I wonder how many of you watch PBS. If you a regular viewer, then you may have caught the program titled “African American Lives.” You may recall seeing prominent African Americans such as Oprah, Don Cheadle, Diana Ross and Morgan Freedman have their ancestry traced all the way back to West Africa! How is that possible?! I wondered that too. I don’t know if you noticed the host, the older African American man who revealed the ancestry to the guest of the PBS show, but his name is Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. He is the (if I recall correctly) the chair of African and African-American Studies at Harvard.

Anyway, the great part of my story is that Dr. Gates was here on the IPFW campus! IPFW and the Honors Program hosts a series of big lectures during the semester and they have important people (scholars or overall charismatic people) come and speak to the students about their life’s work. We even had Samantha Powers on campus. She was the foreign policy advisor on the Obama campaign. So, Dr. Gates talked to us about how he had this ideas to trace African American history and how through perseverance, hard work, it culminated into this big project.
Here are some tips for tracing your ancestry:
1. Try making a family tree, starting from you and working backwards. Ask your grandparents about their own parents, and grandparents. Listen to their stories about old family members
2. Look for records, birth and death certificates, to fill out the farther parts of your ancestry. Then, “when the paper trail ends,” turn to DNA analysis. You will have to contact the company that does the analysis, they send you a kit, you take a cheek swab, and mail it. I believe, the company should have a database with DNA sequences from people from different ethnic groups in different countries across West Africa, across Western Europe and Native American too. They should get back to you with some information on your genetic make-up.

I had my book signed by Dr. Gates and also took pictures. I thought he gave a great lecture, with much humor, too. When you here at IPFW, you’ll be able to enjoy these great lectures and other fun activities .