African American Lives
American television miniseries
African American Lives is an American television miniseries hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., focusing on African American genealogical research. The family histories of prominent people of African American descent are explored using traditional genealogic techniques as well as genetic analysis.
African American Lives
The first installment of the series aired in February 2006. The series featured research into the ancestral lineages of eight prominent African American guests. By billing the guests were: music producer Quincy Jones, astronaut and physician Mae Jemison, comedian Chris Tucker, bishop T. D. Jakes, sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, actress Whoopi Goldberg, physician Ben Carson and talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Writer, host and executive producer of the series, Henry Louis Gates, also features his ancestral heritage on the show. The miniseries featured interviews with the parents and family members of guests including Winfrey's father, Vernon Winfrey. Geneticists Rick Kittles and Mark D. Shriver also make appearances.
The miniseries' four episodes were broadcast over two nights in two parts. On February 1, the first two episodes were broadcast as "Listening to our Past; The Promise of Freedom".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “African American Lives” as american television miniseries. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as american television miniseries. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4689664. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “African American Lives” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.