Statement from Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Regarding Finding Your Roots Episode “Roots of Freedom”
The mission of "Finding Your Roots" is to find and share interesting stories from our celebrity guests’ ancestries and use those stories to unlock new ways to learn about our past. We are very grateful to all of our guests for allowing us into their personal lives and have told hundreds of stories in this series including many about slave ancestors—never shying away from chapters of a family’s past that might be unpleasant.
Not only do they edit out his slave owner ancestor they try to sugarcoat it by throwing his Civil Rights marching mother into the story. Why would they even include her in it? It's about relatives/ancestors you don't know, he knows who she is.
