"African-American Lives 2," Feb. 6, PBS

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The study of genealogy once again leads to a deeper appreciation of the black experience in America in PBS' revealing four-part series, "African-American Lives 2." A follow-up to the well-received 2006 programs, the new installments will air on PBS stations over two Wednesday evenings, Feb. 6 and 13, 9-11 p.m. EST (check local listings).

Like its predecessor, "African-American Lives 2" is hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Joining Gates to explore their respective family backgrounds are 11 other celebrated black Americans.

In the first two one-hour installments, Gates' guests include actors Morgan Freeman and Don Cheadle, poet Maya Angelou, comedian Chris Rock, theologian Peter Gomes and publisher Linda Johnson Rice, daughter of John Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet magazines.

John Johnson's story illustrates a period of black history known as the Great Migration. As Gates explains, over the first three decades of the 20th century, thousands of African-Americans left their homes in the rural South seeking freedom from segregation and enhanced economic opportunity in Northern cities like New York and Detroit. In Johnson's case, this meant relocating from Arkansas to Chicago, where he was able to establish his highly successful publishing concern by the tender age of 25.

Evidence of just how bad conditions were for blacks in the Jim Crow South is provided by Gates' investigation into the family history of radio broadcaster Tom Joyner. The discovery that Joyner's ancestors once owned 130 acres of land outside Columbia, S.C., only serves to deepen a long-standing family mystery: Why did his grandmother and many of her relatives leave the area sometime between the turn of the century and 1930?

The answer comes from local court records unearthed by Gates. In 1913, two of Joyner's great-uncles were tried, together with three other men, for the murder of a Confederate veteran. Convicted by an all-white jury, the brothers were executed in 1915.

The second episode, "A Way Out of No Way," reaches further back in time to examine the last years of slavery, the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction. Cheadle learns that his ancestors were enslaved, not by whites, but by Native Americans. As a result, the Emancipation Proclamation did not legally free them. Even after a subsequent treaty with the U.S. government did liberate such slaves, the freedmen were left without either tribal or American citizenship.

The 10 years that followed the defeat of the Confederacy were full of promise for African-Americans. Emblematic of the era was the career of Chris Rock's great-great-grandfather, Julius Caesar Tingman. Having served in the Union Army, Tingman returned to his native South Carolina and was twice elected to the state Legislature.

Political machinations surrounding the election of 1876, however, led to a deal by which Reconstruction came to a close, federal troops were withdrawn from the South and blacks were once again left politically powerless. Though turned out of office, Tingman went on to amass landholdings of more than 65 acres, leaving behind an estate that would have been impressive even for a white Southerner of the time.

Some of Gates' other interviews touch on interracial marriage and the phenomenon of light-skinned black people "passing" for white. Continuing his quest from the first series, Gates also explores his own family background, visiting the West Virginia farm his ancestors first purchased in 1906.

Whether surveying this lush rural landscape or the decaying urban infrastructure of East St. Louis, Ill., where Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee grew up, the photography is excellent. The interviews in which Gates presents information about their ancestors to his guests are often moving, while the series as a whole shows the enduring personal impact of this long-neglected chapter of the nation's past.

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