“I just want to know who he was,” says Brittany Packnett Cunningham during her guest appearance on Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. Through DNA testing, the shows’ team of genealogists found a close genetic match to the activist that led to revealing the paternal grandfather whose name had been completely unknown to her.
“We live for a moment like this,” says Dr. Gates. It’s an emotional moment for Packnett Cunningham. “It’s like finding yourself,” she says. “It is such a gift!” Gates takes the guest back to Lincoln County, Tennessee, where her roots are traced from a great-great-great-great-grandfather.
The second of this episode’s guests, Anita Hill, is the youngest of thirteen children born to Oklahoma farmers. She knew nothing of her maternal roots beyond the names of her grandparents. Turning to DNA, Gates reconstructs the author-educator’s family tree. Remarkably, her enslaved ancestor’s name was recorded on the rolls of the 1850 slave schedule in Bowie County, Texas. “In 1850, three counties in the entire United States chose to name enslaved people,” Gates explains. “This is like winning the lottery,” says Hill.
This episode airs Tues., January 11, 2022, at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS.