Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2012–…): Season 8, Episode 7 - Incredible Journeys - full transcript
GATES: I'm
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Welcome to
Finding Your Roots.
In this episode, we'll
meet John Leguizamo
and Lena Waithe.
Two stars who built their
careers by exploring their
identities are now going to
discover just how complex
those identities really are.
LEGUIZAMO: This is my
15th great-grandfather?
GATES: How 'bout that?
LEGUIZAMO: From coming from
no history to having so much
history is, it's,
it's unbelievable.
GATES: You descend from
a Native American woman.
WAITHE: What?
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...
WAITHE: Wow!
GATES: A record of all
of our discoveries...
LEGUIZAMO: Wow,
that's incredible.
GATES: And a window
into the hidden past.
WAITHE: This is crazy.
LEGUIZAMO: I'm getting, uh...
uh, teary-eyed here.
Uh, yeah, it's beautiful.
WAITHE: It feels like one big
huge blessing to be connected
to all of these people.
GATES: John and Lena grew up
in the United States,
knowing almost nothing about
their ancestors who lived
far from our shores.
In this episode, they're
going to meet those ancestors,
retrace their incredible
journeys, and uncover
the hidden diversity within
their own family trees.
(theme music plays).
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
GATES: John Leguizamo
is a national treasure.
Over the past three decades,
he's carved out
a unique path...
Juggling leading roles in
film and television with
his brilliant
self-created one-man shows...
LEGUIZAMO: Yo Johnny,
don't be afraid, come on.
Go Johnny, go Johnny,
go, go, go!
Go me, go me,
go me, go me, go me.
And I get to the
conductor's boof...
Boof, that's how I used to talk.
Baf-room, leng-ff, nor-ff.
Yo, we were so ghetto we
couldn't even afford a T-H.
GATES: On stage, John explores
the Latino experience from
myriad angles, via a
dizzying array of characters.
But it all feels firmly rooted
in his own experience,
because it is.
When he was four years old,
John's family emigrated from
Bogotá, Colombia to Queens,
New York, where John grew up
watching his parents make
immense efforts simply to
put a roof over their heads.
LEGUIZAMO: My parents were
always struggling and striving.
I mean, when we first got
here, the four of us,
we lived in an apartment that
was so small, the furniture
was painted on the walls.
And we had a Murphy bed.
I don't know if
people, uh, you know, are...
GATES: They have no idea what
a Murphy bed is, but tell 'em.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
You know, so, it's a bed
that's built so that when the
day comes, in the morning, you
get up, you put it back up...
GATES: Right.
LEGUIZAMO: On the wall.
So, you have a living room,
dining room, bedroom
was all one room.
That was the first year.
The second year, my parents
worked their butts off so that
they got their own room.
And then eventually, we
had a living room separate
from the dining room.
And then, you know, every
year we moved up 'til we got a
house, and then my father
rented all the rooms, and we
had to live with all these
tenants, and we had to like,
you know, clean their rooms
and do all, and do all kinds
of, uh, manual labor.
GATES: What effect do
you think that had on you?
LEGUIZAMO: Well,
it made me rebel.
It made me rebel against them.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: It made me very
anti-authority, because it,
it, it was so strict at home,
and, and it made me, you know,
love humor and comedy, and all
I wanted to do was be fun,
be around fun, and having fun.
GATES: John's
ambitions would quickly grow.
He started out doing stand-up,
then discovered more
serious theater,
and was hooked.
By the time he was 17, he was
reading Tennessee Williams and
Arthur Miller, and telling
anyone who'd listen that
he was going to become an actor.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this
wasn't what his parents
wanted to hear...
LEGUIZAMO: My father was
like: "We didn't come to this
country for you to
be worse than us."
You know, you, you can't be
an actor, don't, you, you know
they were, they
were horrified.
I mean, first of all, you never
see Latin people on television
or plays or anywhere,
so how are you gonna
make a living?
But I didn't care because I
fell in love with this, this,
this calling, this, this, a
higher, uh, art, you know?
I don't know, to me, it was
the greatest art the world had
ever, ever created, and,
and so nothing was gonna
derail me.
GATES: John was
true to his word...
After dropping out of college,
he took acting classes at
New York's famed HB studio,
then set his sights on
a career in Hollywood,
where he soon confronted a
new challenge: typecasting.
The only parts he could
get were gang members,
drug dealers, or other
stereotypes of Latino men.
The dilemma would ultimately
fuel his creativity, but not
before a great deal
of soul-searching.
LEGUIZAMO: How else was I
gonna make a living, you know?
And I was hoping maybe this
is that, that stepping stone.
Maybe this is that, that thing
that's gonna get me to the
next better thing.
But it wasn't, it was like...
I would see all the cats.
I would see Luis Guzmán,
Benjamin Bratt,
Benicio del Toro, and all of us,
you know, coming in for
gangsters with bandanas,
leather jackets, you know,
"What's up man,
what's up, what's up?"
Or janitors, you know,
"Como... how are you doing,
how's everything going?
Everything's good."
You know? So...
I started to
create my own stuff.
And that, that rejection of
Hollywood, and, and Hollywood
rejecting me, forced me to
find a new path for myself.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: And I'm grateful
for that rejection, because
I now create.
I'm self-generating, and uh,
I, I was, I've been able to be
a voice for Latin kids
and Latin people, you know,
showing that our culture is
valid, that it's viable, and
that my ethnicity
is my, my power.
GATES: My second guest is
actor, writer and producer
Lena Waithe, creator of
Showtimes' hit series
The Chi,
a kaleidoscopic look
at Chicago's south side.
It's a place that
Lena knows intimately.
She spent most of her childhood
in the neighborhood...
raised by a single mother,
who was often
too busy to supervise her
closely and largely cut off
from a father, who struggled
with substance abuse...
But while Lena was certainly
shaped by the world outside
her door, there was another
force that was just as strong:
her maternal grandmother,
Tressie Hall, who lived with
her, inspired her, and
even introduced her to
her future profession.
The two spent hours together
in front their television,
guided by Tressie's
well-formed tastes...
WAITHE: We watched a lot of
old TV because that's what my
grandmother wanted to watch.
Like but...
GATES: Because she was old.
WAITHE: Yeah,
because she was older.
GATES: It wasn't old to her!
WAITHE: She's like, "I like
this TV," you know, uhm, but
we'd watch
Hunter
andColumbo
and, like, you know,
Maude,
and, and
All in the Family.
And I just loved her sense of
humor, I loved her swag, and
I enjoyed that time and, and
laughing with her and learning
about just how important
storytelling could be
through television shows.
GATES: Lena's grandmother lit a
fire that has never gone out.
After college, Lena moved
to Los Angeles, with no
connections, and sought work
as a production assistant.
The odds were
stacked against her,
but Lena wasn't
thinking about that...
GATES: Now, Hollywood is not
exactly known to be friendly
to African Americans,
traditionally.
WAITHE: No.
