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Private Notes
An investigation of Tom Joyner's family history uncovers great-uncles who may have been unjustly executed. Also featured: author Bliss Broyard ("One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life"), whose black father passed as white.
The story of Chris Rock's great-great-grandfather, who served in South Carolina's state legislature following the Civil War. Also, Don Cheadle learns that his ancestors were enslaved by Chickasaw Indians.
Information about Morgan Freeman's great-grandmother is unearthed in the records of the Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era federal agency. Also: the story of theologian Peter Gomes' ancestors, who were freed in the late 1700s by Quakers.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovers that he's related to a medieval Irish warlord; Peter Gomes learns that his paternal ancestry descends from a Portuguese Jew, who fled his homeland to escape the Inquisition in the early 1500s.
