Contains Adult Language
In this video segment from the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Wanda Sykes learns her family’s free black ancestry goes back much further than just before the Civil War. In fact, Professor Gates tells Sykes her family’s free black ancestry goes back further than he has ever seen. Sykes also learns the reason for her ancestors’ freedom: her ninth great-grandmother was a white indentured servant who had a child with a black slave. If a mother was free, her child was free; thus, Sykes’s family began a long line of free blacks.
Learn more about Finding Your Roots.