He has already shaken his own. “I’m part Irish,” Professor Gates said at a low-key premiere at MoMA on Tuesday night. “So maybe that’s where my storytelling gene comes from.” The same might apply to Regis Philbin, whom Professor Gates discovered on a past show was his relative on the Irish side.
“DNA testing is opening our eyes to how mixed we are,” said Ken Chahine of Ancestry.com, whose company provided testing services for the show and who watched guests arrive and pose for photographers. “We’re all a little bit of everything.”
Indeed, Tina Brown, who looked particularly svelte and blond, is part Iraqi. “It’s on my mother’s side,” she said. “She was dark and I never knew why.”
Downstairs, in the auditorium, Professor Gates made a speech to an audience that included Tom Colicchio, Fab Five Freddy, the former New York Giant Harry Carson and Thelma Golden. “I feel like Santa Claus, being able to introduce people to their long lost ancestors,” he said.
When the episode rolled, Santa Claus had to deliver some bad news. Anderson Cooper, a guest who always thought that the Cooper side of the family was Southern and poor, learned that a fourth great-grandfather owned 12 slaves.
“It’s really depressing,” Mr. Cooper said. “I feel a sense of shame.”
Ken Burns, the documentarian, received similar news and said it hurt. When told that one of his ancestors was also a loyalist who fought for England in the Revolutionary War, Mr. Burns exclaimed:“Oh, no. God help me!” Then he held his ears.
But there was good news for him, too. DNA testing showed him to be a distant relative of Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, and Abraham Lincoln.
For Anna Deavere Smith, the actress, the news was all good. Her great-great-grandfather, a free man of color, was a conductor on the underground railroad.
“What do you think?” Professor Gates asked when the lights came up.
“Wow,” she said. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
The after-party at the China Grill included Calvin Trillin, Magee Hickey, Naomi Wolf, Stanley Crouch and Anthony Dickey, a celebrity stylist of “the natural hair Anthony Dickey community” whose concerns include roots of a different sort.
Alan M. Dershowitz, the lawyer, moved past guests eating angel hair pasta from Chinese takeout containers. On a coming episode of “Finding Your Roots,” in a season that includes Tina Fey, Stephen King and Derek Jeter, Mr. Dershowitz learns that his grandmother went to jail when she arrived in New York from Europe and couldn’t pay the fee to get off the boat.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t around at the time,” he said. “She could have used a lawyer.”
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