Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a prominent professor and scholar whose programs have been a staple on PBS for more than a decade. He has produced and hosted more than 20 programs. Most recently, the ninth season of Finding Your Roots and the encore of Making Black America have been airing.
Gates received a Peabody Award and NAACP Image Award for his six-part series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, which traced 500 years of African American history up until former President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. Aside from being an award-winning filmmaker, he is also an author, cultural critic, and the director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University.
In this Q&A with PBS Standards & Practices, Gates discusses the importance of selecting a range of guests who “reflect the diversity of both the human experience as well as of the American people” on Finding Your Roots each season. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
1. Inclusiveness is one of PBS's six core principles, meaning “content should reflect the views of people from different backgrounds, such as geographic areas, ethnicities, genders, age groups, religious beliefs, political viewpoints, and income levels.” You manage to have an incredibly wide range of diverse guests on Finding Your Roots. How do you select who will be featured on your program?
Gates: Casting for FINDING YOUR ROOTS is a multifaceted process based on a number of factors. At its core is our desire to tell a rich range of stories that reflect the diversity of both the human experience as well as of the American people, as seen in the history of immigration to the United States. We work toward this goal by sending invitations out to a broad range of compelling individuals, without prior research about their family trees. Once a person has agreed to be in the series, only then does our research into their ancestry start.
Among the scores of possibilities for scheduling a person for a coming season, we engage in a great deal of lively internal discussions as a production team. Eventually, we arrive at a line-up of 20 to 25 guests each season. We also receive many suggestions from the public via social media—and sometimes even from individuals themselves, who reach out to us asking to have their family stories told. In every case, we evaluate potential guests individually while also thinking about the wonderful diversity of the American people—about how best to assemble a season of guests that, as a mosaic, emphasizes the two main themes of our series: first, that human beings are, in fact, far more alike than we are different, and second, that the drama of our family histories underscores how much we, as Americans, have in common.
Alongside our focus on a sophisticated working concept of “genealogical diversity” is our goal of highlighting hidden or overlooked historical facts and narratives, especially stories of those fleeing religious or political persecution, the history of enslavement, and the suffering and resiliency of oppressed or marginalized groups: travails, certainly, but also triumphs. It is our belief that an ideal way for us to contribute to the telling of the endlessly fascinating history of the United States, and indeed the history of the modern world, is through the triumphs and traumas of the people whose family histories have contributed dramatically to the larger story of America. And their stories, we deeply believe, can best be revealed through genealogy. Genealogy is a way to teach our fellow citizens American history, from the roots, from the ground up, branch by branch.
2. Even though the guests are celebrities, viewers seem to readily connect and identify with them. Why do you think that is?
I think it’s because everyone can relate, paradoxically, both to the deep desire to know one’s family origins, and to the deep and haunting silences that so often make it extremely difficult to locate the ancestors who populate our family trees. Most of our guests come to the table knowing virtually nothing about their ancestry, so they are curious, anxious, and filled with anticipation about what our amazing research team has found. Their emotional experiences “meeting” new ancestors, hearing their names for the very first time, despite our guests’ celebrity status, reveal them to be people with whom we all can identify. It really is a joy to share their Book of Life with them, to introduce them to their long-lost ancestors, and to situate their personal family journeys within the much larger canvas of American history and, indeed, the history of our modern world.
3. Another one of PBS’s core values is transparency. The Editorial Standards state, “Producers must be open with the audience – to the extent practical – about how the work was done.” Why is this important in making Finding Your Roots? How do you ensure viewers trust the findings – particularly the ones that shock the participants – that make the program so exciting? For example, actor Edward Norton, who already knew a good deal about his family’s roots before the program, was very surprised to learn his 12th great grandmother was Pocahontas. “How could you possibly determine that?” Norton asked.
Education is core to the mission of PBS. From its beginnings, PBS has been a vital and beloved teaching medium. So I believe many viewers of our show join us each week eager to learn about our country’s past, but also to learn about how to discover their own family’s past, the ancestors whose names they have never even heard before. By showing our guests how we climbed up the branches of their family trees, and how we combine the cutting-edge tools of genetics with genealogy, we hope to inspire our viewers to take that journey themselves, whether by searching online or visiting physical archives in their hometowns or around the country and throughout the world. Genealogy is an exhilarating learning experience, open to all. What is everyone’s favorite subject? Yourself! And genealogy is, first and last, the ultimate way to learn about how we became the person we became as an extension of our ancestors.
4. Is Making Black America: Through the Grapevine intended to both celebrate Black culture and to educate viewers about Black culture? If so, how did you balance those goals in creating the program?
Education is always the overriding goal of every history series we undertake for PBS. In the case of MAKING BLACK AMERICA, we wanted to show viewers what life was like behind what W. E. B. Du Bois called “the Veil”—a “veil” that divided the Black world from the white world, a veil that was woven over many centuries as a result of the slave trade, hereditary bondage, and Jim Crow segregation. Our goal was to show not only the political, social, cultural, and economic organization of Black life in America, but also to convey the fullness of the Black experience, which is not just a history of protest but also a history of aspiration and triumph, a history of Black joy. One of my favorite parts of the series is when we filmed a conversation on that very subject around a table in Weeksville, Brooklyn.
5. You’ve produced and hosted more than 20 documentaries. What topic would you like to take on next?
I’m very excited to be in production on the 10th season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS, while also filming a companion to the Black Church series on the history of Gospel music and Black preaching. It’ll be out next year. I would also like to tell the story of the Great Migrations of Black people in the 20th and 21st centuries; the fascinating life of the great statesman, Frederick Douglass; the history of the relations between Native Americans and African Americans; Black participation in the Civil War; and the history of Black and Jewish Americans. So much exciting work remaining for us to do!
Contact PBS Standards & Practices at standards@pbs.org