GATES: How did you find it
when you, got here?
WAITHE: At the time
there was a Black Hollywood.
It was smaller, but
it was, it was there.
And one of my professors said,
"If you can land in
Black Hollywood,
you'll always be okay."
It was like, and
so, I said, "Okay."
And, uhm, yeah, my first
gig was on
Girlfriends,
as an
assistant to the showrunners,
and it was a dream come true.
I was like, "Oh man,
this is, this is it.
This is great."
Uhm, and then, of course, a
strike hit, and everything
kind of just came crumbling
down, and I was like,
"What am I doing?"
And that's when I think
when I got really creative and
decided just to kind of write
and try to find my voice, and
that's what I started to do.
GATES: Was your
family supportive?
WAITHE: Yeah, they were.
The, the hard thing for them
was that they just didn't have
any information, they couldn't
really help me because it's
just a very tricky business,
and they knew they didn't know
a ton about it, but they knew
that I had a lot of drive, and
I was just going to try to
figure it out on my own.
GATES: You're hard-headed.
WAITHE: Yes, always have been.
GATES: Lena's unwavering drive
has served her well,
giving her the confidence to
stand up for her own story,
onscreen and off.
It's also led to an
amazing string of successes.
Since 2017, she's won an Emmy,
created three TV shows,
and written a feature film.
But for all her
accomplishments, Lena remains
very much a product of the
family that nurtured her
dreams from the
very beginning...
WAITHE: I wouldn't be here if
it weren't for their love and
their support, and also, you
know, some of the dysfunction,
and I think without that, I
don't have anything to draw,
draw from.
It wasn't all, it wasn't a
perfect upbringing, it wasn't,
you know, it wasn't easy,
and because of that, I'm,
I have some wounds and
some scars that make me
the artist and the writer I am.
GATES: Uh-hum.
WAITHE: So, I, you know, it's
interesting because I think
some people say, you know, they
want trauma-free entertainment.
GATES: Good luck with that.
WAITHE: Exactly. It's like...
GATES: Well, there is
no trauma-free author.
WAITHE: Yeah, exactly.
And so we have to find ways to
heal, and the way I choose to
do that is to,
to write about things that
aren't always pretty.
GATES: Lena and John grew up
in homes where daily existence
could be a struggle, in
families focused on the
future, not on the past.
As a result, though each has a
strong sense of themself,
they have little knowledge
of the ancestors who laid
the groundwork for
their success...
It was time to change that.
I started with John Leguizamo.
Growing up in New York City,
far from his native Colombia,
John's understanding of his
ancestry had been filtered
through heavy layer of
mythology, as John himself
readily admits...
LEGUIZAMO: It's all, like, so
interesting in Latin America
especially in my family, uh,
you know, uh, there's so many
stories, you know, that, uh,
my grandfather was Lebanese,
part Lebanese, and, and
his wife was Afro Latina,
and then my grandmother is
an Incan princess...
GATES: You sound like,
uh, Black genealogy at a
family reunion, you know?
Yeah, a king in Africa!
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
There's, there's a lot of
fablizing about, about the
story, but I don't
know the real, real deal.
GATES: The "real deal" behind
John's family tree would prove
fascinating, but it took our
researchers a lot of time to
untangle it from
the "fablizing".
On his mother's side, that
meant following the paper
trail back almost three
centuries, all the way back to
John's 6th great-grandfather,
a man named Manuel
Salvador Londoño...
Manuel was likely born in
Colombia sometime in the
1720s, the key to his story,
and indeed to this entire
branch of John's tree,
lay in the archives of
the city of Rionegro.
LEGUIZAMO: This is wild,
my sixth grandfather.
GATES: Great-great-great-great-
great- great-grandfather.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: Now, look on the right.
That is part of
Manuel's will...
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, wow!
GATES: Recorded in
Rionegro in 1796.
Would you please read the
section of your ancestor's.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh my god.
I hope there's
something for me.
I hope there's, I hope there's
a piece of land or some money.
GATES: Would you please
read the section
that we've translated?
LEGUIZAMO: "Manuel Salvador
Londoño, natural son of
Petrona de la Chica.
He executed his will
before Public Notary
Dr. Alvarez y Tamayo
on April 25, 1796."
GATES: You notice anything
different about Manuel as he's
described there?
LEGUIZAMO: "Natural son."
Oh, not legitimate.
GATES: Yeah. Natural.
LEGUIZAMO: Whoa!
GATES: So, at the time of
Manuel's conception and birth,
his parents were both
single and unmarried.
LEGUIZAMO: You know, young
people can't control themselves.
GATES: And as you could see,
there's no mention of the
name of Manuel's father.
LEGUIZAMO: No.
GATES: And of course,
this was common for
illegitimate children.
LEGUIZAMO: He disappeared,
deadbeat dad.
GATES: Let's find out.
Please turn the page.
LEGUIZAMO: Who's the daddy?
GATES: Ordinarily, it would
be impossible to identify the
unnamed father of an
illegitimate child
born in the 1720s.
But we had an extraordinary
tool at our disposal.
In the 18th century, priests
in Colombia often kept notes
on events in their parishes.
These notes were compiled
by an historian in 2006,
providing an invaluable
resource for genealogists
because the priests had a wide
array of interests, and were
willing to preserve
gossip that was excluded
from official records.
Thanks to these priests, we
learned a great deal about
John's ancestry, including the
identity of Manuel's father,
a man named
Sancho Londoño Zapata.
You ever heard that name?
LEGUIZAMO: No.
I have never.
GATES: Well, Sancho is your
seventh great-grandfather,
and he was the corregidor
of Rionegro at the time,
which meant he was the
local administrator for
the Spanish crown.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh wow, so
this is a Spaniard guy.
This is a...
GATES: He was a big deal, man.
Your sev...
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Let me tell
you how big he was.
Your seventh great-grandfather,
when he died in 1765,
was the richest
person in the entire province.
LEGUIZAMO: No.
Get out of here.
Where's my money?
GATES: He was the corregidor.
That was his title.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
GATES: Though John's 7th
great-grandfather was a
powerful official, we know
little about his life, and
nothing at all about his
relationship to John's
7th great-grandmother,
a woman named
Petronila de la Chica Betuma.
But turning back to the compiled
notes of Rionegro's priests,
we discovered
something about Petronila...
She was a Native American.
LEGUIZAMO: "Teresa de la Chica
Betuma was daughter of
Miguel de la Chica, Indian."
Oh, I had a feeling, and his
wife Francisca, he, he liked
the flavor, a little.
"And his wife, Francisca Betuma,
a marriage celebrated
in Rionegro in April of 1673."
That's nuts.
At the same time, Francisca
was the daughter of don
Jeronimo Betuma,
noble Indian of El Peñol.
The daughters of Miguel de
la Chica and Francisca Betuma
were Petronila de la Chica
and Teresa."
