Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2012–…): Season 8, Episode 6 - Fighters - full transcript
GATES:
I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Welcome to "Finding Your Roots".
In this episode,
we'll meet actors
Terry Crews and Tony Danza,
two men who battled
their way to success.
DANZA: Where I lived in
East New York in Brooklyn,
street fighting was
like the game we played.
Like, you want to
play stickball today?
No, let's fight.
CREWS: You know there
was no such thing as therapy.
GATES: No.
CREWS: It was just, "Hey man,
you know, suck it up, move on.
And we gotta
find a way to live."
GATES: To uncover their roots,
we've used every
tool available...
Genealogists combed
through the paper trail
their ancestors left behind,
while DNA experts
utilized the latest advances in
genetic analysis to reveal
secrets hundreds of years old.
And we've compiled everything
into a book of life...
CREWS: Wow!
GATES: A record of
all of our discoveries...
DANZA: This is all so,
you know, pins and needles.
It's really
it's spine-tingling.
GATES: And a window
into the hidden past.
CREWS: I'm jumping
with joy right now?
DANZA: I marvel when
I think about it.
I mean, I just marvel at the,
at the, somehow they persevered.
CREWS: I had no idea.
I'm sorry I'm so emotional.
This is, I had no idea.
GATES: My two guests
have followed similar and
equally unlikely, paths:
each had troubled childhoods
then turned to sports,
before finding fame
in Hollywood.
Now they're going to
meet ancestors whose paths
were even more improbable,
hearing stories of sacrifice,
courage, and survival,
all hidden in the
branches of their family trees.
(theme music plays).
♪ ♪
GATES: Terry Crews has a story
that defies all expectations.
He's a superstar actor,
pitch-man, and author...
But he has absolutely no
training in any of these fields.
He is entirely a
self-creation...
And that self was formed in
the most unlikely of places...
Terry was raised in
Flint, Michigan in a home
that was marked by
intense conflict...
Circumstances that would
have crushed most children.
CREWS: My father was
addicted to alcohol.
GATES: Uh-huh.
CREWS: And my mother
was addicted to religion.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: Which made a very, very
caustic mix in our household.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: I mean, there were I,
I'll be honest
with you right here, I mean,
I wet the
bed until I was 15 years old
because I did not know what was
going to happen every night.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: I'd wake up to screaming,
fights, glass breaking.
GATES: Oh.
CREWS: And I said,
"I gotta find a, a way out"
and sports was
gonna be my way.
GATES: For Terry,
"sports" meant football,
and that posed a
daunting challenge.
Even the most talented
athletes stand very little
chance of making it in the NFL.
But Terry beat the odds.
In 1991, he was drafted by
the Los Angeles Rams and went
on to play for three different
teams over the next six years.
Then he faced a new challenge...
CREWS: When I was done
in 1997, we went broke.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: Promptly went broke.
And I, my attitude
of being this, this,
"I am a man, I'm
a football player,"
and the whole thing,
I wouldn't get a job.
And finally, when things
got so rough we were digging
in the couches for change,
I decided...
Actually, my wife told me,
"Go get a job."
And I ended up sweeping floors.
And I started to sweep.
I was like, "Let me
get these corners.
Let me get this
a little better."
And I would get $8 an hour.
And I...
They gave me $64 cash.
And I had to pay my
taxes right then and there.
I had $48.
I went home.
I gave my wife 20.
I put 20 in the gas tank.
And I had $8 in my hand
that I didn't have yesterday.
I said, "I'll never
be broke again."
GATES: Terry's
tireless work ethic,
and his remarkably
positive attitude,
would prove to be his salvation.
Eventually, he landed a
job as a security guard on a
film set where his
talents were noticed,
launching a second
career that was even more
improbable than his first...
And now, looking back
over a life marked by
titanic ups and downs,
Terry not only relishes
his success but he's come to
understand his parents,
as well as his
troubled childhood,
with what can only be
described as wisdom.
CREWS: My mother was
doing the best she could with
what she had,
with what she knew.
Um, it-it's kind of
like a saying that we have
in the entertainment industry.
Like, there
really are no villains.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: There are just people
trying to get what they want.
You know?
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: It's, it's, I-I mean,
that goes for my father too.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: He, he was doing
what he knew to do.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And if...
Usually, if you know better,
you do better.
GATES: Because, in the end,
you have a choice.
CREWS: That's it.
You have a choice.
GATES: My second guest is
the beloved actor Tony Danza.
A star of stage and screen
for more than four decades...
Tony came to fame in
1978 in the hit sitcom "Taxi"
playing a Brooklyn-born
boxer turned cab driver.
A tough-talker
with a soft heart.
The role fit Tony to a tee.
Tony grew up in east New York,
one of Brooklyn's
roughest neighborhoods and
was fundamentally
shaped by the experience.
DANZA: I was small.
And unfortunately in
Brooklyn when you're small
you've got to fight.
You've got to fight a lot
and so I was in a lot
of street fights.
My father, I
came home one day,
I'll never forget it,
I came home one day crying.
GATES: Mmm-hmm.
DANZA: He said to me,
"I'm going to show you
how to throw a right hand"
and he showed
me how to drop my shoulder and
just throw a right hand.
So the next day, I was
out getting bullied,
somebody picked on me
and I threw a right hand.
I hit the kid in the nose,
and his nose bled and
everybody in the place was
like holy mackerel,
look at that.
GATES: We got Muhammed Ali.
DANZA: Then, unfortunately,
it became something that I
kind of liked.
GATES: Much like Terry Crews,
Tony came to see
his athletic ability as his
ticket to a better life...
Though he went to college
and studied to be a teacher,
by the time he was early 20s,
he was boxing professionally,
with decidedly mixed results.
DANZA: I could punch.
GATES: Really?
DANZA: I could really punch.
I wasn't much defense.
I had some skills,
but I could bang.
If I hit you.
I used to miss guys
and knock them out.
I mean it was crazy.
I mean it.
I won, all the fights I won,
I won by knockout.
All the fights I lost
I lost by knock out.
The good news was if you
had a dinner date afterwards
you were never late.
GATES: So how did your
parents feel about you turning
professional boxer?
DANZA: They were sick.
My mother was like I cannot
believe I work hard to get you
to go to college and then
you're going to do this.
But I, and I'll be
honest with you,
now I look back at it
and what I put them through.
You know, they both
saw me get knocked out.
GATES: That's tough.
DANZA: Just one of
the worst feelings.
GATES: Happily, Tony,
and his parents,
were all in for a surprise.
In 1977, a talent scout
noticed Tony at a gym...
Soon he was auditioning
for roles in films,
trying to nurture an acting
career alongside his boxing.
And on one magical night,
everything came together.
DANZA: I went to an open call
for a gang picture in New York.
I remember a lot of
feathers, I don't know why.
But anyway, I brought
the poster from my,
I was fighting at Prospect Hall,
it was my first main event,
had my picture.
It said "Tough Tony Danza,
Brooklyn's Knockout Artist."
And when I finished reading,
it was Larry Gordon,
Walter Hill, and uh, and uh,
and Joel Silver.
I mean the big
action movie guys,
and it was at the end of
a long conference table.
They were all
sitting over there,
and I read and they said
thank you very much like
they always do at
these auditions.
Thank you very much.
When they said thank you
very much, they said, hey,
by the way, you really
want to see a warrior and
I unfurled the poster and
I said come see me fight.
GATES: That's a good move.
DANZA: They said,
"Wait a minute,
you're a fighter?"
I said, "Yeah."
So they came to see me fight.
GATES: No.
DANZA: Yeah.
This whole bunch of Hollywood
people came to this fight in
Prospect Hall in Brooklyn.
I was the main event.
They sit through
five boring fights.
It was a terrible card.
I remember it was just
a horrible card.
But I knocked the guy
out and into the front row
in like 40 seconds or something.
I'll never forget, I was
walking around the ring and
I saw Larry Gordon,
we made eye contact.
He went, "That's the greatest
audition I've ever seen."
GATES: My two guests have
both reinvented themselves
through a combination of hard
work and personal strength...
It was time to
introduce them to ancestors
who shared those traits.
We started with Tony Danza...
Tony knew that his
paternal grandparents,
Anthony and Jennie Iadanza,
had emigrated from
Italy to the United States
in the early 20th century.
In fact, Tony told me
that their story was central
to his identity...
But, as it turns out, he
didn't have the full story.
In the 1930 census,
we found Anthony
and Jennie in Brooklyn,
raising seven children together.
But when we jumped
back twenty-five years,
to the 1905 census
for New York,
we found Anthony in
the same neighborhood,
married to a woman
named "Josephine".
GATES: Ever hear of her?
Well, Tony, our research
indicates that your grandfather
was married once before.
DANZA: Is that right?
GATES: Yes.
Your grandfather was
married once before he
married your grandmother Jennie,
and we believe that his
first wife Josephine likely
died sometime after that
census was taken in June 1905.
What's it like to learn that?
DANZA: Now, wait a minute.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
So before Jennie arrives...
GATES: Yeah.
He was married to another woman.
He was married to a woman
named Josephine, who dies,
and there's no recollection
in your family?
DANZA: There's none.
Not a word.
GATES: This census
would prove to be a
gold mine for our research,
not only revealing
Tony's grandfather's early
marriage but also providing
us with insight into how he
and his relatives carved
out lives for themselves
as immigrants in America.
On the entry for Anthony,
we saw that he
worked as a "helper"...
And on the entry for a
household just two doors away,
we saw who he was helping...
DANZA: "Iadanza, Matteo,
occupation saloon keeper."
GATES: Matteo was your
grandfather Anthony's older...
BOTH: Brother.
GATES: And your grandfather
Anthony was a helper
in the saloon.
DANZA: In the saloon.
GATES: In the bar, there you go.
And talk about
history repeating itself,
you worked as a bartender.
DANZA: That's true.
That's right.
I'll tell you the truth,
that's where I learned to
act when I was a bartender.
Bartending is where
you learn how to act.
GATES: Oh, I'm sure.
Well, please turn the page.
DANZA: Oh, man.
They had a bar.
GATES: Yeah, how about that?
Tony, you're looking at
the Brooklyn Standard Union.
DANZA: Oh my God, this is,
holy mackerel.
