Gates Jr: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to "Finding Your Roots."

In this episode, we'll explore the ancestries of actor Lupita Nyong'o, NBA star Carmelo Anthony, and political commentator Ana Navarro.

Three people whose families were disrupted by violent upheavals, leaving them with fundamental questions about their ancestors.

Carmelo Anthony: I was born in Brooklyn.

That's the only thing I know.

Lupita Nyong'o: I'm so curious to think about what I know of history and thinking about which one of my relatives was alive when it was happening.

Ana Navarro: Skip, if you're gonna tell me I'm Donald Trump's cousin, just break it to me slowly.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool.

Genealogists helped stitch together the past from the documents their ancestors left behind, while DNA experts utilized the latest technologies to reveal secrets hundreds of years old.

And we've compiled everything into a "Book of Life," a record of all of our discoveries.

Lupita Nyong'o: Oh, my goodness, I did not know that!

Ana Navarro: I've never heard these people's names, it's powerful.

Carmelo Anthony: Aw, man, I never would have imagined that.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Even though Lupita, Carmelo and Ana come from different parts of the world, their family stories are linked by common experiences.

We're going to bring those experiences to life redefining people they've known and introducing them to ancestors they never even knew existed.

(Theme music plays) ♪ ♪ (Inaudible chatter) Henry Louis Gates Jr: Lupita Nyong'o is one of Hollywood's brightest new stars.

She's been captivating audiences from the moment she arrived at the Yale School of Drama in 2009.

Just four years later, her stunning performance in "Twelve Years a Slave" was a revelation, earning her rave reviews, dozens of awards, and the national spotlight.

Lupita is the first Black person from Africa to win an Academy Award, a remarkable achievement that's been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

But her identity is far more complex than simply "African."

When someone asks you, who are your people, how do you respond?

Lupita Nyong'o: I'm Luo, from the Luo people who originated from Northern Africa and traveled down to East Africa where I'm from, Kenya.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: So you don't say I'm a Kenyan?

Lupita Nyong'o: Oh, well, yeah, I could say I'm a Kenyan.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: But you didn't say you're a Kenyan.

Lupita Nyong'o: I didn't because I'm talking to you.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Lupita's complicated answer reflects her complicated life, she was born in Mexico, to Kenyan parents who had fled repression back home.

The family returned to Kenya when she was a child, and Lupita grew up there.

But growing up in Africa wasn't a straightforward matter.

Kenya was a British colony until 1963.

And the legacy of colonialism is still very much alive, as Lupita discovered when she began acting and was told that her skin was too dark.

Lupita Nyong'o: We'd have casting directors for commercials and stuff come to school sometimes to look for talent, you know scout.

Yeah, I was told.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: By another Kenyan?

Lupita Nyong'o: Um-hum, that my skin was too dark.

At the time everybody in commercials was biracial or light-skinned.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: When is this, what year?

Lupita Nyong'o: This was in the '90s.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: In the 90's.

Lupita Nyong'o: But this was something that I witnessed even in the 2000's.

There was this crazy ad about a woman who can't get a job and then she uses a skin lightener and you see her skin lighten and then she gets the job.

So you know, I don't think we're rid of it.

I think we've made strides in determining what is beautiful on our own terms, but we, like everyone else, around the world are very influenced by Western standards of beauty.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Yeah.

It's a function of this anti-Black racist aesthetic standard.

People of African descent everywhere would be better off if we could throw off that remnant of the colonial mentality.

That's one reason that so many people are so happy to see you on the cover of magazines.

Lupita Nyong'o: I'm happy, too.

Announcer: Anthony for 30.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Carmelo Anthony is a basketball superstar.

Announcer: Pass, Melo, oh wow!

Henry Louis Gates Jr: In 2003, he led Syracuse to the NCAA championship when he was just a freshman, since then, he's been a ten-time NBA all-star and the winner of three Olympic gold medals.

But Carmelo doesn't take his success for granted because he knows his life could have turned out very differently.

Carmelo was born in Brooklyn, New York and the first place he called home was a project: known as the Red Hook Houses.

What was your neighborhood like at that time?

Carmelo Anthony: It was like any other ghetto throughout America.

You had the poverty, you had the drugs, you had the violence.

It was very difficult, but I didn't know no better at that time.

Now that I look back at it when I get together with my friends and I see old friends from the neighborhood that I've grown up with we start talking about stories and I'm like damn, I can't believe I was six, seven years old running around within that environment not even knowing what was surrounding me.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Carmelo overcame his circumstances through basketball, he was a prodigy, dominant on the court even as a child but there was one thing he couldn't overcome.

His father and namesake, Carmelo Iriarte, died of cancer when he was just a toddler.

Over time, the loss hit home.

Carmelo Anthony: I was two years old when my dad died so I didn't really know no better.

It wasn't until later when I started being around people, who had dads around them and just seeing dads coming to practice and dads picking them up from school and taking them to school.