GATES: John, according to
this source, your seventh
great-grandmother
was Indigenous.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, yeah, but I
knew, uh, look at me. Yeah.
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: It
came from somewhere.
That's wild.
GATES: And this introduces us
to her parents, who are your
8th great-grandparents,
Miguel de la Chica and
Francisca Betuma, who are
both recorded there as
being also Indigenous.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, In,
they just say Indian.
Isn't that wild?
They just say Indian.
GATES: Yes.
You've also read the name of
your ninth great-grandfather,
Jeronimo Betuma.
LEGUIZAMO: I can't
believe we got a ninth,
a ninth grandfather.
What, are you going to go to
the beginning of time, I mean?
From coming from no history
to having so much history is,
it's, it's unbelievable.
GATES: And read again
how he's described.
LEGUIZAMO: "Noble Indian."
GATES: "Noble Indian."
LEGUIZAMO: That's beautiful.
It's very moving.
I mean I'm very,
I'm, I'm, I'm moved.
I'm getting uh,
uh, teary-eyed here.
Uh, yeah, it's beautiful.
I mean to...
(Sighs).
GATES: What's
it like to see that?
LEGUIZAMO: Well, I feel
very proud, and I mean it's
incredible to know that
that's where I get my
Indigenous blood from.
It's a, the direct name,
the direct person.
GATES: We believe that
Jeronimo, was likely born
sometime in the mid-1600s,
though we can't be certain,
we found him in the census for
Rionegro for the year 1666,
and that's as far as we
could go on this branch of
John's family tree.
However, we weren't done
with his mother's ancestry,
not by a long shot...
Focusing on another of John's
maternal lines, we were able to
trace back to his 15th
great-grandfather,
a man named
Sebastián de Belalcázar,
whose life is exceedingly
well-documented
for a man of this era.
LEGUIZAMO: This is my
15th great-grandfather?
GATES: How 'bout that?
LEGUIZAMO: That's incredible.
What, what, what
does that take us?
Into the 1400s?
GATES: He died around 1551,
in what today is Cartagena.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: Would you please
read the translated section?
LEGUIZAMO: "I, Sebastián
de Belalcázar Adelantado,
Governor", Governor!
"and Captain-General of
these provinces and
district of Popayán
for His Majesty,
do grant and certify by this
instrument my full power of
attorney to you,
Francisco de Rodas,
in all my litigation,
civil or criminal.
I grant this instrument before
the Notary in the city of Cali."
GATES: Your 15th
great-grandfather was the
governor and captain-general
of the District of Popayán
for the King of Spain.
His boss was the
King of Spain.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
I can't believe it.
I, you could trace
me that far back.
That's incredible.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: My, my
family's gonna, uh,
use the term bug out.
They're gonna
freak out and bug out.
GATES: Neither John, nor his
family, was likely prepared
for what we discovered next.
Records show that
Sebastián served under
Francisco Pizzaro, the
infamous conquistador who
brutally subjugated
the Incan empire.
Indeed, we found testimony
detailing how Pizzaro sent
Sebastián into what is now
Ecuador to conquer the Incan
city of Quito, and seize any
treasure that he could find.
Much to John's chagrin,
Sebastián did exactly
as he was told...
Your ancestor was able to
obtain vast amounts of gold
for Spain, your ancestor,
not only from the
mines of the area,
but he and his cohort
also melted down what
Inca gold was left in the city.
LEGUIZAMO: I mean, it's one
of the great crimes of, of
history, you know?
I mean the, the incredible
artifacts and, and, and the,
and museum pieces
that were melted.
GATES: Right.
LEGUIZAMO: On one side, we
made them, and the other side,
we melted them, you know?
I'm, I'm, I'm kind,
I'm kind of like
Dr. Jekyll and Hyde in here.
GATES: How does it feel to
know that you descend,
you have blood from,
you share DNA with...
LEGUIZAMO: I, I...
GATES: Both a
conquistador line
and a noble Indigenous line.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
I mean it's wild.
I mean, you, you hear a lot
of, like, great Chicano poets,
activists in the '60s going, I,
I conquered myself, you know?
We, it's
basically that, you know?
Here is my conquistador
grandfather and, and, and
my Indigenous line, line, you
know, and they, they were at,
at odds but also, you know,
mix, mixing up in the, in the,
in the dark.
GATES: There was one
more beat to this story.
After the conquest of Quito,
Sebastian broke with Pizzaro
and went north into what is
today Colombia, where,
under license from the
Spanish crown, he won fame
that would endure for centuries.
LEGUIZAMO: No, get outta here.
A statue.
GATES: Yes.
LEGUIZAMO: That's wild. Wow.
GATES: It's located in
the city of Popayán,
which he founded...
LEGUIZAMO: Oh wow.
GATES: In the year 1537,
three years after the
conquest of Quito.
And Popayán wasn't the
only city he founded.
See that map?
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
GATES: Your ancestor
founded all of those cities.
LEGUIZAMO: No!
That's amazing.
I mean, those are big
cities in Colombia.
GATES: Big cities.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
I mean it's, it's
so unfathomable.
GATES: Well, guess what?
A month ago, protesters
pulled this statue down.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, they did?
GATES: Indigenous protesters.
LEGUIZAMO: I had a
feeling it had to go.
GATES: A month ago,
in September.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, man.
I hope they put
it in a museum.
I mean, maybe it
doesn't need to be...
I mean, I'm not against that.
I understand...
GATES: Sure.
LEGUIZAMO: The horrors of
destroying a people's culture,
language, and religion.
And stealing all that they
had, and now they're living
in, in, in, in squalor.
Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not for
that, you know what I mean?
GATES: Well, I mean, he
was a big target, right?
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
But I'm glad you
got that photo quick.
GATES: Much like John, my
second guest, Lena Waithe,
was about to follow her roots
back centuries to meet ancestors
whose stories, and identities,
had been lost to time.
But this journey began
much closer to home:
with Lena's father,
Lawrence David Waithe...
Lawrence separated from Lena's
mother when Lena was a child,
and though he remained in
her life for several years
afterwards, he died young...
Leaving his daughter with a
host of unanswered questions.
WAITHE: He came around on
weekends, you know, for a
little while, and then, and
that was cool, and it was
totally normal, and then it
stopped, and I didn't really
understand why, and I think
there were things that were
going on that maybe they
didn't think a child should
know, so all I knew was the,
the weekend visits stopped,
and, and then, when I was
15, uh, he died suddenly.
GATES: Yeah.
WAITHE: And I just sort of
didn't know, I didn't know
what to make of it.
It's just a very
odd thing to hear.
Even if you haven't seen a
parent in a long time, there's
still something that shifts in
the universe that a person who
helped make you
is no longer here.
And I think I was just sort of
very lost and didn't know what
to make of it, uh, and
I think I still don't.
GATES: You carry
the Waithe name.
Do you know
where it comes from?
WAITHE: I do not.
GATES: Lena's father was
born in Boston in 1951.
