Morgan Freeman is a Golden Globe and Academy Award award-winning actor, producer and director. He has received Oscar nominations for acting in four films, Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Million Dollar Baby (2004), for which he received the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. Freeman's other notable acting roles include Se7en (1995), Amistad (1997), Kiss the Girls (1997) and Gone Baby Gone (2007).

Milestones in Morgan Freeman's ancestry:

Between 1790 and 1860, 1 million slaves are forced to move from the upper South to the deep South to create the cotton kingdom. Among them are Morgan Freeman's great, great grandparents, Lilton Wright and Sylvia Cain, who are forced to move from North Carolina to Mississippi.

1930s Morgan Freeman's mother, Mamie Freeman, and grandmother, Lenora Revere, teach at the Mary Holmes School, in Clay County, Mississippi, the only school in Mississippi at that time dedicated to the education of black women.

1930s and 1940s Workers for the Federal Writers Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.), interview former slaves throughout the South, including Cindy Anderson, Morgan Freeman's great grandmother.

1937 Morgan Freeman is born in Memphis, Tennessee.

Put Morgan Freeman's life and ancestry in historical context with the Interactive Historical Timeline.

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