Henry Louis Gates Jr. Quotes

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

My roots go back to West Africa, but my last name is Kirby, which is not an African name.

Mum and I were delighted to find out we were descended from 'bog-trotters.'

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

You want to try to find your heritage.

I haven't done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband's family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother's side who was a musician, and I'd like to know more about his life.

You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared.

I don't know much about my family history except that my father had straight black hair and his ancestors probably came from India.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea.

You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.

To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within 'Roots' is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents.

I was researching my family tree, and I was deeply hoping I was going to turn out to be Eastern European, but I'm not.

My children have to know where they come from and the way of life in Africa.

I haven't actually checked my family tree, but Rutherford is a very old Scottish name, so I've probably got Scottish genes a few generations back.

It's really cheesy, but basically, 'Roots' got me to find out my own roots.

One of the biggest things that I took from playing Kunta Kinte was where his strength came from in knowing where he was from.

My mother was from West Bromwich; my grandfather was Pakistani. I had an aunt who started trying to trace the family tree and stopped when she saw what turned up.

I really appreciate the British part of my family.

I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.

I've always been fascinated by family ancestry.

My African roots made me what I am today. They're the reason I exist at all.

I've always known that my father's father and grandfather and grandmother were from Mexico. I've never denied it. I've always said it.

My family, although they're very large on both my parents' sides, they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can't get very far, and it's baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out; it's proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.

You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know?

I've known where my heritage is from all along.