As we set out to trace his
roots, we expected that they
would lead us into the
American south, as do the
roots of most of my
African American guests.
And, indeed, Lawrence's mother
has ancestry in Tennessee,
Alabama and Georgia.
But when we turned to
Lawrence's father, we found
ourselves in New York City,
where, in 1921, a man named
Winston Waithe
stepped off a ship.
Winston is Lena's
great-grandfather.
And, according to the
passenger list of his ship,
he wasn't coming to New York
from Charleston, or New Orleans,
or anywhere in
the United States.
He, and this whole line of
Lena's ancestry, was from
Barbados, in the West Indies.
WAITHE: Wow. Barbados.
GATES: So, you had no
idea of any of this?
WAITHE: No.
GATES: Nothing, where they came
from or how they came to the,
well, obviously, if you didn't
know where they came from,
you hadn't ever...
WAITHE: Yeah.
GATES: Thought about
how they got here.
WAITHE: Absolutely.
GATES: What's it like
for you to see that?
WAITHE: That's the interesting
thing, I never thought of my
ancestors as immigrants.
GATES: Oh, right.
WAITHE: Yeah, because, you
know, you know, we, you think,
well, we didn't
want to come here.
You know, there's a
difference, you know, being
brought over here against
your will versus, you know,
choosing to come,
so I think that's the
most shocking thing.
GATES: Yeah, we were
unwilling immigrants, right?
WAITHE: Yeah.
GATES: Not you.
WAITHE: Yeah, I know.
So interesting.
GATES: In Winston's day,
Barbados was an English colony,
and Lena wondered why
her ancestor would leave
his homeland to take a
chance in segregated America.
The answer, it seems,
was economic...
WAITHE: "The Barbados have
become so full of people that
the English government offers
a cash bonus to any inhabitant
who will agree to leave
the island and stay away
for five years."
"Ordinarily, the offer is $20,
but when Barbados people are
least inclined to leave their
island it is raised to $25."
Wow.
So, they were kind
of bribed to go away?
GATES: Yeah.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: They had an
overcrowding problem,
and they go, "Here's 25 bucks,
you know, like you all..."
WAITHE: "Get out."
GATES: "Get out," right?
WAITHE: "Go somewhere." Wow.
GATES: The English government
was paying people to leave.
And I didn't even know.
I mean, until we did the
research of your family tree,
I didn't even know that
anybody was doing this.
WAITHE: This is crazy.
GATES: Winston was 17 years
old when he left Barbados.
But the cash offer wasn't
the only incentive
drawing him north.
Wages were higher in
the United States.
And there may have been
another factor as well:
Winston wasn't the first in
his family to make the move.
As evidenced by the
passenger list of the ship
that brought him here.
WAITHE: "Whether going to join
a relative or friend, father,
Mr. E. Waithe,
123 Houston Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts."
GATES: So, you know
what's going on here?
Your great-grandfather Winston
came to the United States on
his way to be
with his father...
WAITHE: Oh.
GATES: Who was already here.
WAITHE: Got it.
GATES: Your great-great
grandfather Edward Waithe,
who was living in my beloved
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
not that far from my house.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: So, your
great-grandfather wasn't the
first immigrant on
your family tree.
WAITHE: Hmm. Wow.
GATES: What's it like to learn
this information about
two generations of
your blood ancestors?
WAITHE: I mean, it's,
it's really beautiful.
It feels like I have a sense
of, a newer sense of identity.
GATES: So, are you
going to visit Barbados?
WAITHE: I must, for sure.
I can't wait.
GATES: And you probably have
cousins all over there, and
I bet they're looking
at your film saying...
WAITHE: They're like,
"You look familiar."
Wow.
GATES: We now set out to
see what we could learn about
Lena's roots in her
newfound ancestral home.
We knew that we faced
a steep challenge...
Doing genealogy in the West
Indies can be very difficult
because many vital
records have been lost.
But in Lena's
case, we got lucky.
We uncovered a wedding
record from the year 1880
that allowed us to add
two more generations to
her family tree...
WAITHE: "The Parish
Church of Christ Church.
When married, March 27.
Name and surname, William
Moore Waithe, age 38 and
Charlotte Ann Warner, age 37.
Father's name and
surname, Primus Waithe."
GATES: William Moore Waithe is
your third great-grandfather.
He was born almost
200 years ago in 1830
in Christ Church Barbados.
And you just read the name of
his father, Primus Waithe.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: Primus Waithe is your
great-great-great-
great-grandfather.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: He was born
around 1792 also in Barbados.
Remember when George
Washington was president of
the United States?
WAITHE: Oh, man, it's amazing.
Yes.
GATES: Your fourth
great-grandfather.
WAITHE: I love
that name, Primus.
GATES: Primus, it's cool.
WAITHE: That's a strong name.
GATES: This record not only
lists the names of Lena's
direct ancestors, it places
them in a specific parish in
Barbados, a parish
known as Christ Church...
And this would tie Lena to a
terrible chapter in
Barbados' history.
As we pored over the
archives of Christ Church,
we discovered a slave register
from the year 1817,
indicating that Lena's fourth
great-grandfather Primus was
the human property of someone
with a very familiar name...
He was enslaved by a woman
named Mary Murrell Waithe.
WAITHE: Whoa.
GATES: And that is where
you get your surname from.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: The Waithe family.
WAITHE: It was always
such an odd last name,
like, growing up.
GATES: Mhm.
WAITHE: It wasn't like the
other, like other Black kids
I was around, like, like
Washington or Johnson,
and things like that, it was
always a, people always
struggled with
spelling it, pronouncing it.
Like, I was just always trying
to tell people understand it,
but I, yeah, wow.
GATES: What's it
like finally to know?
WAITHE: You know, it's all,
it's, it's painful because
your name is such a huge
part of your identity,
so for someone to put their
identity onto your family,
it just feels, uh, unjust.
GATES: Lena's family wasn't
alone: over the course of the
transatlantic slave trade,
roughly 600,000 Africans were
shipped to Barbados.
More than came to the
entire United States.
Most ended up on sugar
plantations, where conditions
were utterly hellish...
Scholars told us that Primus
likely worked six days a week,
doing 12 hour shifts of the
hardest labor, clearing land,
digging holes, and cutting
the sugar cane, all the while
dealing with oppressive
heat and poor sanitation.
It was both terrifying, and
deadly, as massive numbers
died of exhaustion,
starvation, and disease.
Indeed: the average life
expectancy of an enslaved
male worker on a sugar
plantation was between
seven and nine years...
Before the opening of the
West Indies and the growing
cultivation of sugar there...
WAITHE: Uh-hum.
GATES: Only rich people in
Europe could have sugar.
WAITHE: Oh, wow.
GATES: The West Indies
made sugar the world's
first commodity crop.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: And sugar was gold.
People made vast fortunes,
but to harvest that sugar,
they needed free, cheap labor.
And that labor, of
course, came from Africa.
WAITHE: Yeah.
