Since the premiere of his groundbreaking series African American Lives (2006) and through the first season of Finding Your Roots (2012), noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees.
Tomorrow, in the second-season premiere of Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr., entitled "In Search of Our Fathers," Professor Gates sits down with best-selling author Stephen King, Tony Award winner Courtney B. Vance and actress Gloria Reuben, three guests who knew almost nothing about their fathers' histories.
Stephen King's father walked out on the family when Stephen was only two years old, and never returned; Courtney B. Vance longed to learn more about his true roots after the tragic suicide of his father, a foster child who never knew the identity of his own biological parents; and Gloria Reuben's father, 78 years old when she was born, died when she was still young, taking the secret of his ancestry with him.
Utilizing a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by his guests' ancestors and the world's leading geneticists to decode their DNA, Gates solves the mysteries of their paternal ancestry and introduces them to relatives they never knew they had.
"In Search of Our Fathers of Finding Your Roots," with Henry Louis Gates Jr., premieres tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 8 p.m. EDT/PDT on PBS (check local listings). It features Stephen King, Gloria Reuben and Courtney B. Vance. The 10-episode second season airs Tuesdays from Sept. 23 to Nov. 25.