In 2008, the actor discovered his family's stunning and sad connection to Native Americans as part of the genealogy project African American Lives.

The stars add their voices to The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House for the Obamas.

Just as the nation's capital is bracing for a power shift, the ubiquitous talk host brings his road show to President Obama's front yard. You can bet he's going to raise some hard questions.

The Root’s editor-in-chief, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is launching a new PBS show that builds on the success of his African-American Lives, a series that traced the ancestry of famous black Americans. His new series, Faces of America, uses the same potent combination of traditional genealogical research and advanced DNA techniques to explore the immigrant origins of 12 famous Americans. The Root has obtained clips from the program that will be posted on this site throughout Black History Month. These excerpts are from Gates’ interview with Queen Noor, the widow of the late King Hussein of Jordan. The queen was born in the United States but is great-granddaughter of an immigrant from Syria.