GATES: This article was
published February 14, 1905.
Would you please read
the transcribed section?
DANZA: "Police Raid
on Broadway House,
The Standard Union.
The evidence pointed to the
presence in the house of women
of questionable character.
Detectives, made for
the place again at number 2048
is a Raines Law Hotel
owned by Matteo Iadanza.
There is a passageway in
it leading to number 2046,
which the police say is
used as a disorderly house.
Detectives knocked on
the door of number 2046 and
Iadanza opened the door.
The Detective ran
up from the rear and
began a thorough search,
which was rewarded by
finding a trap door alongside a
blind partition in a small
middle room on the second floor.
The Detective
opened the trap door,
the officers lifted a young
woman out of the pit and
bundled her into the patrol
wagon along with Iadanza.
Bail on the charge of
keeping a disorderly house was
fixed at $2,000."
GATES: So you understand...
DANZA: I love this.
A baffling blind trap was found.
GATES: Isn't that amazing.
DANZA: That's unbelievable.
GATES: Tony's great-uncle
Matteo was part of a
fascinating moment in
American history...
In 1896, New York state
passed a liquor law,
a predecessor to prohibition,
banning the sale of
alcohol on Sundays,
except in hotels
with at least ten rooms.
For saloon
keepers like Matteo,
this was a disaster.
Since they made
such a large share of
their income on Sundays,
the only day of the week
that most workers had off.
So they came up with an
ingenious solution:
converting their
bars into fake hotels,
with makeshift walls, and
continuing to sell alcohol
just like before...
Often, it seems, they got into
other illegal activity as well.
DANZA: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to
learn that your family was
part of this particular chapter
in the history of America?
DANZA: Well, you know,
it's strange because
my father was really...
He reminds me of
Robert De Niro in
"A Bronx Tale".
GATES: Right.
DANZA: He was that kind of guy.
Stay away from that stuff
because it was all
over the neighborhood, you know.
You'd walk by the taxi stand
and you'd see those guys and
you know what they're doing.
So I'm surprised that
this is in there.
I'm really and yet...
GATES: And yet?
DANZA: Well, I think in
Brooklyn in general there's
always a bit of the
bandit in everybody.
GATES: Matteo certainly
embodied a good bit
of the "bandit."
But setting aside his morals,
he also played a
very significant role in
bringing Tony's
family to America,
as evidenced by the arrival
of a ship from Naples, Italy
on July 15, 1906...
Onboard was Tony's
grandmother Jennie...
DANZA: "Zarro, Giovanna,
age: 18, single,
occupation: dress maker.
Last Permanent Residence:
Pietrelcina.
By Whom Passage Paid: Uncle.
Whether joining a relative:
Uncle Matteo Iadanza,
2048 Broadway,
Brooklyn, New York."
GATES: Isn't that cool?
DANZA: Wow.
GATES: So Tony, this marks the
moment when your grandmother,
Giovanna, Jennie, Zarro
stepped foot on American soil.
And as you can see,
her passage was paid by none
other than Matteo Iadanza,
your grandfather
Anthony's brother,
her future brother-in-
law, the saloonkeeper.
What's it like to
see that record?
DANZA: I guess he had the money.
GATES: He had the cash, baby.
DANZA: That's the
first thing, you know.
GATES: And check this out.
The reason that Jennie
referred to Matteo as her uncle
was that actually
Matteo was married to
Jennie's aunt Rufana.
Did you know that?
DANZA: No. This is all so,
you know, pins and needles.
It's really, its spine-tingling.
It really is.
GATES: Well, we don't know if
your grandfather Anthony was
with his first wife Josephine
when Jennie arrived in America.
All we know is that Jennie went
to live at 2048 Broadway where
the saloon was located
with Matteo and Rufana.
And then eight months
later on March 7, 1907,
your grandparents got married.
DANZA: They got married.
GATES: Yeah.
DANZA: So Josephine,
by then is probably...
GATES: She's gone.
DANZA: Morte, yeah.
GATES: Yeah.
What's it like to
learn this story?
DANZA: Man, I'm telling you.
We were saloon owners.
This is great.
GATES: You were
tricking the law.
I like that.
DANZA: This is incredible.
GATES: The passenger list for
the ship that brought Jennie to
New York also gave us the name
of her hometown: Pietrelcina,
a village in the Campania
region of southern Italy and
the place where Tony's father's
family had lived for centuries
likely as subsistence farmers.
Indeed, we were able to map
Tony's roots in the region back
to at least the year 1774,
giving name to five generations
of his ancestors...
DANZA: That's incredible.
GATES: Now, Tony, you're
quite a restless guy.
You're constantly
reinventing yourself.
What's it like for you to know
that your ancestors stayed put
in one place for so long?
DANZA: I just, it
speaks to how people were
at that time, I think, you know,
and it also speaks to a
way of life
that probably was ongoing for
many years and didn't
change that much.
What also speaks to me
though is that if you do go
back this far and there
is this roots and heritage
in this place and
yet they were so determined
to get to America.
GATES: Absolutely, yeah.
DANZA: That really strikes me.
GATES: Probably
motivated by poverty.
DANZA: Poverty.
There's something beautiful
about seeing this.
It's just, it does really give
you a different feeling about
your place in the succession
that's been going on since 1774.
GATES: Yeah.
DANZA: You know, it gives you
this feeling of real...
Wait a minute, we've
been here a long time.
Longer than I thought.
GATES: Much like Tony,
Terry Crews was about to meet
ancestors who overcame a
formidable amount of adversity.
The story began with his
maternal grandmother,
a woman named Mary Ellen Walker.
Mary was born in rural Georgia
but lived most of her life in
Flint, Michigan where
she played a pivotal role
in Terry's childhood.
Growing up,
he called her "mama'
and Mary's love, support,
and larger-than-life
personality were among the
brightest spots in
Terry's turbulent youth.
CREWS: This was the thing.
My mother had me at 18.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And she
had my brother at 16.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: So she was
almost a big sister.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: You know, and she didn't
like us to call her "Mom."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: She got with us
and we called her "Trish."
"Hey, Trish."
So she was
almost like a big sister to us.
But Mama, however, Mama was...
she was everything.
And one thing about Mama is
that she had made her money.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And she made her way
and she worked like crazy.
She worked at AC Spark Plug.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And this was the
weird dynamic that was in
our family is that my
mother was always like,
"You know, your
grandmother got money."
But she just said,
"She could be giving us some.
But she ain't doing it
because she knows that..."
She'd go into
this whole thing.
And I kind of developed
this attitude like, hey,
Mama need to give us
some money, you know.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: But when you look
at what she accomplished.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: This, this
woman from Georgia
came all the way up here,
made it happen for her family.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: Paid off a house...
GATES: And paid off a house.
CREWS: And cars, went
through a couple husbands.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And survived.
GATES: Mary was,
indeed, a survivor...
Much like Terry, she'd
endured a very challenging
childhood and found
stability in an unlikely place.
Sometime in the late 1930s,
when she was still a teenager,
Mary moved from
Georgia to Flint,
not to live with her parents,
but to live with her
maternal grandfather,
a man named Edward Elbert,
we found Mary in
the 1940 census.
One of thirteen
people in Edward's
multi-generational household,
which included four
of his children,
as well as a daughter-in-law...
And he was also taking care
of five of his grandchildren.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Including
your grandmother.
Which of course
raises a question.
Where were Mary's parents?
CREWS: Yeah.
GATES: Well, we aren't sure.
Mary's parents,
your great-grandparents,
were named Robert Walker
and Leonora Elbert.
CREWS: Mm-hmm.
GATES: And we know
very little about them.
We know that they
were both born in Georgia and
they were both born
in the early 1900s.
But we can't find either of
them in the 1940 census.
It seems they sent their
children to live in Flint with
their grandfather sometime
between 1935 and 1940.
Did Mary ever talk about them?
CREWS: No, she didn't.
GATES: And think about this.
In 1940 your
great-great-grandfather
Edward was 69 years old
and he was taking care of
this enormous household.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Terry wondered how
could Edward have possibly
supported so many people.
The 1940 census
indicated that he was a
farmhand who owned his own home,
but at that time,
America was mired in
the great depression and
farmhands were
making almost no money.
Things didn't quite add up
until we discovered that Edward
had some other
occupations as well...
GATES: Could you
please turn the page?
CREWS: Whoo.
GATES: Terry, this is so cool.
This is an ad in a newspaper
called "The Detroit Tribune".
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: Published on
August 16th, 1941.
Would you please
read what it says?
CREWS: What? Okay.
"Edward Elbert.
Red Man's Emergency Wagon.
Hauling all kinds.
Sodding and cement work.
Hunting dogs for sale."
Oh my god.
He was a businessman.
GATES: He was a businessman.
CREWS: This is what I love.
Oh my goodness and you know
I'm going to get a tee-shirt
with this on it.
I'm going to bring
this business back,
I'm gonna tell you that.
GATES: Your great-great
-grandfather was a
super industrious hustler.
Not only was he
working as a farmhand,
he also did all kinds of
handiwork on the side.
He's selling dogs,
he's selling cement,
he's hauling trash,
he's doing lawn work,
and he's taking out an ad for
his services in a newspaper.
Did you have any idea that you
had this entrepreneurial vein
in your ancestral line?
CREWS: I had no idea.
I'm sorry, I'm just
getting emotional.
This is...
I had no idea.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: Because all I do
is think of new ideas.
GATES: Mmm-hmm, yeah.
CREWS: The new things and
ways and new opportunities.
And I'm looking at,
here he was
doing the same thing.
GATES: You didn't
invent it, you inherited it.
CREWS: That's right.
GATES: Edward's accomplishments
are all the more impressive
given what
we discovered next...
In the 1870 census, we
found Edward's father.
A man named Eddie or Ebb
Elbert and his parents,
George and Fannie Newsome,
living in Sandersville, Georgia.
All were newly
freed from slavery.
And as we set out to trace
them back through time,
we encountered a
horrifying story.
In December of 1858,
Fannie and five of
her children were separated
following the
death of their owner.
GATES: Their family
against their will,
out of their control,
was torn apart, ripped apart.
CREWS: First of all, I have
five beautiful children.
I cannot imagine any of
my babies being yanked and
pulled out of my
arms into some...