GATES: What's it like
to hear those numbers?
WAITHE: Just to think about
their lives and them not being
able to explore themselves or
step into themselves or
have the time to get to know
themselves because they were
just being worked
to death, literally.
GATES: Mmm.
WAITHE: It's, it's devastating,
and it's so disturbing.
It doesn't matter how
much of it you read,
you're still, I think there's
just a level of, uh,
just of not being able
to understand that will,
I don't think it will ever come.
It's not meant
to be understood.
GATES: Slavery dominated
Barbados for more than
two centuries, but the
Africans who were caught up
in this ruthless system
didn't succumb in silence.
There were many
acts of resistance,
both small and large...
And, in the spring of 1816,
one of them shook the world.
WAITHE: "On Easter Sunday,
April 14, an insurrection of
the slaves at
Barbados broke out.
An account received on Monday
states that 41 estates were
actually destroyed, and that
the insurrection appeared to
be very extensive, and
the slaves most ferocious.
The Negroes first
proceeded to demolish
the overseers' houses.
They then destroyed the
sugar-pans and all the
implements, which they could
gain possession of,
also all the Negro huts."
Wow. Wow.
Well, be still my heart.
Wow.
Well, I love that.
GATES: The "insurrection," as
newspapers called it, came to
be known as Bussa's Rebellion,
the biggest slave revolt in
the history of Barbados.
It lasted three days before
it was put down by the
British army, leaving dozens of
plantations destroyed and
miles of sugar fields burned.
Lena's fourth
great-grandfather was
24 years old at the time.
He likely knew about the
plans, and he most certainly
saw smoke from the burning
fields, but we don't believe
that he played an active role
in the revolt, for one very
simple reason, he survived.
Although Christ Church
was one of the parishes
impacted by the rebellion, all
people who were known to have
participated were executed,
but Primus wasn't,
Primus lived to father your
third great-grandfather
William in 1830.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: If Primus had been
involved, we would just erase
you right now and you
would just disappear.
WAITHE: Wow. Wow.
Whew. Wow.
GATES: What do you
make of all this?
WAITHE: Oh, it's so
interesting because I wonder
if he wanted to be involved
but was too afraid or, wow.
I'm sure there was some
survivor's remorse, uhm,
but I'm grateful he did.
GATES: I'm
grateful he did, too.
Lena, unfortunately, Primus
would never know freedom.
WAITHE: Oh.
GATES: He would never ever
be released from bondage.
He died enslaved in Barbados
sometime between 1829 and
1832, and slavery is not
abolished throughout the
British Empire until 1834,
so just before the
Abolition of Slavery.
WAITHE: It would've been
beautiful if he could've
seen that, but I'm happy,
but I'm happy he saw
the fires instead.
GATES: Yep.
We had a final
detail to share.
The same archives in Christ
Church that held a record of
Primus' enslavement also
held another record,
of a far more
optimistic nature...
WAITHE: "When born,
1867, August 8.
Child's Christian name,
Edward Albert.
Surname, Waithe."
GATES: Any idea what
you're looking at?
WAITHE: I don't.
GATES: That's the
baptismal record for your
great-great-grandfather...
WAITHE: Oh, wow.
GATES: Edward Waithe.
Edward Waithe was
Primus's grandson.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: And he wasn't only the
first immigrant ancestor on
your Waithe line, remember
he comes to Boston in 1905?
WAITHE: Uh-hum.
GATES: He was also the first
person on your family tree,
on the Waithe line,
to be born free.
WAITHE: Wow. Wow. 1867.
GATES: Does it change the
way you think of your father's
family and your
relationship to it?
I mean, are you
more of a Waithe now?
WAITHE: I'm happy I know
where the name comes from.
Um, I think I'm mostly filled
with gratitude for all these
amazing human beings who,
you know, lived and worked and
raised their children, and
uh, fought, and survived.
GATES: The key word, survived.
WAITHE: Yeah.
By the skin of their teeth.
GATES: We'd already traced John
Leguizamo's mother's family
back to the early 1500s,
revealing his
ancient roots in
his native Colombia.
Now, turning to his paternal
ancestry, we found ourselves
facing a mystery.
Growing up, John knew
his father's mother,
María Emilia Leguizamo, but
never met his father's father,
his own grandfather, he
didn't even know his name.
We were starting,
essentially, from scratch...
Have you ever heard much
about your grandfather?
LEGUIZAMO: I, I mean the only
thing I heard was that he was
a chicken farmer, and
he had a lot of kids.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
What do you know about
his relationship
to your grandmother?
LEGUIZAMO: To my grandma?
Well, I, I think, I don't know.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: I, I don't, I
have no, no stories of him.
I, I don't really have,
nothing was passed down
to me about him.
I think my father and him were
estranged, and uh, so, I, I,
I, I, I knew, I knew nothing.
GATES: Lacking first-hand
knowledge, John told me that
he had long ago made an
assumption: he believed his
grandfather was Puerto Rican,
based on the fact that there's
a barrio called "Leguizamo"
in one of Puerto Rico's
largest cities.
But we could find no evidence
of John's family on the island,
and his DNA does not show any
trace of Puerto Rican heritage.
Instead, John's father's roots
lie in the same place as his
mother's: Colombia....
And the solution to the
mystery lay in the nexus
between his grandfather's
name, and his unusual life...
LEGUIZAMO: "Name of deceased,
Martin Vargas-Cualla,
place of death, Houston, Texas,
date of death, July 29, 1975.
Occupation,
self-employed merchant,
Birthplace, Bogotá, Colombia,
citizen of what country,
Colombia."
GATES: Have you
ever seen that before?
LEGUIZAMO: No.
Who is that?
GATES: John, this is
the death certificate of
your grandfather.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh wow.
GATES: He died in Houston,
Texas, on July 29, 1975.
He was 80 years old.
LEGUIZAMO: Now, now,
why don't I have, I'm not,
he's not Legui, Leguizamo.
GATES: Right.
LEGUIZAMO: He's Vargas.
I'm not Vargas.
I'm Leguizamo.
GATES: Your grandmother
was not married to Martin.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, there you go.
GATES: Okay?
She was one of several women
with whom he had children and
who lived at his properties.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, wow, my, my
grandmother lived in his,
one of his properties?
GATES: Yes.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, okay.
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: So, we didn't take
my grandfather's name 'cause
that, otherwise
I'd be a Vargas.
GATES: You got it.
LEGUIZAMO: Uh-huh.
GATES: But she was there.
She was living...
she had children on
his property, but...
LEGUIZAMO: He
didn't claim them.
He didn't claim, he didn't,
he didn't claim my father.
GATES: Yeah. Right.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
That's where all the
confusion comes...
GATES: There you go.
You got it.
LEGUIZAMO: So, I
should be a Vargas.
I should be
John Alberto Vargas.
Johnny Vargas.
GATES: Johnny Vargas.
LEGUIZAMO: Johnny Vargas.
