Erin Burnett, André Leon Talley, and Amy Carlson are Dr. Henry Louis Gates’s guests on Finding Your Roots, airing Tues., April 19, 2022, at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS.
CNN anchor Erin Burnett long-wanted to know about her Irish roots. Dr. Gates answers that question by shedding light on her great-grandmother’s difficult life in a rural village in County Mayo. She is surprised to learn about the scandalous divorce of her Burnett great-great-grandparents in New York and about her descent from enslaver John Wilson Rockwell, who was born in 1766 in Middletown, Connecticut.
Fashion icon André Leon Talley, editor-at-large of Vogue magazine, hears details about his little-known grandfather’s military service in France during the first World War. Dr. Gates traces Talley’s lineage from Simon Trice of Orange County, North Carolina. Born into slavery, Trice lived to see freedom for himself and other family members.
Blue Bloods actress Amy Carlson, who knew of her Swedish roots, learns a surprising fact about her ancestors’ immigration to New York from Sweden in 1868. Dr. Gates presents her with a family tree extending to the early 1600s.