And taken away into
someone else's household.
I'd, I, I would never
know where they went.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And with no hope
of seeing them again.
GATES: This is just in
one day, one action.
CREWS: Can you imagine having
your family separated and
the generations all...
And you...
One day you saw your mom,
and the next day
she was gone forever.
GATES: She's gone.
CREWS: Oh, man.
I can't imagine.
GATES: It's, it's
heart-wrenching.
CREWS: Incredible.
GATES: Fannie was
about 32 years old when her
owner's estate was divided.
At the time,
her husband George was
enslaved on a nearby property,
owned by a planter
named Hezekiah Newsome.
So, Fannie was now in danger
of never seeing her husband,
or some of her children again.
But, miraculously,
that's not what happened.
In 1861, Fannie and two of
her children were hired out
to work on the
Newsome plantation.
Reuniting the family,
at least in part.
GATES: They didn't
get sold down the river.
CREWS: Yes.
GATES: They were on, they,
nearby, and they brought them
back together by...
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Hiring them
out for a nominal sum.
$25, which is $656 in 2020.
CREWS: Oh, oh.
GATES: So, what do
you think this was like
for your ancestors,
after this three-year period?
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: On the one hand,
it's a happy moment.
CREWS: Listen, I am...
First of all, I'm jumping
with joy right now, right?
I mean, the reunion
had to be spectacular.
GATES: Yeah, isn't that cool?
CREWS: That is the
coolest thing ever.
GATES: Back in the house again.
CREWS: In the midst of
all this horror they get to
be back together again.
GATES: Yeah, they get
to be back together again.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: This reunion
was only the beginning.
Four years later,
the end of the Civil War
would bring an end to slavery,
and Terry's ancestors
would finally be free to
live as they chose...
Returning to the 1870 census,
we looked with fresh eyes at
George and Fannie's household,
seeing it now as
evidence of how a family
torn apart by slavery had pulled
itself back together again...
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to know
that your ancestors had such
strong family bonds?
CREWS: This is beautiful.
It's beautiful.
GATES: They managed to
create a family sometime in
the mid-1840s and keep that
family together and intact,
so that five years after
the Civil War, when the,
the enumerator from the
census came by, they were...
CREWS: They were...
GATES: All living
together 30 years later.
CREWS: Man, this is a movie.
This is a movie.
GATES: It's true.
CREWS: No, it is.
GATES: And it's your story.
CREWS: This is a movie!
Think about this.
GATES: It's your story...
CREWS: They were all
split up, different homes,
but, and they found a
way to stick together.
GATES: We'd already revealed
how Tony Danza's paternal
ancestors made their
way from Italy to America,
via a Brooklyn saloon...
Now, turning to
his mother's roots,
we uncovered a journey that
was even more surprising...
The story begins with Tony's
grandfather, Antonino Camisa,
a legendary figure
within his family.
Tony believed that in 1917,
his grandfather came
to New York from Sicily,
hoping to earn money...
The truth, however,
was far more complicated.
Antonino actually
came here much earlier,
along with his brother,
on a ship that
arrived in Boston in 1909...
DANZA: Now, wait a minute.
So this...
GATES: That's your
grandfather Antonino.
DANZA: And it's 1909.
So, I'm off by a bunch of
years then because I thought
he came in 1917.
GATES: 1909, there it is.
Tony, you're looking at the
moment that your grandfather,
set foot in America for
the very first time.
What's it like to see
that and to see the ship?
DANZA: The ship is...
I mean it must have been
just a luxurious journey.
Oh, my God.
GATES: And believe
me they were not in the
first-class cabin, right.
DANZA: Geeze.
It's amazing and it also
pushes back the timeline for me.
You know, that's incredible.
GATES: Tony's "timeline"
was probably off because his
grandfather's life
had been so difficult,
so its details had
not been passed on.
Records show that after
Antonino arrived in Boston,
he made his way to
the industrial town of
Canonsburg, Pennsylvania,
where he found work as
what was known as a "tinner."
It was a dreadful
way to earn a living.
"tinners" spent
their days in hot,
noisy mills passing
sheets of steel through vats
of acid and molten metal.
Breathing in chemical fumes
and earning abysmal pay.
DANZA: Imagine making that trip
and hearing all these stories
of paved with gold, the streets.
GATES: Statue of Liberty,
5th Avenue, Madison Avenue.
Then you go to Canonsburg.
DANZA: And be a tinner.
GATES: And you're a tinner.
DANZA: Well, you know,
you feel like somebody
sacrificed for you.
GATES: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
How do you think he
was able to endure?
DANZA: I'm telling you,
I just want to...
(crying).
It's a lot to go through.
GATES: It is.
DANZA: You know
what's funny is...
I never, uh, even considered,
uh, liken a, a long heritage.
It never really entered my mind.
So, this, uh...
I don't know.
There's an effect on you,
some kind of crazy,
I don't know,
gratefulness or something.
I don't know what to say.
Sorry.
GATES: No. The affect is...
DANZA: I think everybody
should go through this.
GATES: I think everybody should.
You know, it's very powerful.
It's a very powerful
experience and you know what,
I have no idea why.
DANZA: Yeah, I don't know why
tinner is striking me that way.
GATES: Yeah well, he was
paying his dues, man.
He was working six days
a week 10 hours a day.
DANZA: Yeah.
GATES: Despite his grueling job,
Antonio tried to make a
life for himself in America.
By 1914, he had married a
fellow Italian immigrant,
Tony's grandmother
Anna Tummarello,
and started a family.
But a great deal of
tumult lay ahead.
Within a few years,
the couple lost two of
their children to disease and
sometime around 1920,
they decided to
return to Sicily...
Where they were soon
reminded of why they'd left in
the first place: poverty.
At the time, Sicily was among
the poorest places in Europe
and many struggled simply
to put food on the table.
By 1929, Tony's grandparents
were back on a ship,
bound for New York, now
with an even greater resolve,
and many more children in tow...
DANZA: This is my aunt Rose.
DANZA: "Melchiorre Camisa" now,
oh Mike, yeah,
my uncle Mike.
Anna Camisa and
Francesca Camisa, age 2.
So my aunt Frances, my mother,
my uncle Mike,
my aunt Rose,
my uncle Tony,
and my uncle John.
GATES: They had five children
born in Italy and then John was
born in Canonsburg.
You ever seen that
document before?
DANZA: No, no.
GATES: Isn't that cool?
DANZA: It's unbelievable.
GATES: In November of 1929,
your grandparents
returned to the United States
with their six children,
five of whom
were born in Italy,
including your mom, Anna.
DANZA: And how about,
how about,
so now you got
these six kids...
GATES: Yeah.
DANZA: And you've already
been to America,
wasn't an easy trip.
It's not going to be
any easy trip to get back.
I mean, it just takes an
enormous amount of gumption...
GATES: Oh, absolutely.
DANZA: To get up and...
Yeah, but I mean it's another
one of those sacrifice things.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
DANZA: Where you
do this for the kids.
GATES: Right,
and for the future.
DANZA: For the future.
GATES: We soon discovered
that Tony's grandparents weren't
the only members
of his family to make
this kind of sacrifice.
Moving back just
one generation,
we found the passenger list
for a ship that arrived in
America from Naples
on October 20, 1902.
Onboard were the parents
of Tony's grandmother,
Antonino Tummarello
and Anna Caracci...
GATES: Recognize those names?
DANZA: Yeah.
GATES: Those are your
great-grandparents arriving
in the United States from
Italy for the very first time
together in 1902
heading to New Orleans.
(stammering)
DANZA: And I never heard this.
GATES: Your mother's
parents were not your first
maternal ancestors to
try their luck in America.
Your great-grandparents
came here first.
What's it like to find this out?
It's stunning.
DANZA: I had no idea.
I had no idea.
I thought I've always
been so proud that I know
that they got here and
he's in, it wasn't true.
GATES: It wasn't true.
DANZA: Nothing I know is true.
Oh, my God.
GATES: Tony's great
-grandparents were actually
part of a very
significant historical trend.
Between 1884 and 1924,
a huge wave of
Italian immigrants,
roughly 300,000 people,
moved to New Orleans
looking for work.
Most were Sicilians,
like Tony's ancestors
and as newspapers from
the era make clear,
the work they found
was often backbreaking...
GATES: Tony, this was published
in the Times-Democrat,
a New Orleans daily newspaper
on the 13 of July 1900.
This was about two years
before the arrival of
your great-grandparents.
Would you please read
the transcribed section?
DANZA: "Italian Labor Rapidly
Ousting the Sugar Belt Negroes.
Italian immigrants have
driven out at least 75% of
the Negro labor.
They are preferred to the
Negroes for several reasons,
chief of which are that
they will work very cheap
and are steady.
They will work right along
all day Saturday and Sunday.
Their endurance
is phenomenal."
That's just...
GATES: In the late 19th century,
I mean, go figure, right.
DANZA: But professor...
I'm trying to
think how you could be cheaper.
GATES: People out of
slavery for thirty-five years.
DANZA: That's what
I'm trying to say.
What the heck?
GATES: I know.
Can you imagine how hard
things must have been in
Sicily to cross
the ocean to work on a
Louisiana sugar plantation?
DANZA: No, I do know
that my mother told me that
they were starving.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
DANZA: It wasn't
even about livelihood.
It was about eating.
GATES: Perhaps unsurprisingly,
Tony's great-grandparents
did not stay in New Orleans...
Instead, they seem to have
followed an itinerant path over
the next decade, before
ultimately settling back in
their native Sicily.
Migration patterns like this
were not uncommon at the time.
Many Italians who crossed
the Atlantic later returned
to their homelands.
Historians have dubbed these
people "birds of passage" and
Tony's great-grandparents
are prime examples...
Causing Tony to reconsider,
yet again, his family's story.
DANZA: Wow.
GATES: Nobody ever talks
about this in our school books,
but 70% of the Italians
in that period did that.
They went back and forth.
DANZA: They were
like migrant workers.
GATES: They were
like migrant workers.
DANZA: Only thing is they
had to go across an ocean.
GATES: Yeah. Isn't that amazing?
DANZA: What people
will do to survive.
GATES: Do you feel a
connection to these people?
DANZA: I'm grateful.