GATES: This record indicates
that John's grandfather
was a "merchant."
John had heard he was
also a chicken farmer.
Both were true, in part.
It seems that Martin was
actually successful in
many realms, and made a
substantial fortune as a
rancher and a businessman.
This made him a
prominent figure in Colombia.
Indeed, we found newspaper
articles dating back to the
1950s detailing his
very colorful career...
LEGUIZAMO: "Don Martin Vargas
Cualla is a character
out of a novel.
A familial or academic setback
threw him into the capital
city when he was
beginning his adolescence.
For ten pesos, he bought two
old horses that he later sold
at 25, and that
was the beginning.
Animals and lands allowed him
to multiply in a world that
was his own, estate after
estate, beasts, and cattle.
The previous owner of those
old horses is a breeder of
beautiful specimens and
a creator of riches."
GATES: Any word of this...
LEGUIZAMO: No, no.
GATES: Never passed
down in your family?
LEGUIZAMO: No. Nobody...
GATES: Why?
LEGUIZAMO: I, I don't,
I don't know what was
going on in my family.
I mean, uh, was it, were, were
the people just not proud or,
or, or, or because they were,
or because he was a natural
instead of a legitimate son?
GATES: Mhm.
LEGUIZAMO: I think, a lot of my
father's own, demons, kind of...
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: Haunting
him his whole life.
'Cause he was always,
my father was always,
never satisfied with what,
what he did, never, always
constantly questing for more,
always trying to be better,
always trying to...
GATES: Hey, I come from
people, I had a fortune,
I want to get it back.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Somehow disappeared.
LEGUIZAMO: 'Cause
he never got it.
He never got it 'cause he wasn't
legitimate to, to the will.
GATES: Right, you got it.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
That's crazy.
GATES: It turns out that
Martin wasn't the only
prominent figure on this
branch of John's tree.
Moving back two generations,
we came to a man named
Higinio Cualla.
Higinio is John's
great-great-grandfather,
and his obituary, published
in Colombia in 1927,
is a litany of impressive
accomplishments.
LEGUIZAMO: "Yesterday passed
away Don Higinio Cualla,
at the age of 87 years.
Bogotá will always
remember with gratitude
the best of our mayors.
His love for the city, his
commitment to the common good,
the enthusiasm with which he
worked on all hours for the
progress of the capital
can never be forgotten.
He was the real initiator
of the development of
modern Bogotá.
Many of the improvements
that we enjoy today
are owed to him.
It is a shame that his grand
spirit did not continue to
inspire his successors."
GATES: Pretty
amazing, isn't it?
LEGUIZAMO: As a
mayor of Bogotá?
GATES: For 16 years.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: From 1884 to 1900.
LEGUIZAMO: That's wild.
I, we, but we never,
nobody ever acknowledged that.
Nobody ever passed that down to
me, telling me that, you know,
I'm the son of, I'm, I'm the
great-grandson of a mayor.
GATES: Yeah!
How do you feel about that?
LEGUIZAMO: I, I, my chest
is pumped up a little bit.
I do feel a little, uh,
boastful, and I'm gonna
have to try to calm myself.
GATES: This obituary claims
that Higinio helped modernize
Bogotá, and the historical
record bears that out.
After taking office in 1884,
the Cualla administration
helped bring electricity to
the city, built trolley lines,
a theater, and an aqueduct,
all the while fixing roads and
establishing a tax to
help the city's poor.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: He truly
was industrious.
LEGUIZAMO: And he
was compassionate:
"Shelter for beggars".
GATES: And on the left,
there's a monument.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, did they
knock that one down, too?
GATES: It's another
monument, a monument...
Now, the good news,
it's still standing.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, it is?
Yeah, he, he didn't
do anything dastardly.
GATES: And you've
never seen that before?
LEGUIZAMO: No, I mean
who would've thunk?
GATES: But look at this.
Your 15th great-grandfather
Sebastián was a statue.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Your great-great-
grandfather, a statue.
That's amazing.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: How do you think
these stories got lost?
I mean you have two sets
of stories that got lost.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, all, all of it.
I mean I, I, I think that's a
lot, uh, really true for a lot
of Latin people, and you know,
uh, the conquest was a brutal
thing where people were, you
know, you were destroying a
culture, you're mixing with
it, you're, they're, they're
sexually attracted, so you're
creating a, a new culture,
but it, but, but at that same
time, things are being hidden.
There's a lot of shaming.
There's a lot of hiding
and, and I don't know.
I think it, that doesn't
totally disappear that easily
over a couple of centuries,
and I think that's part of it.
There's a lot of stuff that's
hidden, and I think there's a
lot of shame in, in, in
the conquest, and, and that
continues and perpetuates,
sort of like a PTSD.
GATES: Turning to DNA, we can
see how this complex history
is reflected in
John's own chromosomes...
His admixture indicates
that he's a blend of
Native American, European and
sub-Saharan African...
And when we looked at his
mitochondrial DNA, the genetic
fingerprint that's passed down
from mother-to-child across
generations, we were able
to pinpoint the geographic
origins of his direct
maternal ancestors.
You want to guess?
Was she European,
was she African,
or was she Indigenous?
LEGUIZAMO: I
would say Indigenous.
GATES: Okay. But why?
LEGUIZAMO: Because the
conquistadors were,
were mostly male.
GATES: Uh-huh.
LEGUIZAMO: And, and, and the
women that they had affairs
with were mostly
Indigenous or African.
Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Please turn the page.
Very good guess.
LEGUIZAMO: Aha. Tsssssss...
GATES: Your maternal
haplogroup or, or clan
is called B2d.
The map there shows
your where your direct
maternal ancestors came from.
As you can see, they all
came from the Americas.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah,
Indigenous, yeah, yeah.
GATES: How does
it make you feel?
LEGUIZAMO: I mean, uh, it's
beautiful to know about my,
you know, that I'm related to
the Aztecs and the Mayas
and the Incas.
Uh, uh, I take
great pride in that.
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: And to know that
I, I, I am a quarter of that
and... is, is amazing.
GATES: While John was
delighted by his DNA results,
they were not a
complete surprise.
But that wasn't the
case with Lena Waithe.
When we examined her
mitochondrial DNA,
believing it would take
us back to Africa,
we found ourselves somewhere
completely unexpected...
You descend from
a Native American woman.
WAITHE: What?
GATES: One of your umpteenth
great-great-grandmothers
was a Native American.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: Isn't that cool?
WAITHE: That's a
huge surprise.
I, I, uhm, wow.
I, I wasn't expecting that.
GATES: Neither was I.
Lena's mitochondrial DNA ties
her to a subgroup of what's
known as "haplogroup B",
one of four major
Native American haplogroups.
This means that Lena's direct
maternal ancestors crossed
into North America more
than 15,000 years ago.
Causing Lena to
re-imagine, once again,
her family's story...
You're descended from
willing immigrants,
and unwilling immigrants.
