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Introduction 3 DNA from the sperm gets into a fertilized egg, the mitochondrial DNA is inheritied only from mother to child, enabling the tracing of a person’s maternal line.” It sounds incredible, but it is true, because both Y-DNA and mtDNA are passed down from parent to child without recombining and usually without mutating. So every human being can be assigned to one of the 750 haplogroups on his or her mother’s ancestral line, and every man can be assigned to one of the 500 haplogroups on his father’s ancestral line. We are living in an age in which not just African Americans but all the people in the world can trace our roots through a test tube. And while we all descend from our original human ancestors who lived in East Africa, most of these haplogroups evolved from genetic mutations in their descendants, who migrated out of East Africa to populate the rest of the world starting some fifty thousand years ago. Back in the year 2000, when Dr. Kittles tested my DNA, this procedure was new, indeed revolutionary. I could not even imagine what it could possibly mean to learn this information about my African heritage. None of today’s commercial genetic testing companies, such as Family Tree DNA, AfricanAncestry.com (Dr. Kittles’s company), 23andMe, or AfricanDNA.com (a company I own along with Family Tree DNA), even existed. And the cost of these tests was much higher than it is today. Dr. Kittles was a pioneer both in the history of genetics and in African American history. At last, my results arrived. And here is where things became “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice put it. I ripped open the envelope and read: “I compared your pattern of variation with those in my database, which now represents over six thousand samples from populations from west, central, and eastern Africa,” it began. “No matches or related sequences were observed with West African populations. . . . I hope the test has been helpful and insightful, please let me know if you have any questions.” Say what? I reread his words: “No matches or related sequences were observed.” What could this possibly mean? Where in Africa was I from? Wasn’t this what the test had been all about? Was I to be denied what I thought of as my “Kunta Kinte” moment? Since family legend had long held that Jane Gates’s children were fathered by a white man of Irish descent, if I was going to be able to trace my roots to Africa, it would have to be through my mother’s line. I had to be from someplace in Africa; how else to explain my skin color and my facial features, my grade of hair? And if that place of origin was not in Africa, then where in the world could it possibly be? 4 Introduction This surprising and frustrating result of my first DNA test in the year 2000 launched me on a path that has resulted, a decade later, in three fourhour PBS series and a one-hour special on Oprah Winfrey’s family tree. Shortly before I met Dr. Kittles, I had gotten the idea of doing a documentary series in which I would trace the family trees of African Americans. My friend Quincy Jones, the music producer, had told me that for several years he had given his friends their family tree as a Christmas present. He told me about the genealogist he had worked with, Johni Cerny, who excelled at analyzing African American family trees. While I was working on a treatment for what I hoped would become a four-hour series, it occurred to me that I could combine my passion for genealogy, born back in 1960, with this new science of ancestry tracing through DNA. It was one of those middle-of-the-night revelations. The next day, I phoned Quincy and asked him if he would be in the series. His interest in genealogy traced back to Alex Haley: Quincy had scored the music for Roots, and the two had become close friends. He agreed on the spot. I wrote to Oprah Winfrey, and she phoned me a week later from Quincy’s house to say yes. Six other African Americans agreed to join as well, including Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Tucker, Bishop T. D. Jakes, Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot, Dr. Ben Carson, and Dr. Mae Jemison. That was the origin of the series that became African American...

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