I just feel this
tremendous gratefulness,
but I'm also sort of in
awe of them as far as the way
they not only persevered
and hardships and tinner and
the things, but this travel.
What were those journeys like?
GATES: What do you think
they would have made of you?
DANZA: You know, when I
went back to Sicily I was
"the autore", "the cousin,"
"the cugino autore."
And they were very,
very proud of me.
They were very proud of me,
and I'd like to think that
they would be proud of me.
I know they'd be
proud of my kids,
and I know they'd be
happy that I'm continuing
their line, I think.
GATES: Absolutely.
DANZA: But I am nothing
compared to what these people
have went through
and accomplished.
GATES: We'd already traced
Terry Crews' maternal roots
back six generations,
introducing him to ancestors
who showed immense strength.
Now we had a more
difficult task before us.
Terry's father was abusive
and to explore his roots,
we had to confront the fact
that even Terry's happiest
memories of him are
tinged with sorrow.
CREWS: My father
played the, the lottery.
Both legal and illegal.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: You know he
played the numbers.
GATES: The numbers.
CREWS: So when he would hit was
one of the most joyous times
I'll ever remember
in my household.
My father would hit
and he would come home,
he would wake us up,
it would be like 1:00 AM.
We would always have pizza.
Cause that was the only food
that was available at that time.
You know, he'd bring
these pizzas, we'd smell,
we'd be like, "Oh my God,
pizza hurry."
You know, and we would flip out.
And my mother, of course,
being very religious,
gambling is not, gambling is
not allowed unless you win.
My mother'd be like,
"Oh my goodness. We won."
I was like, "Wait, but...
Okay, I'm not even
gonna answer that."
Uh, she'd come
home and he would,
he would have his jacket
on and he would have all these
clothes on and he would say,
"Search my pockets."
GATES: Oh man.
CREWS: And my mother
would go into this pocket and
pull out a wad of money.
And then another pocket,
another pocket.
GATES: Oh.
CREWS: And then...
And then I would
watch them kiss.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And I remember saying,
"This is just like on TV.
It's just like in the movies."
GATES: Right, right.
CREWS: It was, I was like,
"That's my mother
and that's my father."
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And they love each other.
GATES: Mmm-hmm.
CREWS: And we
would just sit there.
We'd eat that pizza man, and...
GATES: Yeah, yeah.
CREWS: We would just, it
was just some of the best times
I will ever remember, you know.
And I was like,
"They love each other, look."
GATES: Yeah, mm-hmm.
They really do love each other.
CREWS: Look, they do.
You know because it
was a lot of just...
It was so much fighting
and so much stuff,
but then those moments.
I said, "This is it,
that's the ideal.
That's what I want our
family to be all the time."
GATES: And then you
go to sleep, it's like,
"Okay, it's going
to be a new day."
CREWS: That's right.
GATES: "Cause everything's
gonna be better."
CREWS: That's exactly it.
GATES: And then, boom.
CREWS: It would go back.
GATES: There's no
explaining away or excusing
what Terry endured,
but we soon encountered
what seemed, at least,
to be one factor that
may have contributed to his
father's behavior:
Terry told me that his father
was estranged from his father,
Terry's grandfather,
a man named Edward Crews...
We found Edward in the archives
of Calhoun county Georgia,
marrying Terry's
grandmother, Ermelle Smart,
in November of 1943.
Ermelle is still alive today
and Terry often visited her in
Georgia when he was a child.
But he does not recall ever
hearing her speak about Edward
and as we began our research,
the reason for that
silence became clear...
CREWS: "State of Georgia
versus Edward Crews.
Style of case, abandonment.
State's witness, Ermelle Crews."
GATES: In 1954, eleven years
after they were married,
Ermelle sued Edward for the
abandonment of their children.
CREWS: Mm-hmm.
GATES: Your father would've
been about nine years old
at the time.
CREWS: Mm-hmm. Yeah,
my, my father never said
anything about this.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: My uncle Sonny,
told me a little
bit about the fact that, uh,
he was not around...
He told me that he was
in and out of their lives.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And he would
hardly ever showed up.
Um, so that would make
the case for abandonment.
GATES: In June of 1954,
Terry's grandfather pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to
one year at a
public works camp.
He was discharged after
serving about nine months,
but his trouble with the
law was just beginning.
Less than three years later,
he was arrested again
for trying to break into
a liquor store, but this time,
he did not get off lightly.
CREWS: "The State
versus Edward Crews.
Plea of guilty to attempt
at burglary whereupon it is
considered and adjudged by
the court that Edward Crews be
placed and confined at
hard labor in a chain gang,
upon some public works
for the term of 12 months.
March 29th, 1957."
CREWS: Hmm. Not good.
GATES: And you've never
heard anything about this?
CREWS: No.
GATES: And you've
heard Sam Cooke's song
"Working On A Chain Gang"
1,000 times, right?
CREWS: Uh, I mean, uh, I
can go back in all the movies
I've ever seen
about this kinda stuff.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And all I can say is,
this, this stuff was real.
Like a chain gang.
GATES: Yeah, oh, and wearing
stripes and it was horrible.
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: "Chain gangs" are
part of a shameful chapter
in American history.
They were a form of labor that
evolved out of what was known
as "convict leasing" a system
developed after slavery whereby
white businessmen could
purchase prisoners to live and
work under their control.
When that system was
abolished in the early 1900s,
chain gangs became commonplace
across the Jim Crow south and
played a major role in
expanding the infrastructure of
many southern states.
In practice, this meant that
men like Terry's grandfather
were essentially forced
to work without pay,
under inhumane conditions,
as a punishment for even
the most minor crimes.
CREWS: Well, it's, it's
not rehabilitation.
Um, I'm sure, uh, they
left a little bit more of
their souls out there every day.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
CREWS: That's brutal.
Look at it.
GATES: Free labor.
CREWS: Free.
It's legalized slavery.
GATES: You got it.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: And you know how
hot it gets in Georgia?
CREWS: Oh, listen, man, that's
all I remember about Georgia.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: As a kid, the heat.
It was unbearable.
There was times you
couldn't even move.
GATES: How do you think
having a father in and out
of jail growing up,
affected your father?
It could not have not
affected your father.
CREWS: Yeah.
That, that right there had to
be devastating to a nine, 10,
11-year-old boy.
Had to be horrifying.
GATES: Your uncle James
told us that the bus route
that he and your father
took to get to school,
passed by the prison where
their father was locked up.
And that he and your dad would
visit their father on Sundays.
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: And he would
always promise to do better
when he got out.
But as your uncle stated,
he never kept his promise.
CREWS: This is so heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking.
GATES: Edward Crews was
discharged from prison on
January the 7th 1958.
He was just 34 years old,
but unfortunately,
he had little time left
to enjoy his freedom...
CREWS: "Certificate of death.
Name, Edward Crews.
Date of death, March 5th, 1963.
Place of death,
Butler County, Georgia.
Age, 38 years.
Cause of death, epileptic."
Epileptic seizure?
GATES: Yep.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Edward died of epilepsy
when he was just 38 years old.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Your father was only
17 years old at the time.
CREWS: He was young,
38 years is young.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
CREWS: Wow.
Five years after he got out.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: Oh my goodness.
GATES: And you were
born five years after
your grandfather died.
CREWS: Yes. I was, my
father never talked about him.
GATES: Could you
please turn the page?
CREWS: Oh my goodness.
Wow.
GATES: That's your
grandfather's headstone.
CREWS: Whoa.
GATES: He's buried in
St. Steven's Church Cemetery
in Edison, Georgia.
CREWS: Oh my goodness.
"Edward Crews."
And this is in Edison?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
St. Steven's Cemetery.
CREWS: I've never seen it.
Never seen it.
I've been to Edison
since I was a little kid.
GATES: Does learning
these new details about
your grandfather's life,
do you think it will make you
look at the relationship
between you and your father
with a new lens, you know?
With new perspective?
CREWS: Yeah, yeah, I mean,
hurt people hurt people.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And that's one thing
I've learned in all my walks.
GATES: Mm-hmm, do you
think that walking your
father through
your Book of Life is
something you're gonna do?
CREWS: Definitely, I'm
gonna invite my father out.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And, we're gonna
go over this book together.
GATES: But I'd have,
your counselor standing by.
CREWS: Yeah, yeah.
No, I keep him on the
speakerphone, like...
Just chime in when I,
when I need,
when I need your help, sir.
GATES: The paper trail had now
run out for each of my guests.
It was time to show them
their full family trees.
Now filled with ancestors whose
names they'd never heard before.
DANZA: It's just magnificent.
GATES: Isn't that great?
DANZA: I appreciate it so much.
CREWS: This is like my
own personal museum...
I feel them.
GATES: For each, it
was a moment of wonder,
providing a chance to reflect
on the sacrifices made by
generation after generation
to lay the groundwork
for their own success...
DANZA: I just had
the best parents.
I really just had
the best parents.
But when you see this
and you get to go back and
see their parents'
and their parents'-parents'
and their
parents'-parents'-parents'
it blows your mind.
It blows your mind
and it makes you feel,
first of all, I
can't get over the gratitude
but really I do feel solid.
Like I have some kind of...
I have a history.
GATES: A foundation.
DANZA: A foundation,
there you go.
GATES: Yeah, and you're standing
on a foundation of ancestors.
DANZA: That's me.
CREWS: I'm actually
connected to my past.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And, I was never
connected before today.
GATES: Hmm.
CREWS: There was a
huge disconnection.
I just didn't know.
GATES: Hmm. That's beautiful.
CREWS: You're anchoring
me right now, man.
And when you look at all the
worth that comes from being
anchored, you know, I remember
being jealous of white families
in school and their
fathers were the so-and-so's.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
CREWS: And I was like,
"Wow," and they knew they
could do whatever they wanted
because they
were a so-and-so.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: But we can do this too.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: I know I can do
whatever I want to do,
'cause look how
strong my family was.
GATES: Absolutely.
CREWS: I love that, I love that.
GATES: That's the end of
our search for the ancestors
of Terry Crews and Tony Danza.
Join me next time as we
unlock the secrets of the past
for new guests
on another episode of
"Finding Your Roots".
I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Welcome to "Finding Your Roots".