WAITHE: Unwilling immigrants.
GATES: Right.
WAITHE: Yeah, I thought it
was all unwilling, so yeah.
GATES: And, and on one line,
your mother's, mother's line,
somebody was sitting here
watching when all
these people showed up.
WAITHE: Yeah, absolutely.
GATES: Black, white,
and, and in-between.
WAITHE: And, and I'm sure
she wasn't happy about it,
but you know...
All right, I'm
gonna walk taller now.
I am, now that I know.
GATES: The paper trail had
run out for each of my guests.
It was time to unfurl
their full family trees...
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: Now filled with names
they'd never heard before.
LEGUIZAMO: That's
a lot of people.
GATES: Giving each the chance
to reflect on the incredible
journeys that had
produced their families,
and their identities...
LEGUIZAMO: You know, you
feel empowered in some way.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: You feel like you
have this, all these people
behind you, all these
ancestors, you know?
You just don't, you don't
feel like you're just some
spontaneous
generation, you know?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: That's beautiful.
Thank you.
GATES: Does anything that
we've shared change anything
about the way
you see yourself?
WAITHE: I think it has.
I, even though I knew I have
a, a last name that can kind
of give you, me a hint that
I come from, you know,
an island or Caribbean, but
I think I've always just
thought of myself as, and
my ancestors as American.
GATES: Right.
WAITHE: As... you know...
and thinking of, knowing that
my ancestors are immigrants,
and, and chose to come to
this country, just gives me
a whole new perspective.
GATES: You're from elsewhere.
WAITHE: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
I'll take it.
GATES: That's the end of our
journey with Lena Waithe and
John Leguizamo.
Join me next time when we
unlock the secrets of the past
for new guests, on another
episode of
Finding Your Roots.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Welcome to
Finding Your Roots.
In this episode, we'll
meet John Leguizamo
and Lena Waithe.
Two stars who built their
careers by exploring their
identities are now going to
discover just how complex
those identities really are.
LEGUIZAMO: This is my
15th great-grandfather?
GATES: How 'bout that?
LEGUIZAMO: From coming from
no history to having so much
history is, it's,
it's unbelievable.
GATES: You descend from
a Native American woman.
WAITHE: What?
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...
WAITHE: Wow!
GATES: A record of all
of our discoveries...
LEGUIZAMO: Wow,
that's incredible.
GATES: And a window
into the hidden past.
WAITHE: This is crazy.
LEGUIZAMO: I'm getting, uh...
uh, teary-eyed here.
Uh, yeah, it's beautiful.
WAITHE: It feels like one big
huge blessing to be connected
to all of these people.
GATES: John and Lena grew up
in the United States,
knowing almost nothing about
their ancestors who lived
far from our shores.
In this episode, they're
going to meet those ancestors,
retrace their incredible
journeys, and uncover
the hidden diversity within
their own family trees.
(theme music plays).
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
GATES: John Leguizamo
is a national treasure.
Over the past three decades,
he's carved out
a unique path...
Juggling leading roles in
film and television with
his brilliant
self-created one-man shows...
LEGUIZAMO: Yo Johnny,
don't be afraid, come on.
Go Johnny, go Johnny,
go, go, go!
Go me, go me,
go me, go me, go me.
And I get to the
conductor's boof...
Boof, that's how I used to talk.
Baf-room, leng-ff, nor-ff.
Yo, we were so ghetto we
couldn't even afford a T-H.
GATES: On stage, John explores
the Latino experience from
myriad angles, via a
dizzying array of characters.
But it all feels firmly rooted
in his own experience,
because it is.
When he was four years old,
John's family emigrated from
Bogotá, Colombia to Queens,
New York, where John grew up
watching his parents make
immense efforts simply to
put a roof over their heads.
LEGUIZAMO: My parents were
always struggling and striving.
I mean, when we first got
here, the four of us,
we lived in an apartment that
was so small, the furniture
was painted on the walls.
And we had a Murphy bed.
I don't know if
people, uh, you know, are...
GATES: They have no idea what
a Murphy bed is, but tell 'em.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
You know, so, it's a bed
that's built so that when the
day comes, in the morning, you
get up, you put it back up...
GATES: Right.
LEGUIZAMO: On the wall.
So, you have a living room,
dining room, bedroom
was all one room.
That was the first year.
The second year, my parents
worked their butts off so that
they got their own room.
And then eventually, we
had a living room separate
from the dining room.
And then, you know, every
year we moved up 'til we got a
house, and then my father
rented all the rooms, and we
had to live with all these
tenants, and we had to like,
you know, clean their rooms
and do all, and do all kinds
of, uh, manual labor.
GATES: What effect do
you think that had on you?
LEGUIZAMO: Well,
it made me rebel.
It made me rebel against them.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: It made me very
anti-authority, because it,
it, it was so strict at home,
and, and it made me, you know,
love humor and comedy, and all
I wanted to do was be fun,
be around fun, and having fun.
GATES: John's
ambitions would quickly grow.
He started out doing stand-up,
then discovered more
serious theater,
and was hooked.
By the time he was 17, he was
reading Tennessee Williams and
Arthur Miller, and telling
anyone who'd listen that
he was going to become an actor.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this
wasn't what his parents
wanted to hear...
LEGUIZAMO: My father was
like: "We didn't come to this
country for you to
be worse than us."
You know, you, you can't be
an actor, don't, you, you know
they were, they
were horrified.
I mean, first of all, you never
see Latin people on television
or plays or anywhere,
so how are you gonna
make a living?
But I didn't care because I
fell in love with this, this,
this calling, this, this, a
higher, uh, art, you know?
I don't know, to me, it was
the greatest art the world had
ever, ever created, and,
and so nothing was gonna
derail me.
GATES: John was
true to his word...
After dropping out of college,
he took acting classes at
New York's famed HB studio,
then set his sights on
a career in Hollywood,
where he soon confronted a
new challenge: typecasting.
The only parts he could
get were gang members,
drug dealers, or other
stereotypes of Latino men.
The dilemma would ultimately
fuel his creativity, but not
before a great deal
of soul-searching.
LEGUIZAMO: How else was I
gonna make a living, you know?
And I was hoping maybe this
is that, that stepping stone.
Maybe this is that, that thing
that's gonna get me to the
next better thing.
But it wasn't, it was like...
I would see all the cats.
I would see Luis Guzmán,
Benjamin Bratt,
Benicio del Toro, and all of us,
you know, coming in for
gangsters with bandanas,
leather jackets, you know,
"What's up man,
what's up, what's up?"
Or janitors, you know,
"Como... how are you doing,
how's everything going?
Everything's good."
You know? So...
I started to
create my own stuff.
And that, that rejection of
Hollywood, and, and Hollywood
rejecting me, forced me to
find a new path for myself.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: And I'm grateful
for that rejection, because
I now create.
I'm self-generating, and uh,
I, I was, I've been able to be
a voice for Latin kids
and Latin people, you know,
showing that our culture is
valid, that it's viable, and
that my ethnicity
is my, my power.