That's when it started to affect me.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Carmelo's father had deep roots in Puerto Rico.

And as an adult, Carmelo has been increasingly drawn to these roots.

In fact, they're one of the main reasons he wanted to be in our series.

Carmelo Anthony: As I started getting older and started becoming more in tune into my Puerto Rican side and wanting to know who my dad was and wanting to know that side of the family that's when all the questions started to come.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: It's like discovering another aspect of yourself.

Carmelo Anthony: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ana Navarro: Everything you just said is 50 shades of crazy.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: My third guest, Ana Navarro, is one of TV's most outspoken political commentators.

Ana Navarro: Don't tell me you're offended when I say (bleep) and you're not offended when Donald Trump says it.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: A lifelong Republican, with a fierce independent streak, Ana is not afraid to criticize her own party, especially when it comes to immigration, a cause she staunchly supports.

Ana Navarro: No matter what he says, no matter what anybody else says.

This is your country and I, as an American, thank you.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Ana herself is an immigrant.

She was born in Nicaragua, the youngest daughter of a landowner and politician.

Her family was comfortable and happy.

Ana Navarro: I had a gilded childhood.

I grew up going to farms in the morning, you know, having great friends, having great birthday parties.

You know, for a few years there, it really was a perfect childhood.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: But in 1979, when Ana was just seven years old, her idyllic childhood came to a violent end, as the Sandinistas, a group of Marxist rebels, seized power from a military dictatorship only to be confronted by counter-insurgent groups that would become known infamously as the Contras.

Nicaragua rapidly descended into chaos.

Ana Navarro: I was living it, it was part of our daily lives.

There was bullets going through our windows.

There was fighting in our actual city at some points, when it was under siege.

For a while there, we actually moved to Honduras, the country next door.

I remember families, families like mine in cars, and they would tie little white handkerchiefs or diapers, cotton diapers, which were used back then, on the antennas so people would know we were coming in peace and we were refugees.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: After almost a year of constant danger, the Navarros fled their homeland and settled in Miami, where Ana still lives today.

Ana Navarro: I remember thinking, "Oh, you know, okay, this is fun.

We're gonna be close to Disney World, but soon we're gonna be back in Nicaragua."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: When did you realize there was no going back?

Ana Navarro: You know, one year turns into two years, turns into three years, next thing you know it turns into ten years.

At some point during those first ten years, I became an American.

I saw the future of my life in this country, as opposed to wanting to go back and have a different life.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Ana would go to college and law school in the United States, then break into politics as a strategist, before ultimately ending up in front of the camera.

But even though she has flourished in America, she has never forgotten the turmoil of her youth.

Indeed, she says it defines her still to this day.

Ana Navarro: I get asked all the time, "Why are you a Republican?

Why are you still a Republican?"

Um, in my household, Ronald Reagan was a quasi-deity.

He was combating communism, and you know, we had fled communism.

That about sealed the deal for us.

But it also, in a more general term, it, um, you know, I think my life, the experiences told me to speak up, because things happen.

And if things happen, I want to know that I either made, helped them happen or, or tried to prevent them from happening.

I don't just want to be a passive observer watching them happen, and I think that came from that very early experience of having to, to flee as a child.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: My three guests each live far from their ancestral homes.

And each comes from families that were scattered by conflicts and tragedies.

As a result, while Ana, Carmelo, and Lupita all feel strongly attached to their cultural heritage, crucial details about the lives of their ancestors have been lost.

I wanted to recover them.

We started with Lupita.

Like Ana, Lupita's childhood was marked by traumatic upheaval.

In 1978, five years before her birth, a man named Daniel arap Moi became president of Kenya.

Moi: We must be prepared to make any necessary sacrifices for our country.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Moi soon began consolidating power, ultimately creating a one-party state.

To quell the opposition, he censored journalists and academics and rounded up dissidents, one of his targets was Lupita's father, Peter, a professor of political science, devoted to nurturing democracy in Kenya.

In 1980, Peter was arrested and held overnight.

Though he returned home safely, not everyone in his family was so fortunate.

He soon learned that his younger brother Charles had disappeared.

News reports claimed Charles died falling from a ferry boat, but the story never rang true to Lupita's relatives.

Your family believes that Uncle Charles was pushed off the ferry to intimidate your father and witnesses were too terrified to testify.

Lupita Nyong'o: Well, for a long time we weren't really even really allowed to say his name.

Like his name was always said in hushed tones and stuff.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: That had to be horrible for your father.

Lupita Nyong'o: It was definitely a major loss to my family.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: The Nyong'os were so shaken by the death that they fled to Mexico City, where Lupita was born in 1983.

Mexico was safe and Peter again found work as a university professor.

But Mexico wasn't home.

And by the time Lupita was four, her family was back in Kenya, despite the risks.

Why do you think your parents returned?

