Genealogy and Family History: Videos

Presented and written by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this series journeys deep into the ancestry of a group of remarkable individuals and provides new understanding of personal identity and American history.

Since the premiere of his groundbreaking series African American Lives (2006), noted scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Now, in the second season of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Professor Gates continues that journey, utilizing a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world's leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears. Each of the 7 episodes highlights three celebrity guests, as Gates guides them through layers of ancestral history, uncovering secrets and surprises of their family trees and sharing life-altering discoveries.

Featuring John Philip Colletta. Genealogy is a journey of self-discovery that can teach you as much about yourself as about those who came before you. But what holds many of us back from unearthing our family history is uncertainty about how to go about it. Discover which resources you should use and trust, how you should make your way through tangles of public records, and so much more.

The Italian Americans reveals the unique and distinctive qualities of one immigrant group's experience, and how these qualities, over time, have shaped and challenged America. Unlike other immigrant groups, many Italians did not come to America to stay. At the turn of the 20th century, most came to work, earn money to support their families, and eventually return home. Nearly half of the first generation Italian immigrants did return to Italy.

For those that made America home, their struggle to maintain a distinct Italian culture was guided by remarkably powerful ideals of family that had always been at the center of their lives. In the Italian family, the needs of the collective came before the individual -- a value system often at odds with American ideals of freedom and personal choice. While the power of the Italian family became a source of strength, it also bred suspicion, popularized in popular media as a dark, criminal element.

This clash of culture echoed through generations of Italian Americans and, as they entered positions of political, social and cultural influence, it has left its mark on the American landscape.