Wanda Sykes and John Legend Find Their Roots

[sprywonderdog]

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reveals the ancestral pasts of musician John Legend and comedian Wanda Sykes.

Watch the full episode here:



PBS

Comments

[fabouluz]

I love Wanda Sykes.

[mots_inutiles]

Me too! Seeing this made me remember my dream last night. I was in this really weird hotel where you had to follow a maze to get to your room, and it was run by all these lesbians - including Wanda Sykes. And she lent me a book - but I had to promise to give it back! I followed the red "C" path to get to my room. lol

[caitiecait]

I wish someone would do this for me.

[zemi_chan]

Same.

[brighter]

Same here.

[sprywonderdog]

I've started doing what I could myself. This week, I found the first known picture of one of my African-American ancestors whom we weren't even aware existed. It's amazing how much she resembles my extremely pale mom.

[vicvinegar]

I just need to say that I'm head over heels in love with johns fiancée and their dog pippa

[emesieremonde]

im always amused when the black celebs think they have "native american blood" when in fact its european ancestry

[myblackass]

I know so many people that claim the same thing.

Everybody has that "100% Native American great grandmother with long straight black hair that went down her back." Never mind that she was actually white and it was probably safer for her to claim Native ancestry is she was married to a black man.

[emesieremonde]

i think it has more to do with people not wanting to talk about the non-consensual and consensual relationships between black women slaves and their white male masters. There were a lot of mixed raced children born during that time.

[cadaver_andante]

lol this actually happened in my family. my great great grandmother was a white woman with "dark" skin (dark for white ppl i guess), and she died when her children were young. her kids didn't know what her race was and assumed she was Native American because of the way she looked. some of my older cousins recently did the geneology tests and the ancestry search stuff and we found out she was a german immigrant, with no native blood at all.

[snapiphany]

I would love to trace my genealogy. But since my parents' country's record keeper let roaches and rats eat up all the records, that's pretty much impossible now.