Lupita Nyong'o: My father is so passionate about the country.

And he so deeply believes that there is a better future possible.

And so I know that he feels that he's most useful when he can be there.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Back in his homeland, Peter resumed his activism, organizing a new political party to oppose Moi.

The party could only operate underground because it was completely illegal but we found a transcript of an interview that Peter gave about his experience, an interview Lupita had never seen.

Lupita Nyong'o: "We started organizing from July 1987.

The whole thing was happening here in my house."

Oh!

Henry Louis Gates Jr: How about that?

Lupita Nyong'o: That was what was going on.

That is great.

And it explains all those people.

I mean I was, what, four at the time.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Oh, so you had all these strangers.

Lupita Nyong'o: Yeah, lots of people always there; tea, tea, tea being served.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: And they were plotting the revolution.

Lupita Nyong'o: Yeah.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: When Moi's government learned about Peter's party, they took swift action.

Peter was seized and taken to what was known as "The Nyayo House," a torture chamber in the basement of a Nairobi skyscraper.

All the while, his family had no idea where he was.

Do you remember this?

Lupita Nyong'o: Yeah, I remember him missing.

My mother tried to create a sense of normalcy in the house, but we weren't allowed to go to school and we spent days with the curtains drawn and all I remember is having the fire going all the time and just burning papers that I didn't even know what they were but our job was just to throw in the fire.

Throw in the fire.

And it was a very, um, weird time.

I didn't understand what was going on and he was gone for a while.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: 26 days he was tortured in Nyayo House.

Your mother must have thought your father was never going to come back.

Lupita Nyong'o: She must have.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: So, it's... Lupita Nyong'o: She kept that to herself though.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: I'm sure, yeah.

Lupita Nyong'o: She really did, and for that I'm, I feel for her but I'm also very grateful that she did that and I remember the day he came back.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: You do?

Lupita Nyong'o: He just walked in the door.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Ah, no!

Lupita Nyong'o: There was no cell phones.

He literally just walked in the door.

She was not expecting him.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Oh my gd.

Lupita Nyong'o: The poor guy was so thin.

I didn't notice that, I just jumped into my father's arms.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Although Moi would stay in power for another 13 years, Peter never gave up.

And his story has a marvelous, almost implausible ending.

In 2013, Peter was elected to Kenya's senate.

Four years later, he was elected governor of Kisumu where he continues to serve today, still working for reform and democracy.

Lupita Nyong'o: Oh, that's beautiful.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Your father's story is a miracle.

Lupita Nyong'o: He's my hero.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Like Lupita, Carmelo Anthony had a political activist for a father but his story is very different from Peter's.

And Carmelo had to seek it out for himself.

After his father succumbed to cancer when Carmelo was just two years old.

His mother rarely spoke about him.

So Carmelo grew up with fundamental questions about his life.

Carmelo Anthony: My mom never until late, I want to say 10, 12, 13 years ago is when I really, like, sat down with my mom and got that information.

But when I was younger, I remember just shadows of him.

Then you start being suspicious and you start asking more and more questions about kind of who you are and your family, and, just things you know, your foundation.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: As Carmelo investigated, he discovered that his father had been part of the New York City chapter of a famed Puerto Rican civil rights group known as the Young Lords.

In the late 1960s, inspired in part by the Black Panthers, the Young Lords fought for school breakfast programs and better health care for working-class Latinos.

Learning that his father had been involved with the group fascinated Carmelo and ignited his own activist impulses, now he oversees a foundation that, among its many activities, builds and refurbishes basketball courts in Puerto Rico.

Do you think you inherited your social conscience from your dad?

Carmelo Anthony: By far, for what I've known and what I've heard about my dad, he was for the people 1,000%.

He cared about everybody.

So what he stood for is like wow.

He passed it on.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: But while Carmelo has become very involved with Puerto Rico, he knows nothing about his family's history there.

His grandparents moved to New York City soon after their marriage in 1947 and they left their roots behind.

So we set out to find them.

Our journey started with the 1920 census for a barrio known as Miraflores, located in the outskirts of the city of Arecibo.

It lists Carmelo's great-grandparents, Luciano Iriarte and Angela Rodriguez and it reveals something intriguing about their relationship.

Carmelo Anthony: Luciano Iriarte y Lugo, head of household, "C.C."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Do you have any idea what C.C.

might mean?

Carmelo Anthony: Not at all.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Contrato Consensual.

It means that your great-grandparents were living together but they were not legally married.

Carmelo Anthony: That's mind-boggling, wow.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Relationships of this kind were common and legitimate, as evidenced by the fact that they are offered as an option on the Puerto Rican census.

But as we continued to explore the life of Carmelo's great-grandfather Luciano, we discovered something that wasn't nearly so common.

Carmelo, this is another 1920 census and this time from a different rural barrio called Arenalejos.

Would you please read the translated section?