In this episode,
we'll meet actors
Terry Crews and Tony Danza,
two men who battled
their way to success.
DANZA: Where I lived in
East New York in Brooklyn,
street fighting was
like the game we played.
Like, you want to
play stickball today?
No, let's fight.
CREWS: You know there
was no such thing as therapy.
GATES: No.
CREWS: It was just, "Hey man,
you know, suck it up, move on.
And we gotta
find a way to live."
GATES: To uncover their roots,
we've used every
tool available...
Genealogists combed
through the paper trail
their ancestors left behind,
while DNA experts
utilized the latest advances in
genetic analysis to reveal
secrets hundreds of years old.
And we've compiled everything
into a book of life...
CREWS: Wow!
GATES: A record of
all of our discoveries...
DANZA: This is all so,
you know, pins and needles.
It's really
it's spine-tingling.
GATES: And a window
into the hidden past.
CREWS: I'm jumping
with joy right now?
DANZA: I marvel when
I think about it.
I mean, I just marvel at the,
at the, somehow they persevered.
CREWS: I had no idea.
I'm sorry I'm so emotional.
This is, I had no idea.
GATES: My two guests
have followed similar and
equally unlikely, paths:
each had troubled childhoods
then turned to sports,
before finding fame
in Hollywood.
Now they're going to
meet ancestors whose paths
were even more improbable,
hearing stories of sacrifice,
courage, and survival,
all hidden in the
branches of their family trees.
(theme music plays).
♪ ♪
GATES: Terry Crews has a story
that defies all expectations.
He's a superstar actor,
pitch-man, and author...
But he has absolutely no
training in any of these fields.
He is entirely a
self-creation...
And that self was formed in
the most unlikely of places...
Terry was raised in
Flint, Michigan in a home
that was marked by
intense conflict...
Circumstances that would
have crushed most children.
CREWS: My father was
addicted to alcohol.
GATES: Uh-huh.
CREWS: And my mother
was addicted to religion.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: Which made a very, very
caustic mix in our household.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: I mean, there were I,
I'll be honest
with you right here, I mean,
I wet the
bed until I was 15 years old
because I did not know what was
going to happen every night.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: I'd wake up to screaming,
fights, glass breaking.
GATES: Oh.
CREWS: And I said,
"I gotta find a, a way out"
and sports was
gonna be my way.
GATES: For Terry,
"sports" meant football,
and that posed a
daunting challenge.
Even the most talented
athletes stand very little
chance of making it in the NFL.
But Terry beat the odds.
In 1991, he was drafted by
the Los Angeles Rams and went
on to play for three different
teams over the next six years.
Then he faced a new challenge...
CREWS: When I was done
in 1997, we went broke.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: Promptly went broke.
And I, my attitude
of being this, this,
"I am a man, I'm
a football player,"
and the whole thing,
I wouldn't get a job.
And finally, when things
got so rough we were digging
in the couches for change,
I decided...
Actually, my wife told me,
"Go get a job."
And I ended up sweeping floors.
And I started to sweep.
I was like, "Let me
get these corners.
Let me get this
a little better."
And I would get $8 an hour.
And I...
They gave me $64 cash.
And I had to pay my
taxes right then and there.
I had $48.
I went home.
I gave my wife 20.
I put 20 in the gas tank.
And I had $8 in my hand
that I didn't have yesterday.
I said, "I'll never
be broke again."
GATES: Terry's
tireless work ethic,
and his remarkably
positive attitude,
would prove to be his salvation.
Eventually, he landed a
job as a security guard on a
film set where his
talents were noticed,
launching a second
career that was even more
improbable than his first...
And now, looking back
over a life marked by
titanic ups and downs,
Terry not only relishes
his success but he's come to
understand his parents,
as well as his
troubled childhood,
with what can only be
described as wisdom.
CREWS: My mother was
doing the best she could with
what she had,
with what she knew.
Um, it-it's kind of
like a saying that we have
in the entertainment industry.
Like, there
really are no villains.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: There are just people
trying to get what they want.
You know?
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: It's, it's, I-I mean,
that goes for my father too.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: He, he was doing
what he knew to do.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And if...
Usually, if you know better,
you do better.
GATES: Because, in the end,
you have a choice.
CREWS: That's it.
You have a choice.
GATES: My second guest is
the beloved actor Tony Danza.
A star of stage and screen
for more than four decades...
Tony came to fame in
1978 in the hit sitcom "Taxi"
playing a Brooklyn-born
boxer turned cab driver.
A tough-talker
with a soft heart.
The role fit Tony to a tee.
Tony grew up in east New York,
one of Brooklyn's
roughest neighborhoods and
was fundamentally
shaped by the experience.
DANZA: I was small.
And unfortunately in
Brooklyn when you're small
you've got to fight.
You've got to fight a lot
and so I was in a lot
of street fights.
My father, I
came home one day,
I'll never forget it,
I came home one day crying.
GATES: Mmm-hmm.
DANZA: He said to me,
"I'm going to show you
how to throw a right hand"
and he showed
me how to drop my shoulder and
just throw a right hand.
So the next day, I was
out getting bullied,
somebody picked on me
and I threw a right hand.
I hit the kid in the nose,
and his nose bled and
everybody in the place was
like holy mackerel,
look at that.
GATES: We got Muhammed Ali.
DANZA: Then, unfortunately,
it became something that I
kind of liked.
GATES: Much like Terry Crews,
Tony came to see
his athletic ability as his
ticket to a better life...
Though he went to college
and studied to be a teacher,
by the time he was early 20s,
he was boxing professionally,
with decidedly mixed results.
DANZA: I could punch.
GATES: Really?
DANZA: I could really punch.
I wasn't much defense.
I had some skills,
but I could bang.
If I hit you.
I used to miss guys
and knock them out.
I mean it was crazy.
I mean it.
I won, all the fights I won,
I won by knockout.
All the fights I lost
I lost by knock out.
The good news was if you
had a dinner date afterwards
you were never late.
GATES: So how did your
parents feel about you turning
professional boxer?
DANZA: They were sick.
My mother was like I cannot
believe I work hard to get you
to go to college and then
you're going to do this.
But I, and I'll be
honest with you,
now I look back at it
and what I put them through.
You know, they both
saw me get knocked out.
GATES: That's tough.
DANZA: Just one of
the worst feelings.
GATES: Happily, Tony,
and his parents,
were all in for a surprise.
In 1977, a talent scout
noticed Tony at a gym...
Soon he was auditioning
for roles in films,
trying to nurture an acting
career alongside his boxing.
And on one magical night,
everything came together.
DANZA: I went to an open call
for a gang picture in New York.
I remember a lot of
feathers, I don't know why.
But anyway, I brought
the poster from my,
I was fighting at Prospect Hall,
it was my first main event,
had my picture.
It said "Tough Tony Danza,
Brooklyn's Knockout Artist."
And when I finished reading,
it was Larry Gordon,
Walter Hill, and uh, and uh,
and Joel Silver.
I mean the big
action movie guys,
and it was at the end of
a long conference table.
They were all
sitting over there,
and I read and they said
thank you very much like
they always do at
these auditions.
Thank you very much.
When they said thank you
very much, they said, hey,
by the way, you really
want to see a warrior and
I unfurled the poster and
I said come see me fight.
GATES: That's a good move.
DANZA: They said,
"Wait a minute,
you're a fighter?"
I said, "Yeah."
So they came to see me fight.
GATES: No.
DANZA: Yeah.
This whole bunch of Hollywood
people came to this fight in
Prospect Hall in Brooklyn.
I was the main event.
They sit through
five boring fights.
It was a terrible card.
I remember it was just
a horrible card.
But I knocked the guy
out and into the front row
in like 40 seconds or something.
I'll never forget, I was
walking around the ring and
I saw Larry Gordon,
we made eye contact.
He went, "That's the greatest
audition I've ever seen."
GATES: My two guests have
both reinvented themselves
through a combination of hard
work and personal strength...
It was time to
introduce them to ancestors
who shared those traits.
We started with Tony Danza...
Tony knew that his
paternal grandparents,
Anthony and Jennie Iadanza,
had emigrated from
Italy to the United States
in the early 20th century.
In fact, Tony told me
that their story was central
to his identity...
But, as it turns out, he
didn't have the full story.
In the 1930 census,
we found Anthony
and Jennie in Brooklyn,
raising seven children together.
But when we jumped
back twenty-five years,
to the 1905 census
for New York,
we found Anthony in
the same neighborhood,
married to a woman
named "Josephine".
GATES: Ever hear of her?
Well, Tony, our research
indicates that your grandfather
was married once before.
DANZA: Is that right?
GATES: Yes.
Your grandfather was
married once before he
married your grandmother Jennie,
and we believe that his
first wife Josephine likely
died sometime after that
census was taken in June 1905.
What's it like to learn that?
DANZA: Now, wait a minute.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
So before Jennie arrives...
GATES: Yeah.
He was married to another woman.
He was married to a woman
named Josephine, who dies,
and there's no recollection
in your family?
DANZA: There's none.
Not a word.
GATES: This census
would prove to be a
gold mine for our research,
not only revealing
Tony's grandfather's early
marriage but also providing
us with insight into how he
and his relatives carved
out lives for themselves
as immigrants in America.
On the entry for Anthony,
we saw that he
worked as a "helper"...
And on the entry for a
household just two doors away,
we saw who he was helping...
DANZA: "Iadanza, Matteo,
occupation saloon keeper."
GATES: Matteo was your
grandfather Anthony's older...
BOTH: Brother.
GATES: And your grandfather
Anthony was a helper
in the saloon.
DANZA: In the saloon.
GATES: In the bar, there you go.
And talk about
history repeating itself,
you worked as a bartender.
DANZA: That's true.
That's right.
I'll tell you the truth,
that's where I learned to
act when I was a bartender.
Bartending is where
you learn how to act.
GATES: Oh, I'm sure.
Well, please turn the page.
DANZA: Oh, man.
They had a bar.
GATES: Yeah, how about that?
Tony, you're looking at
the Brooklyn Standard Union.
DANZA: Oh my God, this is,
holy mackerel.
GATES: This article was
published February 14, 1905.
Would you please read
the transcribed section?
DANZA: "Police Raid
on Broadway House,
The Standard Union.
