Season 1 · Episode 2 — John Lewis and Cory Booker
In this episode, we feature two African American politicians from different generations and opposite backgrounds. John Lewis grew up in a sharecropping family in rural Georgia, while Cory Booker was raised in an affluent, all-white New Jersey suburb. Although both men have devoted their lives to the betterment of African-American people, neither of them knows much about their own ancestors. In this episode, we introduce Booker to his white great-grandfather, a man he never knew, and move Lewis to tears over the extraordinary ambitions and accomplishments of his slave ancestors..
Season 1 episodes
E1Their European immigrant ancestors blazed unconventional trails in America, from capturing British ships for the American Revolution to cro…
E2In this episode, we feature two African American politicians from different generations and opposite backgrounds. John Lewis grew up in a s…
E3What's in a name? Well, a lot, at least when it comes to piecing together your family history. For former slaves, choosing a last name was…
E4What do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have in common? They are both famous actors and both descend from prominent American families that ha…
E5Pastor Rick Warren, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Sheik Yasir Qadhi are of three different faiths, all with complex family histories that profo…
E6Many American descend from a dense soups of European ethnicities; we could call them mutts, with ancestral roots across every country in Eu…
E7Samuel L. Jackson, Condoleezza Rice and Brown University President Ruth Simmons have each climbed to the pinnacle of their profession, yet…
E8The three guests in this episode are all children of first- or second-generation immigrants and share the peculiar burdens of that heritage…
E9Most African Americans struggle to trace their ancestors beyond Emancipation; slavery erased names and family ties with brutal efficiency.…
E10Michelle Rodriguez, Adrian Grenier and Linda Chavez all share Spanish colonial roots, yet each views their own identity very differently. I…