Carmelo Anthony: "Luciano Iriarte, head of household.

Maria Gomez Rodriguez, wife."

Another C.C.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: You know what this means?

Carmelo Anthony: Yeah, he had another family.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: He had another family, so your great-grandfather was a busy dude.

Carmelo Anthony: Yeah, he made a home wherever he could lay his head basically.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: In 1920, Luciano was living with two different women, about two miles apart and was raising children with each of them.

It's unclear how this arrangement worked, but it appears that Luciano didn't keep it a secret.

Records show that a daughter from one of his families served as a witness at the wedding of a son from the other.

What do you think of Luciano?

What do you think he was like?

I mean this is an interesting dude, man.

Carmelo Anthony: Man, the way I look at it is eventually they obviously had to know about each other.

That conversation had to be deep.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: And you know, this is not like L.A.

and New York.

This is Arenalajos and Miraflores, which are two miles apart.

Carmelo Anthony: That's like Brooklyn and Queens.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: You got it.

We wondered how Luciano managed to support his two families.

The explanation, we think, is tied to his occupation.

Luciano was a supervisor on a sugar plantation, a highly desirable job.

Sugar was one of Puerto Rico's principle industries in the 1920's and supervisors received perks, such as company housing.

Which may have helped ease Luciano's domestic expenses.

In fact, the more we researched, the more it seemed that, in some ways, Luciano was living a charmed life.

But that life was about to change and change radically.

This is your great-grandfather's death certificate.

It's from the year 1932.

Would you please read the translated section?

Carmelo Anthony: "Luciano Iriarte, principle cause of death, leprosy."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Luciano died of leprosy in a quarantine hospital when he was 55 years old.

Carmelo Anthony: I never heard this story.

I mean it puts a lot of things in perspective.

That's sad to know that he had to be quarantined.

That's sad.

You don't want to hear that.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Luciano died young and probably suffered a great deal.

But his story contains a grace note, of sorts, which deeply affected Carmelo.

For at least the last two years of his life, Luciano lived in a leprosy hospital just southeast of San Juan in Trujillo Alto, a place that Carmelo knows well.

Because it's the very same city where Carmelo rebuilt a basketball court, more than 80 years later.

Isn't that an amazing coincidence?

Carmelo Anthony: It is, it is.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Why did you refurbish the basketball court there?

Carmelo Anthony: I don't know, man.

Something was just telling me to go there.

I don't know what it was.

To know that now makes that court that much special.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: My third guest is Ana Navarro.

Ana grew up in exile from civil war in Nicaragua, and urgently wanted to reconnect with her Nicaraguan roots.

Our search would uncover an entirely new branch of her family tree.

It began with her mother, Violeta Flores Lopez.

Violeta was born in the city of Leon on June 23, 1940 and raised in a wealthy farming family.

There's your mother as a three-year-old.

Ana Navarro: Aww, she grew up in a privileged household, and uh, you know, with, with Shirley Temple curls.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Yeah, look at those curls.

Ana Navarro: Dressed up, and she would tell me about the lunches at her grandfather's house, where the entire family would go, would schlep over every single day and just, uh, having a very strong family unit.

I think she would tell you, she had a wonderful childhood too.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Unhappily, much like her daughter would, Violeta saw her idyllic youth clouded by violence.

When she was 20, her father was shot to death, a still-unsolved murder that was national news in Nicaragua.

This is an article dated September 2, 1960 from La Prensa newspaper.

Would you please read the translated section?

Ana Navarro: "Grief follows the deeply-felt passing of don Daniel Flores Baca, which took place at 5:00 am yesterday.

Mr.

Flores Baca died as a result of a fatal gunshot wound fired by an unknown assailant, moments after he opened the gate of the agricultural property La Esperanza."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: What has your mother told you about this?

Ana Navarro: I think losing her father is, um, left a void in her that she's never been able to fill.

Uh, she was very close to him.

Um, he was doting on her, um, and you know, still to this day, when she speaks about him, you can hear the, you can hear the sorrow, the nostalgia, the grief, the love that she had for him.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: The terrible loss was followed by a shocking revelation, two years after the murder, one of Violeta's cousins blurted out a family secret: it turned out Violeta had been adopted as an infant.

Meaning that the man who had raised her, the man whose death she was still grieving, was not her biological father at all, Violeta was devastated all over again.

Ana Navarro: It's been something that's been painful to her, uh, her entire life.

She still to this day doesn't understand how, how a biological parent can give away a child.

I think to her it's something that's so unimaginable.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: The identities of Violeta's birth parents were actually known to her family.

Her mother was a woman named "Bertha del Carmen Alvarado" her father, a man named "Arturo Baca Mua‘ez".

What do you know about your mother's biological parents?

I know you know a lot about her adoptive parents.

Ana Navarro: I knew and met, uh, and spent some time with her biological mother, who died, uh, recently, but I don't know, I don't know much.