The evidence pointed to the
presence in the house of women
of questionable character.
Detectives, made for
the place again at number 2048
is a Raines Law Hotel
owned by Matteo Iadanza.
There is a passageway in
it leading to number 2046,
which the police say is
used as a disorderly house.
Detectives knocked on
the door of number 2046 and
Iadanza opened the door.
The Detective ran
up from the rear and
began a thorough search,
which was rewarded by
finding a trap door alongside a
blind partition in a small
middle room on the second floor.
The Detective
opened the trap door,
the officers lifted a young
woman out of the pit and
bundled her into the patrol
wagon along with Iadanza.
Bail on the charge of
keeping a disorderly house was
fixed at $2,000."
GATES: So you understand...
DANZA: I love this.
A baffling blind trap was found.
GATES: Isn't that amazing.
DANZA: That's unbelievable.
GATES: Tony's great-uncle
Matteo was part of a
fascinating moment in
American history...
In 1896, New York state
passed a liquor law,
a predecessor to prohibition,
banning the sale of
alcohol on Sundays,
except in hotels
with at least ten rooms.
For saloon
keepers like Matteo,
this was a disaster.
Since they made
such a large share of
their income on Sundays,
the only day of the week
that most workers had off.
So they came up with an
ingenious solution:
converting their
bars into fake hotels,
with makeshift walls, and
continuing to sell alcohol
just like before...
Often, it seems, they got into
other illegal activity as well.
DANZA: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to
learn that your family was
part of this particular chapter
in the history of America?
DANZA: Well, you know,
it's strange because
my father was really...
He reminds me of
Robert De Niro in
"A Bronx Tale".
GATES: Right.
DANZA: He was that kind of guy.
Stay away from that stuff
because it was all
over the neighborhood, you know.
You'd walk by the taxi stand
and you'd see those guys and
you know what they're doing.
So I'm surprised that
this is in there.
I'm really and yet...
GATES: And yet?
DANZA: Well, I think in
Brooklyn in general there's
always a bit of the
bandit in everybody.
GATES: Matteo certainly
embodied a good bit
of the "bandit."
But setting aside his morals,
he also played a
very significant role in
bringing Tony's
family to America,
as evidenced by the arrival
of a ship from Naples, Italy
on July 15, 1906...
Onboard was Tony's
grandmother Jennie...
DANZA: "Zarro, Giovanna,
age: 18, single,
occupation: dress maker.
Last Permanent Residence:
Pietrelcina.
By Whom Passage Paid: Uncle.
Whether joining a relative:
Uncle Matteo Iadanza,
2048 Broadway,
Brooklyn, New York."
GATES: Isn't that cool?
DANZA: Wow.
GATES: So Tony, this marks the
moment when your grandmother,
Giovanna, Jennie, Zarro
stepped foot on American soil.
And as you can see,
her passage was paid by none
other than Matteo Iadanza,
your grandfather
Anthony's brother,
her future brother-in-
law, the saloonkeeper.
What's it like to
see that record?
DANZA: I guess he had the money.
GATES: He had the cash, baby.
DANZA: That's the
first thing, you know.
GATES: And check this out.
The reason that Jennie
referred to Matteo as her uncle
was that actually
Matteo was married to
Jennie's aunt Rufana.
Did you know that?
DANZA: No. This is all so,
you know, pins and needles.
It's really, its spine-tingling.
It really is.
GATES: Well, we don't know if
your grandfather Anthony was
with his first wife Josephine
when Jennie arrived in America.
All we know is that Jennie went
to live at 2048 Broadway where
the saloon was located
with Matteo and Rufana.
And then eight months
later on March 7, 1907,
your grandparents got married.
DANZA: They got married.
GATES: Yeah.
DANZA: So Josephine,
by then is probably...
GATES: She's gone.
DANZA: Morte, yeah.
GATES: Yeah.
What's it like to
learn this story?
DANZA: Man, I'm telling you.
We were saloon owners.
This is great.
GATES: You were
tricking the law.
I like that.
DANZA: This is incredible.
GATES: The passenger list for
the ship that brought Jennie to
New York also gave us the name
of her hometown: Pietrelcina,
a village in the Campania
region of southern Italy and
the place where Tony's father's
family had lived for centuries
likely as subsistence farmers.
Indeed, we were able to map
Tony's roots in the region back
to at least the year 1774,
giving name to five generations
of his ancestors...
DANZA: That's incredible.
GATES: Now, Tony, you're
quite a restless guy.
You're constantly
reinventing yourself.
What's it like for you to know
that your ancestors stayed put
in one place for so long?
DANZA: I just, it
speaks to how people were
at that time, I think, you know,
and it also speaks to a
way of life
that probably was ongoing for
many years and didn't
change that much.
What also speaks to me
though is that if you do go
back this far and there
is this roots and heritage
in this place and
yet they were so determined
to get to America.
GATES: Absolutely, yeah.
DANZA: That really strikes me.
GATES: Probably
motivated by poverty.
DANZA: Poverty.
There's something beautiful
about seeing this.
It's just, it does really give
you a different feeling about
your place in the succession
that's been going on since 1774.
GATES: Yeah.
DANZA: You know, it gives you
this feeling of real...
Wait a minute, we've
been here a long time.
Longer than I thought.
GATES: Much like Tony,
Terry Crews was about to meet
ancestors who overcame a
formidable amount of adversity.
The story began with his
maternal grandmother,
a woman named Mary Ellen Walker.
Mary was born in rural Georgia
but lived most of her life in
Flint, Michigan where
she played a pivotal role
in Terry's childhood.
Growing up,
he called her "mama'
and Mary's love, support,
and larger-than-life
personality were among the
brightest spots in
Terry's turbulent youth.
CREWS: This was the thing.
My mother had me at 18.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And she
had my brother at 16.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: So she was
almost a big sister.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: You know, and she didn't
like us to call her "Mom."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: She got with us
and we called her "Trish."
"Hey, Trish."
So she was
almost like a big sister to us.
But Mama, however, Mama was...
she was everything.
And one thing about Mama is
that she had made her money.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And she made her way
and she worked like crazy.
She worked at AC Spark Plug.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And this was the
weird dynamic that was in
our family is that my
mother was always like,
"You know, your
grandmother got money."
But she just said,
"She could be giving us some.
But she ain't doing it
because she knows that..."
She'd go into
this whole thing.
And I kind of developed
this attitude like, hey,
Mama need to give us
some money, you know.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: But when you look
at what she accomplished.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: This, this
woman from Georgia
came all the way up here,
made it happen for her family.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: Paid off a house...
GATES: And paid off a house.
CREWS: And cars, went
through a couple husbands.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And survived.
GATES: Mary was,
indeed, a survivor...
Much like Terry, she'd
endured a very challenging
childhood and found
stability in an unlikely place.
Sometime in the late 1930s,
when she was still a teenager,
Mary moved from
Georgia to Flint,
not to live with her parents,
but to live with her
maternal grandfather,
a man named Edward Elbert,
we found Mary in
the 1940 census.
One of thirteen
people in Edward's
multi-generational household,
which included four
of his children,
as well as a daughter-in-law...
And he was also taking care
of five of his grandchildren.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Including
your grandmother.
Which of course
raises a question.
Where were Mary's parents?
CREWS: Yeah.
GATES: Well, we aren't sure.
Mary's parents,
your great-grandparents,
were named Robert Walker
and Leonora Elbert.
CREWS: Mm-hmm.
GATES: And we know
very little about them.
We know that they
were both born in Georgia and
they were both born
in the early 1900s.
But we can't find either of
them in the 1940 census.
It seems they sent their
children to live in Flint with
their grandfather sometime
between 1935 and 1940.
Did Mary ever talk about them?
CREWS: No, she didn't.
GATES: And think about this.
In 1940 your
great-great-grandfather
Edward was 69 years old
and he was taking care of
this enormous household.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Terry wondered how
could Edward have possibly
supported so many people.
The 1940 census
indicated that he was a
farmhand who owned his own home,
but at that time,
America was mired in
the great depression and
farmhands were
making almost no money.
Things didn't quite add up
until we discovered that Edward
had some other
occupations as well...
GATES: Could you
please turn the page?
CREWS: Whoo.
GATES: Terry, this is so cool.
This is an ad in a newspaper
called "The Detroit Tribune".
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: Published on
August 16th, 1941.
Would you please
read what it says?
CREWS: What? Okay.
"Edward Elbert.
Red Man's Emergency Wagon.
Hauling all kinds.
Sodding and cement work.
Hunting dogs for sale."
Oh my god.
He was a businessman.
GATES: He was a businessman.
CREWS: This is what I love.
Oh my goodness and you know
I'm going to get a tee-shirt
with this on it.
I'm going to bring
this business back,
I'm gonna tell you that.
GATES: Your great-great
-grandfather was a
super industrious hustler.
Not only was he
working as a farmhand,
he also did all kinds of
handiwork on the side.
He's selling dogs,
he's selling cement,
he's hauling trash,
he's doing lawn work,
and he's taking out an ad for
his services in a newspaper.
Did you have any idea that you
had this entrepreneurial vein
in your ancestral line?
CREWS: I had no idea.
I'm sorry, I'm just
getting emotional.
This is...
I had no idea.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: Because all I do
is think of new ideas.
GATES: Mmm-hmm, yeah.
CREWS: The new things and
ways and new opportunities.
And I'm looking at,
here he was
doing the same thing.
GATES: You didn't
invent it, you inherited it.
CREWS: That's right.
GATES: Edward's accomplishments
are all the more impressive
given what
we discovered next...
In the 1870 census, we
found Edward's father.
A man named Eddie or Ebb
Elbert and his parents,
George and Fannie Newsome,
living in Sandersville, Georgia.
All were newly
freed from slavery.
And as we set out to trace
them back through time,
we encountered a
horrifying story.
In December of 1858,
Fannie and five of
her children were separated
following the
death of their owner.
GATES: Their family
against their will,
out of their control,
was torn apart, ripped apart.
CREWS: First of all, I have
five beautiful children.
I cannot imagine any of
my babies being yanked and
pulled out of my
arms into some...
And taken away into
someone else's household.
I'd, I, I would never
know where they went.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And with no hope
of seeing them again.
