ICYMI: “Finding Your Roots” featuring Secretary Lonnie Bunch

Americans tend to have short historical memories, especially when it comes to our own families. Many of us cannot name our great-grandparents, others only have half-remembered stories about our families’ origins.

Actor Sheryl Lee Ralph and Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G Bunch both appeared on the April 2 edition of “Finding Your Roots.”

For more than a decade, renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has helped to expand America’s sense of itself, stimulating a national conversation about identity with humor, wisdom, and compassion. Gates has explored the ancestry of dozens of influential people on PBS’ “Finding Your Roots,” taking millions of viewers deep into the past to reveal the connections that bind us all.

In the most recent episode, “Finding Your Roots: Moving on Up,” Gates meets actor Sheryl Lee Ralph and historian (and our own Smithsonian Secretary) Lonnie Bunch—two African Americans whose ancestors broke boundaries as they moved from slavery to freedom. Traveling from plantations in the south to cities in the north, Gates uses his detective skills to piece together the lives of women and men who survived unimaginable ordeals—and emerged to forge thriving families.

If you did not see the program when it originally aired, you can access it at this link: Finding Your Roots | Moving On Up | Season 11 | Episode 9 | PBS. 

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