I don't know, you know, their descendancy or any of that.

It's been, because it brings my mom so much pain, I don't ask her, and she doesn't tell me.

At the same time, I'm, I'm very curious.

I'm very curious as to who they are and where, you know, where I come from.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: To satisfy Ana's curiosity, we sent our researchers into the archives of the city of Leon.

We weren't able to find anything related to her grandmother Bertha.

But we found a great deal about her grandfather Arturo.

Arturo, it seems led a most complicated life.

He fathered children with several different women.

One of those children, a daughter named Melida, had a very telling birth date.

Ana Navarro: "The girl, Melida Maria Francisca was born the legitimate daughter to Arturo Baca Mua‘oz and his wife, Doa‘a Lidia Blessing."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Recognize anyone there?

Ana Navarro: Yeah, Melida Maria Francisca is my mother's sister, and this is, uh, my mother's father, so she was the legitimate daughter.

My mother was the illegitimate daughter.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Can you see when Melida Maria Francisca was born?

Ana Navarro: "September 15, 1940."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: And that's three months after your mother was born.

Ana Navarro: So, he had two women pregnant at the same time.

He sounds like a charmer.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Did your mother ever meet him?

Ana Navarro: You know, I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that.

My mother says, uh, the only thing she inherited from her father is, uh, you know, like she says, "The only thing I got from that son of a bitch is diabetes."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Ana clearly had a strong aversion to Arturo.

But Arturo is her biological grandfather.

His ancestors are Ana's ancestors.

And we were able to trace his family back three generations, to a man named Alejandro Baca Icaza, Alejandro was born in Nicaragua, likely in the early 1850s.

Ana Navarro: Wow, he's my second-great-grandfather.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: That's right, he's your great-great-grandfather.

Ana Navarro: Wow, okay, I, you know, uh, this is completely foreign to me.

I, I've never heard these people's names.

They're just not part of my life, so it's, uh, it's powerful.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: So, how does it make you feel?

I mean, you didn't know anything about this window unto your... Ana Navarro: Oh, God, you know what I'm feeling a little vicarious resentment, frankly, on behalf of my mom, who probably doesn't know any of this, and has been robbed from her, uh, biological family, her biological father.

So, I'm, I'm feeling a little pissed off at this guy.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Right.

Ana Navarro: To tell you the truth, for having been such a philanderer and such an irresponsible human being, fathering children all over the place, and uh, and leaving them.

At the same time, I'm grateful.

But for him, but for his irresponsibility, there would be no me, there would be no mom.

So, I am, I'm both grateful and, and uh, irritated at him.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We'd already seen how Lupita Nyong'o's father struggled under the oppressive regime of Kenyan president Daniel Moi.

Now I wanted to look at how earlier generations of her family had experienced another kind of oppression: the oppression of British colonial rule.

We started with someone who is very close to Lupita's heart, her grandfather, Laban Onyango Buyu.

Who's that man in the photo?

Lupita Nyong'o: My papa, Laban.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Tell me about Laban.

Lupita Nyong'o: He was a choirmaster.

Whenever we meet with my grandfather the first thing we do is sing.

That is the introduction.

He will give us the parts and we will sing.

Do a few rounds of singing and then we will pray and then we will commune.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Oh, that's great.

Lupita Nyong'o: Yeah.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Laban was born around 1930.

At the time, Kenya had been under British control for nearly four decades and the British dominated almost every significant aspect of political and economic life.

For the African people in the region, the most meaningful sources of autonomy were cultural and many of them were specific to ethnic groups that pre-dated the arrival of the British.

Laban's family was part of the Luo people, one of the largest of these ethnic groups and Laban was a very proud Luo.

This is an excerpt from the Luo union constitution from the year 1945.

Would you mind reading the highlighted passage over there?

Lupita Nyong'o: The union shall have branches anywhere the Luo are residing permanently, working, or otherwise.

To promote and maintain mutual help and understanding among the Luo wherever they are.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Have you ever heard of this, the Luo union?

Lupita Nyong'o: No.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: The Luo union was an organization formed in the 1930s to promote and strengthen Luo identity.

It was like the Black Nationalists... Lupita Nyong'o: Wow.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: And your grandfather was one of them.

According to your mom, he was active in recruiting new members and he also participated in many cultural events.

Did he ever talk about this?

Lupita Nyong'o: No, I don't remember.

I don't know anything about this.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: The Luo union wasn't formed explicitly as a political organization, but its rise coincided with independence movements in Kenya in the 1930s and the 1940's.

These movements had complex and sometimes bitter relations with each other but they ultimately forced the British to yield to their demands.

In 1957, Black African candidates were allowed to run for office in Kenyan elections for the very first time and in 1963, the country finally declared its hard-won independence.