GATES: This is just in
one day, one action.
CREWS: Can you imagine having
your family separated and
the generations all...
And you...
One day you saw your mom,
and the next day
she was gone forever.
GATES: She's gone.
CREWS: Oh, man.
I can't imagine.
GATES: It's, it's
heart-wrenching.
CREWS: Incredible.
GATES: Fannie was
about 32 years old when her
owner's estate was divided.
At the time,
her husband George was
enslaved on a nearby property,
owned by a planter
named Hezekiah Newsome.
So, Fannie was now in danger
of never seeing her husband,
or some of her children again.
But, miraculously,
that's not what happened.
In 1861, Fannie and two of
her children were hired out
to work on the
Newsome plantation.
Reuniting the family,
at least in part.
GATES: They didn't
get sold down the river.
CREWS: Yes.
GATES: They were on, they,
nearby, and they brought them
back together by...
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Hiring them
out for a nominal sum.
$25, which is $656 in 2020.
CREWS: Oh, oh.
GATES: So, what do
you think this was like
for your ancestors,
after this three-year period?
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: On the one hand,
it's a happy moment.
CREWS: Listen, I am...
First of all, I'm jumping
with joy right now, right?
I mean, the reunion
had to be spectacular.
GATES: Yeah, isn't that cool?
CREWS: That is the
coolest thing ever.
GATES: Back in the house again.
CREWS: In the midst of
all this horror they get to
be back together again.
GATES: Yeah, they get
to be back together again.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: This reunion
was only the beginning.
Four years later,
the end of the Civil War
would bring an end to slavery,
and Terry's ancestors
would finally be free to
live as they chose...
Returning to the 1870 census,
we looked with fresh eyes at
George and Fannie's household,
seeing it now as
evidence of how a family
torn apart by slavery had pulled
itself back together again...
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to know
that your ancestors had such
strong family bonds?
CREWS: This is beautiful.
It's beautiful.
GATES: They managed to
create a family sometime in
the mid-1840s and keep that
family together and intact,
so that five years after
the Civil War, when the,
the enumerator from the
census came by, they were...
CREWS: They were...
GATES: All living
together 30 years later.
CREWS: Man, this is a movie.
This is a movie.
GATES: It's true.
CREWS: No, it is.
GATES: And it's your story.
CREWS: This is a movie!
Think about this.
GATES: It's your story...
CREWS: They were all
split up, different homes,
but, and they found a
way to stick together.
GATES: We'd already revealed
how Tony Danza's paternal
ancestors made their
way from Italy to America,
via a Brooklyn saloon...
Now, turning to
his mother's roots,
we uncovered a journey that
was even more surprising...
The story begins with Tony's
grandfather, Antonino Camisa,
a legendary figure
within his family.
Tony believed that in 1917,
his grandfather came
to New York from Sicily,
hoping to earn money...
The truth, however,
was far more complicated.
Antonino actually
came here much earlier,
along with his brother,
on a ship that
arrived in Boston in 1909...
DANZA: Now, wait a minute.
So this...
GATES: That's your
grandfather Antonino.
DANZA: And it's 1909.
So, I'm off by a bunch of
years then because I thought
he came in 1917.
GATES: 1909, there it is.
Tony, you're looking at the
moment that your grandfather,
set foot in America for
the very first time.
What's it like to see
that and to see the ship?
DANZA: The ship is...
I mean it must have been
just a luxurious journey.
Oh, my God.
GATES: And believe
me they were not in the
first-class cabin, right.
DANZA: Geeze.
It's amazing and it also
pushes back the timeline for me.
You know, that's incredible.
GATES: Tony's "timeline"
was probably off because his
grandfather's life
had been so difficult,
so its details had
not been passed on.
Records show that after
Antonino arrived in Boston,
he made his way to
the industrial town of
Canonsburg, Pennsylvania,
where he found work as
what was known as a "tinner."
It was a dreadful
way to earn a living.
"tinners" spent
their days in hot,
noisy mills passing
sheets of steel through vats
of acid and molten metal.
Breathing in chemical fumes
and earning abysmal pay.
DANZA: Imagine making that trip
and hearing all these stories
of paved with gold, the streets.
GATES: Statue of Liberty,
5th Avenue, Madison Avenue.
Then you go to Canonsburg.
DANZA: And be a tinner.
GATES: And you're a tinner.
DANZA: Well, you know,
you feel like somebody
sacrificed for you.
GATES: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
How do you think he
was able to endure?
DANZA: I'm telling you,
I just want to...
(crying).
It's a lot to go through.
GATES: It is.
DANZA: You know
what's funny is...
I never, uh, even considered,
uh, liken a, a long heritage.
It never really entered my mind.
So, this, uh...
I don't know.
There's an effect on you,
some kind of crazy,
I don't know,
gratefulness or something.
I don't know what to say.
Sorry.
GATES: No. The affect is...
DANZA: I think everybody
should go through this.
GATES: I think everybody should.
You know, it's very powerful.
It's a very powerful
experience and you know what,
I have no idea why.
DANZA: Yeah, I don't know why
tinner is striking me that way.
GATES: Yeah well, he was
paying his dues, man.
He was working six days
a week 10 hours a day.
DANZA: Yeah.
GATES: Despite his grueling job,
Antonio tried to make a
life for himself in America.
By 1914, he had married a
fellow Italian immigrant,
Tony's grandmother
Anna Tummarello,
and started a family.
But a great deal of
tumult lay ahead.
Within a few years,
the couple lost two of
their children to disease and
sometime around 1920,
they decided to
return to Sicily...
Where they were soon
reminded of why they'd left in
the first place: poverty.
At the time, Sicily was among
the poorest places in Europe
and many struggled simply
to put food on the table.
By 1929, Tony's grandparents
were back on a ship,
bound for New York, now
with an even greater resolve,
and many more children in tow...
DANZA: This is my aunt Rose.
DANZA: "Melchiorre Camisa" now,
oh Mike, yeah,
my uncle Mike.
Anna Camisa and
Francesca Camisa, age 2.
So my aunt Frances, my mother,
my uncle Mike,
my aunt Rose,
my uncle Tony,
and my uncle John.
GATES: They had five children
born in Italy and then John was
born in Canonsburg.
You ever seen that
document before?
DANZA: No, no.
GATES: Isn't that cool?
DANZA: It's unbelievable.
GATES: In November of 1929,
your grandparents
returned to the United States
with their six children,
five of whom
were born in Italy,
including your mom, Anna.
DANZA: And how about,
how about,
so now you got
these six kids...
GATES: Yeah.
DANZA: And you've already
been to America,
wasn't an easy trip.
It's not going to be
any easy trip to get back.
I mean, it just takes an
enormous amount of gumption...
GATES: Oh, absolutely.
DANZA: To get up and...
Yeah, but I mean it's another
one of those sacrifice things.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
DANZA: Where you
do this for the kids.
GATES: Right,
and for the future.
DANZA: For the future.
GATES: We soon discovered
that Tony's grandparents weren't
the only members
of his family to make
this kind of sacrifice.
Moving back just
one generation,
we found the passenger list
for a ship that arrived in
America from Naples
on October 20, 1902.
Onboard were the parents
of Tony's grandmother,
Antonino Tummarello
and Anna Caracci...
GATES: Recognize those names?
DANZA: Yeah.
GATES: Those are your
great-grandparents arriving
in the United States from
Italy for the very first time
together in 1902
heading to New Orleans.
(stammering)
DANZA: And I never heard this.
GATES: Your mother's
parents were not your first
maternal ancestors to
try their luck in America.
Your great-grandparents
came here first.
What's it like to find this out?
It's stunning.
DANZA: I had no idea.
I had no idea.
I thought I've always
been so proud that I know
that they got here and
he's in, it wasn't true.
GATES: It wasn't true.
DANZA: Nothing I know is true.
Oh, my God.
GATES: Tony's great
-grandparents were actually
part of a very
significant historical trend.
Between 1884 and 1924,
a huge wave of
Italian immigrants,
roughly 300,000 people,
moved to New Orleans
looking for work.
Most were Sicilians,
like Tony's ancestors
and as newspapers from
the era make clear,
the work they found
was often backbreaking...
GATES: Tony, this was published
in the Times-Democrat,
a New Orleans daily newspaper
on the 13 of July 1900.
This was about two years
before the arrival of
your great-grandparents.
Would you please read
the transcribed section?
DANZA: "Italian Labor Rapidly
Ousting the Sugar Belt Negroes.
Italian immigrants have
driven out at least 75% of
the Negro labor.
They are preferred to the
Negroes for several reasons,
chief of which are that
they will work very cheap
and are steady.
They will work right along
all day Saturday and Sunday.
Their endurance
is phenomenal."
That's just...
GATES: In the late 19th century,
I mean, go figure, right.
DANZA: But professor...
I'm trying to
think how you could be cheaper.
GATES: People out of
slavery for thirty-five years.
DANZA: That's what
I'm trying to say.
What the heck?
GATES: I know.
Can you imagine how hard
things must have been in
Sicily to cross
the ocean to work on a
Louisiana sugar plantation?
DANZA: No, I do know
that my mother told me that
they were starving.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
DANZA: It wasn't
even about livelihood.
It was about eating.
GATES: Perhaps unsurprisingly,
Tony's great-grandparents
did not stay in New Orleans...
Instead, they seem to have
followed an itinerant path over
the next decade, before
ultimately settling back in
their native Sicily.
Migration patterns like this
were not uncommon at the time.
Many Italians who crossed
the Atlantic later returned
to their homelands.
Historians have dubbed these
people "birds of passage" and
Tony's great-grandparents
are prime examples...
Causing Tony to reconsider,
yet again, his family's story.
DANZA: Wow.
GATES: Nobody ever talks
about this in our school books,
but 70% of the Italians
in that period did that.
They went back and forth.
DANZA: They were
like migrant workers.
GATES: They were
like migrant workers.
DANZA: Only thing is they
had to go across an ocean.
GATES: Yeah. Isn't that amazing?
DANZA: What people
will do to survive.
GATES: Do you feel a
connection to these people?
DANZA: I'm grateful.
I just feel this
tremendous gratefulness,
but I'm also sort of in
awe of them as far as the way
they not only persevered
and hardships and tinner and
the things, but this travel.
