Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr: Kevin Bacon And Kyra Sedgwick

The basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from is at the core of the new 10-part PBS series FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., the 12th series from Professor Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

Filmed on location across the United States, the series premiered nationally Sundays, March 25 through May 20, 2012 at 8 p.m.

The series features Kevin Bacon, Cory Booker, Angela Buchdal, Geoffrey Canada, Margaret Cho, Harry Connick Jr., Robert Downey Jr., Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Samuel L. Jackson, John Legend, John Lewis, Branford Marsalis, Yasir Qadhi, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Rodriguez, Kyra Sedgwick, Wanda Sykes, Ruth Simmons, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters and Rick Warren.

"Kevin Bacon And Kyra Sedgwick" - What do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have in common? They are both famous actors and both descend from prominent American families that have been in this country since its inception. But they share something else, too: Both had ancestors who were early opponents of slavery.

Bacon’s Quaker ancestors repudiated slavery long before the rest of the country, in 1780. And Sedgwick’s ancestor Theodore Sedgwick argued the freedom case of Elizabeth Freeman, also known as “Mumbet,” in 1781 — which helped bring an end to slavery in Massachusetts. These facts – and many others – are revealed to Sedgwick and Bacon in this episode, revealing quite a bit about slavery in the North in the process.

FINDING YOUR ROOTS is on Facebook.