Lupita's grandfather Laban was 35 years old on Independence Day, he would go on to become a teacher of Swahili, the official language of the new Kenyan state and he thoroughly embraced the end of British colonialism.

Laban's father however a man named Adero Buyu had had a very different experience with the British, just a generation earlier.

Look at this document.

It's from the national archives of Great Britain.

You see any names that you recognize?

Lupita Nyong'o: Buyu, Adero, East Africa Police.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Your great-grandfather served with the British during World War I. Lupita Nyong'o: I didn't know that.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: This book is full of surprises.

Lupita Nyong'o: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Would you please turn the page?

This is another portion of your great-grandfather's service record.

Would you please read the highlighted section at the bottom?

Lupita Nyong'o: Buyu, Adero, rank third class constable.

Unit: East Africa Police, 1914 to 1915.

Star, yes.

British war medal, yes.

Victory medal, yes.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Did you ever see these medals in your home?

I mean were they preserved or hanging in a framed box?

Lupita Nyong'o: I have never heard anything about medals of the world war, no.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Adero's medals which were given to almost all Africans who served in the British military attest to a largely forgotten theater of the first world war, the conflict began and mostly unfolded in Europe, but the main combatants Germany, France and Great Britain all possessed resource rich African colonies and these lands soon became battlefields.

More than two million Africans served as soldiers and laborers in fighting that stretched across the continent.

Lupita's great-grandfather was in a military unit made up of Kenyan policemen and likely participated in one of the war's many tragic moments.

In 1915, the Turkana, a semi-nomadic people rebelled against the British and were brutally suppressed.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Would you please turn the page?

Lupita Nyong'o: Don't tell me, what?

Look at that.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Lupita, we think that your great-grandfather was one of those officers sent to quell the rebellion of the Turkana people.

Lupita Nyong'o: Oooh.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Oh, tough one.

Lupita Nyong'o: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's tough.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We have no way of knowing how Lupita's great-grandfather felt about his service with the British, but he would remain in the colonial police long after the war ended ultimately spending more than twenty years with the force.

And learning his story profoundly effected how Lupita thinks of her ancestors.

Lupita Nyong'o: All you've told me about Adero is new and very, very interesting to me.

And just the roles of my people in the colonial times is something that I haven't really given much thought.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: And the difficult choices.

Lupita Nyong'o: And the difficult choices and also just the mirroring of things.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Yeah, that is quite interesting.

Lupita Nyong'o: You know, I have all sorts of political views and ideals and stuff like that.

I have a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong and when you realize that your line, in your line exists people who went on either side of the political situation, you know, it's humbling for sure.

It's perspective gaining and more than anything you're reminded of just empathy, you know, and how important empathy is for us to make it as a human race.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We'd already taken Carmelo Anthony's Puerto Rican ancestry back to the late 19th century.

But our journey was far from over.

We were able to go all the way back to Carmelo's third great-grandmother a woman named Valentina Iriarte.

Valentina was likely born around 1815.

Did you ever dream that we would go back this far in your father's family tree?

Carmelo Anthony: Not at all, I thought you were going to go back to, you know, grandfather and great-grandfather.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We're back 202 years.

Carmelo Anthony: Yeah, this is crazy.

I don't know what the hell was going on around that time.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Records state that Valentina was a mulatto, meaning that she was of African and European descent.

Records also show that she spent much of her life in and around the city of San Sebastian located in northwestern Puerto Rico.

But when we searched archives in the area for her birth certificate, we came up empty.

So we widened our search, then made an unexpected discovery.

This is the 1910 census, Carmelo, for Valentina's son Lucas Iriarte.

He would be your great-great-granduncle.

Carmelo Anthony: Mother's birthplace Venezuela.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Venezuela, your third great-grandmother was not born in Puerto Rico at all.

She was born in Venezuela.

Did you know that you had Venezuelan roots?

Carmelo Anthony: Not at all.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Are you surprised?

Carmelo Anthony: I never would have imagined that.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We wanted to learn how Valentina got from Venezuela to Puerto Rico, there were no records of anyone with the surname "Iriarte" to tell us.

But as we dug deeper, we realized that Valentina had different surnames on different documents.

This is the death certificate of Lucas Iriarte, remember your great-great-granduncle.

Can you see how his mother, Valentina, is listed?

Carmelo Anthony: Valentina, Echeandia.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Echeandia, have you ever heard that name Echeandia?

Carmelo Anthony: Echeandia, no.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: This surname was the key to Valentina's story.

In the early 1800's, a number of Venezuelans came to Puerto Rico, fleeing a revolution in their homeland, among them was a Spaniard named Juan Bautista Echeandia, Juan was a wealthy planter and a slave owner and he brought some of his human property with him.

Carmelo Anthony: "I grant license to don Juan Bautista Echeandia, along with his wife, six children, a brother, two nephews, and 40 slaves to go to the island of Puerto Rico, June 28, 1821."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: They were escaping this revolution.

