentiment of "I knew that!"

This series is a sequel to African American Lives, the four-part PBS documentary broadcast in 2006. Like African American Lives 2, it placed black Americans fully in the discussion of American history and established them as a unique racial blend.

For contemporary Americans, slavery seems very distant, a piece of long-ago history. Talking about reparations had been moot because few black people could produce proof of their ancestors' labor; if asked, I could not give this information about mine. That no longer is the case.

Witnessing these celebrities crying, being vulnerable to the truth of science, choked me up.

Comedian Chris Rock and radio host and commentator Tom Joyner are mainstays of African American entertainment culture. Known for their humor, here they show us their serious side. And they appear moved. Rock could not hold back the tears of pride as he learned of the accomplishments of an ancestor who had been a slave for 21 years, fought as a Union soldier, and, though he started with nothing, became a landholder and a South Carolina government official.

He said the knowledge gave him new clarity about his existence and the existence of his people. Like many of us, Rock was blind to what it took from everyone to build America.

I hold my tongue every day about the residual effects of slavery and its greedy exploitation. You hear folks say that it all happened so long ago, that I didn't own any slaves. But American history is like a string of pearls; if you try to snatch one of them away, all the pearls fall. The truth may make you uncomfortable, but it keeps the string together.

I was amazed at the complexity of relationships between slaves and their former owners. Two of Freeman's ancestors, a black woman and a white man, lived together, had children together, and are buried together, but couldn't legally marry.

My own reactions were as varied as those of the people Gates profiles. Enlightenment produced tears, thousand-yard stares, and even laughter in these high-profile celebrities as the secrets of their ancestry were exposed.

The blending of so-called races produced the phenomenon of "passing," short for "passing for white." Like many African Americans, I can share photos in my family album of someone from the present or past who lived as white.

Author Bliss Broyard, daughter of New York Times critic Anatole Broyard, finds with Gates' help that she is 17.2 percent black. Today, her perception of the world is still transforming her emotionally and psychologically.

I wonder how many "blacks" are passing. Being black or white is a matter of how you are perceived.

The new evidence revealed in African American Lives 2 continues to stimulate me. I realize that in many ways our lineage is designed. We were engineered to help build America.

And we Americans did a damn good job, too!

For more information, go to the series Web site at http://go.philly.com/aalivesEndText