“Anchored to the Past,” an episode of Finding Your Roots, features broadcast journalists Don Lemon and Gretchen Carlson. The show airs Tues., April 20 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS.
Louisiana native Don Lemon learns new details about the background of his biological father, Wilmon Richardson, an attorney and an active member of the civil rights movement. The earliest identifiable paternal ancestor was a South Carolinian who was born in 1830.
“People would see my grandmother and me and they would wonder why this white lady was walking with this black kid,” said Lemon. “We never knew her complete racial makeup, but she identified as a black woman.” The news anchor is presented with a pedigree extending his grandmother’s Rivault family to the early 1700s and to an ancestor who helped settle the state of Kentucky.
For Gretchen Carlson, growing up in Minnesota, she was always told her roots were “100 percent Swedish.” She hears the story of her maternal third great-grandparents’ arduous three-month voyage across the Atlantic to the U.S. from Småland, Sweden, in 1851. One of their sons—Carlson’s ancestor—eventually came to Minnesota where he served the U.S. Army during the Civil War. “I’m proud that he was my relative,” says Carlson when she hears his story. DNA analysis, however, differs from family tradition. “She’s not 100 percent Swedish,” says the show’s host, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Photos: Courtesy of McGee Media