They said we're out of here.

We're going to take our most valuable commodity, our slaves.

Carmelo Anthony: 40 slaves.

They bolted, man.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: They bolted.

They took the money and ran!

Carmelo Anthony: 40 slaves, my mind is blown right now.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Carmelo and I both thought it was likely that his third great-grandmother Valentina was one of Juan Echeandia's slaves, but we wanted to be certain.

So we returned to the records.

We learned that in 1828, Juan's daughter married a man named Bartolome Iriarte and soon after, it seems, Valentina became Bartolome's property.

The evidence lay in the baptismal record of one of her children.

Carmelo Anthony: "Valentina, mother of the baptized is a slave of don Bartolome Iriarte."

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Valentina, your great-great-great-grandmother was a slave.

Carmelo Anthony: There was a small part of me that was like somebody in my family is a slave, but... Wow, I'm speechless... I'm speechless.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We had now unraveled much of Valentina's story.

She left Venezuela as a slave of the Echeandia family, then she was sold or given to the Iriarte family on the island of Puerto Rico.

This explains both how she ended up in Puerto Rico, and why she had multiple surnames.

But one question remained to be answered, in addition to being a slave of the Echeandias, was Valentina also a member of the family genetically?

Such relationships were common in the history of slavery throughout the new world.

To find out for sure, we identified a direct descendant of Juan Echeandia and asked her to take a DNA test.

When the results came in, we compared them to Carmelo's.

If you see any red, you'll know that you're related.

If you don't see any red, then you aren't.

Carmelo Anthony: Can I turn it?

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Turn the page, any red?

Carmelo Anthony: Yeah.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: How does that make you feel?

Carmelo Anthony: I mean, once you figured out that she was a slave you understand that there was some possibility that she had some type of involvement with the slave owner, so, this is deep.

I mean it makes me feel like open now, open minded to really understand where it all comes from, where the family comes from, how they got here, when they got here, who's who.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Does this change how you think about your roots?

Carmelo Anthony: It does, it does.

I mean it's not just Puerto Ricans now.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: No.

Carmelo Anthony: I mean you have Venezuelans, you go all the way back to Spain.

This changes a lot of things.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We'd already traced Ana Navarro's maternal ancestry back four generations in Nicaragua.

Now, turning to her father's family tree, we were able take her to a place that she had never associated with her roots.

Our journey started with the will of her fourth great-grandmother, a woman named Bartola Navarro.

Now you're looking at a will.

Look at that handwriting, isn't that amazing?

Ana Navarro: Wow.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: This is a will, Ana, from 1802, and it's from the national archive of Costa Rica.

Ana Navarro: Oh my gosh.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Did you have any idea that you had Costa Rican roots?

Ana Navarro: You know, I didn't, and what you don't know is that there's, you know, there, there's this, like, fictional animosity between Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans, so this is the first... Henry Louis Gates Jr: Really?

Ana Navarro: I know, well, I know, it comes, they put something in the water.

They've been fighting over land for, for years.

Um, so, I did not know I had Costa Rican roots.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: As it turns out, Costa Rica plays a crucial role in the history of Ana's family, her 4th great-grandparents Bartola Navarro and Miguel Pacheco were born here in the 1750's.

The couple had four children together.

One of them Ana's third great-grandfather was named Pantaleon Navarro.

Pantaleon was born in the 1780's and as a young man, he moved to Nicaragua, transplanting an entire branch of Ana's family tree.

We can't say for sure why Pantaleon made the move.

But records suggest he had an issue of some kind with his father.

Do you notice anything strange about your fourth-great-grandparents Miguel and Maria's names?

Ana Navarro: Yeah, what's strange is that the Navarro is on her side.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: You got it.

Your third-great-grandfather, Pantaleon Navarro, went by his mother's name, and not his father's, Pacheco.

You want to guess why?

Ana Navarro: No idea.

Yeah, I'm wondering if his father did something real bad, that he didn't want to be associated.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Ana's guess was reasonable and as we researched further, it seemed that there had indeed been a serious rift between Pantaleon and his father Miguel.

But who was the injured party?

And what was the cause of the conflict?

Judging from Miguel's will, it appeared that the there were hard feelings on both sides.

Ana Navarro: "i declare that of my aforementioned four children, Pantaleon, left my side and my service at around 18 years of age to the city of Leon, from where he wrote me various letters expressly denying me as his father, and for that reason I would like to declare him disinherited from my assets..." Wow, okay, so, there's some family drama there.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Big time, what in the world could have happened?

Ana Navarro: Gosh, everything I'm thinking of is pretty bad, you know?

Things done to the mother, things done to the child, or maybe he fell in love with somebody who his father didn't want him to marry.

I have, I don't know what theories I could come up with, but none of them are good.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: No letters between Miguel and Pantaleon are known to have survived.

The only hard evidence of their conflict lies in the curious wording of this will.

But in the national archives of Costa Rica, we found Miguel's wedding certificate and it contains a tantalizing clue as to why the son may have sought to distance himself from the father... Ana Navarro: "Miguel Pacheco, free mulatto."

Wow, so, it was a racial thing.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Yeah, his father was Black.

Ana Navarro: I am bothered by the idea that this child disowned his father because his father was a mulatto.

What kind of, you know, racist, superficial child is this to put his love for his father beneath his racism?

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Race was everything.

Race was everything in the new world, and particularly at this time, so that you did not want to be Black.

You know, you wanted to get as far away from Blackness as you possibly could.

So, we can't... Ana Navarro: So, how did these Black people get to Costa Rica?

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Slavery.

Ana Navarro: Okay.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Virtually every Black person who came to the Americas came here as a slave and Costa Rica was no exception.

But its history is somewhat unusual.

Enslaved African people began arriving here in the mid 1500's, with the conquistadors.

But the region wasn't well-suited to large scale agriculture.

So slavery was never as profitable here as it was in many other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America.

And over time, many Costa Ricans freed their slaves even though the institution itself was not abolished until 1824.

This forced us to wonder if Ana's fourth great-grandfather Miguel was born in 1758.

Was he born into slavery?

Or was he born free?

We found the answer in his own baptismal record.

Ana Navarro: Oh, I can't.

"Miguel Geronimo, slave."

Wow, wow.

And then his damn son disowns him.

This guy goes from being a slave to being free, and his son disowns him.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Did it ever occur to you that you descended from a slave?

Ana Navarro: No, it did not, it really did not.

The idea that somebody in my family, uh, suffered that is, is painful, the idea that somebody was torn from their homeland and sold as chattel is painful.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: We don't know how or exactly when Miguel became free.

But we do know that when he married at the age of 29, he was a free man.

And we know that he made the most of his freedom.

His will lists an impressive array of possessions, including farmland, cattle, and horses.

Ana Navarro: Well, I love the fact that he went from being a, he, being property that could be willed, to having property and assets that he could will.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Yeah, excellent point.

Ana Navarro: And I'm beginning to be fine with him having disinherited his son.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Son sounds like a jerk.

Ana Navarro: Yeah, you know, I'm thinking we come a long way, baby.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Come a long way.

The paper trail had now run out for each of my guests.

It was time to see what genetic analysis could tell us about their more distant ancestry.

Lupita's results contained something I'd never seen before, when we examined her mitochondrial DNA the genetic fingerprint passed down from mother to daughter across generations we found that she carries DNA from the oldest maternal haplogroup, a very ancient branch on the mtDNA tree, just adjacent to what scientists call the "Mitochondrial Eve" the most recent woman from whom all living humans today descend... When mitochondrial Eve was walking around there were no human beings alive outside of Africa.

Everybody was Black in the whole world.

Lupita Nyong'o: I predate race!

Henry Louis Gates Jr: You predate race, yeah.

Lupita Nyong'o: That's dope.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Carmelo's DNA contains a mix of African and European ancestry, reflecting the history of slavery in the new world but it also reveals something Carmelo hadn't anticipated, a population that was in the new world long before any Europeans or Africans arrived here... Carmelo Anthony: 6% Native American.

So I got native in my family.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Yeah, through the islands.

Carmelo Anthony: Wow I mean this is a history lesson for me and for my family.

I've become a teacher now you passed something on to me that I will be able to sit and pass on to them.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Like Carmelo, Ana Navarro shares DNA with Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans a mixture that, as an immigrant, she found inspiring... Ana Navarro: It makes me very happy because I am somebody that, that loves the idea of diversity, and I love knowing that I have such diversity within me.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Does it change the way that you think about yourself as an American?

Even about what an American is?

Ana Navarro: No, it doesn't.

To me, one of the beauties of being American is that we're not monolithic.

We're not homogeneous.

We're so much of everything turned into this one package we call American.

So, it, uh, it does not change how I view Americans.

It just, it makes me more, if anything, it makes me more American.

Henry Louis Gates Jr: That's the end of our journey through the family trees of Ana Navarro, Carmelo Anthony and Lupita Nyong'o.

Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of "Finding Your Roots".

Narrator: Next time on "Finding Your Roots".

Two actors learn family secrets when the paper trail ends.

Gaby Hoffmann: Oh my god, this is crazy.

Narrator: Gaby Hoffmann... Gaby Hoffmann: I have, at times, felt very, very lost.

Narrator: And Téa Leoni.

Téa Leoni: Who's that?

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

: That's your grandmother.

Téa Leoni: Wow, gosh.

Narrator: DNA discoveries tell the truth... Gaby Hoffmann: Whoa!

Narrator: About their ancestors.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

: Guess who he is.

Gaby Hoffmann: Who?

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

: King Henry II.

Narrator: On the next, "Finding Your Roots."