Join WTTW on Thursday, April 25 at 4:30 pm for a special Finding Your Roots community conversation. Now in its tenth season, Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., continues to be one of the most popular series in public media. The program expertly uncovers the long-buried secrets, hidden identities, and lost ancestors of some of today’s most compelling personalities, and explores the connections that bind us all together.

Join us to preview selections from Finding Your Roots along with Chicago Tonight co-host and Chicago Tonight: Black Voices host Brandis Friedman. Brandis will moderate a conversation with Rachel Jamison Webster, author of Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family; Gail Lukasik, author of White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing; and Chianta Dorsey, Division Chief, Archives & Special Collections at the Chicago Public Library.

Brandis and the panelists will discuss how identity is shaped and forged, and how it acts as a window into the wider world. They will also offer context and points of view around identity formation. In addition, the panelists will share how their use of DNA uncovered close relatives important to the development of the United States, as well as ancestors whose names they had never heard that compelled each of them to rethink her own identity. 

Corporate support for season ten of FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. is provided by Ancestry®, Johnson & Johnson and AARP. Major support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support is also provided by Ford Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Candace King Weir and by members of The Inkwell Society and by public television viewers like you.