What were those journeys like?
GATES: What do you think
they would have made of you?
DANZA: You know, when I
went back to Sicily I was
"the autore", "the cousin,"
"the cugino autore."
And they were very,
very proud of me.
They were very proud of me,
and I'd like to think that
they would be proud of me.
I know they'd be
proud of my kids,
and I know they'd be
happy that I'm continuing
their line, I think.
GATES: Absolutely.
DANZA: But I am nothing
compared to what these people
have went through
and accomplished.
GATES: We'd already traced
Terry Crews' maternal roots
back six generations,
introducing him to ancestors
who showed immense strength.
Now we had a more
difficult task before us.
Terry's father was abusive
and to explore his roots,
we had to confront the fact
that even Terry's happiest
memories of him are
tinged with sorrow.
CREWS: My father
played the, the lottery.
Both legal and illegal.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: You know he
played the numbers.
GATES: The numbers.
CREWS: So when he would hit was
one of the most joyous times
I'll ever remember
in my household.
My father would hit
and he would come home,
he would wake us up,
it would be like 1:00 AM.
We would always have pizza.
Cause that was the only food
that was available at that time.
You know, he'd bring
these pizzas, we'd smell,
we'd be like, "Oh my God,
pizza hurry."
You know, and we would flip out.
And my mother, of course,
being very religious,
gambling is not, gambling is
not allowed unless you win.
My mother'd be like,
"Oh my goodness. We won."
I was like, "Wait, but...
Okay, I'm not even
gonna answer that."
Uh, she'd come
home and he would,
he would have his jacket
on and he would have all these
clothes on and he would say,
"Search my pockets."
GATES: Oh man.
CREWS: And my mother
would go into this pocket and
pull out a wad of money.
And then another pocket,
another pocket.
GATES: Oh.
CREWS: And then...
And then I would
watch them kiss.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And I remember saying,
"This is just like on TV.
It's just like in the movies."
GATES: Right, right.
CREWS: It was, I was like,
"That's my mother
and that's my father."
GATES: Right.
CREWS: And they love each other.
GATES: Mmm-hmm.
CREWS: And we
would just sit there.
We'd eat that pizza man, and...
GATES: Yeah, yeah.
CREWS: We would just, it
was just some of the best times
I will ever remember, you know.
And I was like,
"They love each other, look."
GATES: Yeah, mm-hmm.
They really do love each other.
CREWS: Look, they do.
You know because it
was a lot of just...
It was so much fighting
and so much stuff,
but then those moments.
I said, "This is it,
that's the ideal.
That's what I want our
family to be all the time."
GATES: And then you
go to sleep, it's like,
"Okay, it's going
to be a new day."
CREWS: That's right.
GATES: "Cause everything's
gonna be better."
CREWS: That's exactly it.
GATES: And then, boom.
CREWS: It would go back.
GATES: There's no
explaining away or excusing
what Terry endured,
but we soon encountered
what seemed, at least,
to be one factor that
may have contributed to his
father's behavior:
Terry told me that his father
was estranged from his father,
Terry's grandfather,
a man named Edward Crews...
We found Edward in the archives
of Calhoun county Georgia,
marrying Terry's
grandmother, Ermelle Smart,
in November of 1943.
Ermelle is still alive today
and Terry often visited her in
Georgia when he was a child.
But he does not recall ever
hearing her speak about Edward
and as we began our research,
the reason for that
silence became clear...
CREWS: "State of Georgia
versus Edward Crews.
Style of case, abandonment.
State's witness, Ermelle Crews."
GATES: In 1954, eleven years
after they were married,
Ermelle sued Edward for the
abandonment of their children.
CREWS: Mm-hmm.
GATES: Your father would've
been about nine years old
at the time.
CREWS: Mm-hmm. Yeah,
my, my father never said
anything about this.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: My uncle Sonny,
told me a little
bit about the fact that, uh,
he was not around...
He told me that he was
in and out of their lives.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And he would
hardly ever showed up.
Um, so that would make
the case for abandonment.
GATES: In June of 1954,
Terry's grandfather pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to
one year at a
public works camp.
He was discharged after
serving about nine months,
but his trouble with the
law was just beginning.
Less than three years later,
he was arrested again
for trying to break into
a liquor store, but this time,
he did not get off lightly.
CREWS: "The State
versus Edward Crews.
Plea of guilty to attempt
at burglary whereupon it is
considered and adjudged by
the court that Edward Crews be
placed and confined at
hard labor in a chain gang,
upon some public works
for the term of 12 months.
March 29th, 1957."
CREWS: Hmm. Not good.
GATES: And you've never
heard anything about this?
CREWS: No.
GATES: And you've
heard Sam Cooke's song
"Working On A Chain Gang"
1,000 times, right?
CREWS: Uh, I mean, uh, I
can go back in all the movies
I've ever seen
about this kinda stuff.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And all I can say is,
this, this stuff was real.
Like a chain gang.
GATES: Yeah, oh, and wearing
stripes and it was horrible.
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: "Chain gangs" are
part of a shameful chapter
in American history.
They were a form of labor that
evolved out of what was known
as "convict leasing" a system
developed after slavery whereby
white businessmen could
purchase prisoners to live and
work under their control.
When that system was
abolished in the early 1900s,
chain gangs became commonplace
across the Jim Crow south and
played a major role in
expanding the infrastructure of
many southern states.
In practice, this meant that
men like Terry's grandfather
were essentially forced
to work without pay,
under inhumane conditions,
as a punishment for even
the most minor crimes.
CREWS: Well, it's, it's
not rehabilitation.
Um, I'm sure, uh, they
left a little bit more of
their souls out there every day.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
CREWS: That's brutal.
Look at it.
GATES: Free labor.
CREWS: Free.
It's legalized slavery.
GATES: You got it.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: And you know how
hot it gets in Georgia?
CREWS: Oh, listen, man, that's
all I remember about Georgia.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: As a kid, the heat.
It was unbearable.
There was times you
couldn't even move.
GATES: How do you think
having a father in and out
of jail growing up,
affected your father?
It could not have not
affected your father.
CREWS: Yeah.
That, that right there had to
be devastating to a nine, 10,
11-year-old boy.
Had to be horrifying.
GATES: Your uncle James
told us that the bus route
that he and your father
took to get to school,
passed by the prison where
their father was locked up.
And that he and your dad would
visit their father on Sundays.
CREWS: Oh.
GATES: And he would
always promise to do better
when he got out.
But as your uncle stated,
he never kept his promise.
CREWS: This is so heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking.
GATES: Edward Crews was
discharged from prison on
January the 7th 1958.
He was just 34 years old,
but unfortunately,
he had little time left
to enjoy his freedom...
CREWS: "Certificate of death.
Name, Edward Crews.
Date of death, March 5th, 1963.
Place of death,
Butler County, Georgia.
Age, 38 years.
Cause of death, epileptic."
Epileptic seizure?
GATES: Yep.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Edward died of epilepsy
when he was just 38 years old.
CREWS: Wow.
GATES: Your father was only
17 years old at the time.
CREWS: He was young,
38 years is young.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
CREWS: Wow.
Five years after he got out.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: Oh my goodness.
GATES: And you were
born five years after
your grandfather died.
CREWS: Yes. I was, my
father never talked about him.
GATES: Could you
please turn the page?
CREWS: Oh my goodness.
Wow.
GATES: That's your
grandfather's headstone.
CREWS: Whoa.
GATES: He's buried in
St. Steven's Church Cemetery
in Edison, Georgia.
CREWS: Oh my goodness.
"Edward Crews."
And this is in Edison?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
St. Steven's Cemetery.
CREWS: I've never seen it.
Never seen it.
I've been to Edison
since I was a little kid.
GATES: Does learning
these new details about
your grandfather's life,
do you think it will make you
look at the relationship
between you and your father
with a new lens, you know?
With new perspective?
CREWS: Yeah, yeah, I mean,
hurt people hurt people.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And that's one thing
I've learned in all my walks.
GATES: Mm-hmm, do you
think that walking your
father through
your Book of Life is
something you're gonna do?
CREWS: Definitely, I'm
gonna invite my father out.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: And, we're gonna
go over this book together.
GATES: But I'd have,
your counselor standing by.
CREWS: Yeah, yeah.
No, I keep him on the
speakerphone, like...
Just chime in when I,
when I need,
when I need your help, sir.
GATES: The paper trail had now
run out for each of my guests.
It was time to show them
their full family trees.
Now filled with ancestors whose
names they'd never heard before.
DANZA: It's just magnificent.
GATES: Isn't that great?
DANZA: I appreciate it so much.
CREWS: This is like my
own personal museum...
I feel them.
GATES: For each, it
was a moment of wonder,
providing a chance to reflect
on the sacrifices made by
generation after generation
to lay the groundwork
for their own success...
DANZA: I just had
the best parents.
I really just had
the best parents.
But when you see this
and you get to go back and
see their parents'
and their parents'-parents'
and their
parents'-parents'-parents'
it blows your mind.
It blows your mind
and it makes you feel,
first of all, I
can't get over the gratitude
but really I do feel solid.
Like I have some kind of...
I have a history.
GATES: A foundation.
DANZA: A foundation,
there you go.
GATES: Yeah, and you're standing
on a foundation of ancestors.
DANZA: That's me.
CREWS: I'm actually
connected to my past.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
CREWS: And, I was never
connected before today.
GATES: Hmm.
CREWS: There was a
huge disconnection.
I just didn't know.
GATES: Hmm. That's beautiful.
CREWS: You're anchoring
me right now, man.
And when you look at all the
worth that comes from being
anchored, you know, I remember
being jealous of white families
in school and their
fathers were the so-and-so's.
GATES: Oh, yeah.
CREWS: And I was like,
"Wow," and they knew they
could do whatever they wanted
because they
were a so-and-so.
GATES: Right.
CREWS: But we can do this too.
GATES: Yeah.
CREWS: I know I can do
whatever I want to do,
'cause look how
strong my family was.
GATES: Absolutely.
CREWS: I love that, I love that.
GATES: That's the end of
our search for the ancestors
of Terry Crews and Tony Danza.
Join me next time as we
unlock the secrets of the past
for new guests
on another episode of
"Finding Your Roots".