GATES: My second guest is
actor, writer and producer
Lena Waithe, creator of
Showtimes' hit series
The Chi,
a kaleidoscopic look
at Chicago's south side.
It's a place that
Lena knows intimately.
She spent most of her childhood
in the neighborhood...
raised by a single mother,
who was often
too busy to supervise her
closely and largely cut off
from a father, who struggled
with substance abuse...
But while Lena was certainly
shaped by the world outside
her door, there was another
force that was just as strong:
her maternal grandmother,
Tressie Hall, who lived with
her, inspired her, and
even introduced her to
her future profession.
The two spent hours together
in front their television,
guided by Tressie's
well-formed tastes...
WAITHE: We watched a lot of
old TV because that's what my
grandmother wanted to watch.
Like but...
GATES: Because she was old.
WAITHE: Yeah,
because she was older.
GATES: It wasn't old to her!
WAITHE: She's like, "I like
this TV," you know, uhm, but
we'd watch
Hunter
andColumbo
and, like, you know,
Maude,
and, and
All in the Family.
And I just loved her sense of
humor, I loved her swag, and
I enjoyed that time and, and
laughing with her and learning
about just how important
storytelling could be
through television shows.
GATES: Lena's grandmother lit a
fire that has never gone out.
After college, Lena moved
to Los Angeles, with no
connections, and sought work
as a production assistant.
The odds were
stacked against her,
but Lena wasn't
thinking about that...
GATES: Now, Hollywood is not
exactly known to be friendly
to African Americans,
traditionally.
WAITHE: No.
GATES: How did you find it
when you, got here?
WAITHE: At the time
there was a Black Hollywood.
It was smaller, but
it was, it was there.
And one of my professors said,
"If you can land in
Black Hollywood,
you'll always be okay."
It was like, and
so, I said, "Okay."
And, uhm, yeah, my first
gig was on
Girlfriends,
as an
assistant to the showrunners,
and it was a dream come true.
I was like, "Oh man,
this is, this is it.
This is great."
Uhm, and then, of course, a
strike hit, and everything
kind of just came crumbling
down, and I was like,
"What am I doing?"
And that's when I think
when I got really creative and
decided just to kind of write
and try to find my voice, and
that's what I started to do.
GATES: Was your
family supportive?
WAITHE: Yeah, they were.
The, the hard thing for them
was that they just didn't have
any information, they couldn't
really help me because it's
just a very tricky business,
and they knew they didn't know
a ton about it, but they knew
that I had a lot of drive, and
I was just going to try to
figure it out on my own.
GATES: You're hard-headed.
WAITHE: Yes, always have been.
GATES: Lena's unwavering drive
has served her well,
giving her the confidence to
stand up for her own story,
onscreen and off.
It's also led to an
amazing string of successes.
Since 2017, she's won an Emmy,
created three TV shows,
and written a feature film.
But for all her
accomplishments, Lena remains
very much a product of the
family that nurtured her
dreams from the
very beginning...
WAITHE: I wouldn't be here if
it weren't for their love and
their support, and also, you
know, some of the dysfunction,
and I think without that, I
don't have anything to draw,
draw from.
It wasn't all, it wasn't a
perfect upbringing, it wasn't,
you know, it wasn't easy,
and because of that, I'm,
I have some wounds and
some scars that make me
the artist and the writer I am.
GATES: Uh-hum.
WAITHE: So, I, you know, it's
interesting because I think
some people say, you know, they
want trauma-free entertainment.
GATES: Good luck with that.
WAITHE: Exactly. It's like...
GATES: Well, there is
no trauma-free author.
WAITHE: Yeah, exactly.
And so we have to find ways to
heal, and the way I choose to
do that is to,
to write about things that
aren't always pretty.
GATES: Lena and John grew up
in homes where daily existence
could be a struggle, in
families focused on the
future, not on the past.
As a result, though each has a
strong sense of themself,
they have little knowledge
of the ancestors who laid
the groundwork for
their success...
It was time to change that.
I started with John Leguizamo.
Growing up in New York City,
far from his native Colombia,
John's understanding of his
ancestry had been filtered
through heavy layer of
mythology, as John himself
readily admits...
LEGUIZAMO: It's all, like, so
interesting in Latin America
especially in my family, uh,
you know, uh, there's so many
stories, you know, that, uh,
my grandfather was Lebanese,
part Lebanese, and, and
his wife was Afro Latina,
and then my grandmother is
an Incan princess...
GATES: You sound like,
uh, Black genealogy at a
family reunion, you know?
Yeah, a king in Africa!
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
There's, there's a lot of
fablizing about, about the
story, but I don't
know the real, real deal.
GATES: The "real deal" behind
John's family tree would prove
fascinating, but it took our
researchers a lot of time to
untangle it from
the "fablizing".
On his mother's side, that
meant following the paper
trail back almost three
centuries, all the way back to
John's 6th great-grandfather,
a man named Manuel
Salvador Londoño...
Manuel was likely born in
Colombia sometime in the
1720s, the key to his story,
and indeed to this entire
branch of John's tree,
lay in the archives of
the city of Rionegro.
LEGUIZAMO: This is wild,
my sixth grandfather.
GATES: Great-great-great-great-
great- great-grandfather.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: Now, look on the right.
That is part of
Manuel's will...
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, wow!
GATES: Recorded in
Rionegro in 1796.
Would you please read the
section of your ancestor's.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh my god.
I hope there's
something for me.
I hope there's, I hope there's
a piece of land or some money.
GATES: Would you please
read the section
that we've translated?
LEGUIZAMO: "Manuel Salvador
Londoño, natural son of
Petrona de la Chica.
He executed his will
before Public Notary
Dr. Alvarez y Tamayo
on April 25, 1796."
GATES: You notice anything
different about Manuel as he's
described there?
LEGUIZAMO: "Natural son."
Oh, not legitimate.
GATES: Yeah. Natural.
LEGUIZAMO: Whoa!
GATES: So, at the time of
Manuel's conception and birth,
his parents were both
single and unmarried.
LEGUIZAMO: You know, young
people can't control themselves.
GATES: And as you could see,
there's no mention of the
name of Manuel's father.
LEGUIZAMO: No.
GATES: And of course,
this was common for
illegitimate children.
LEGUIZAMO: He disappeared,
deadbeat dad.
GATES: Let's find out.
Please turn the page.
LEGUIZAMO: Who's the daddy?
GATES: Ordinarily, it would
be impossible to identify the
unnamed father of an
illegitimate child
born in the 1720s.
But we had an extraordinary
tool at our disposal.
In the 18th century, priests
in Colombia often kept notes
on events in their parishes.
These notes were compiled
by an historian in 2006,
providing an invaluable
resource for genealogists
because the priests had a wide
array of interests, and were
willing to preserve
gossip that was excluded
from official records.
Thanks to these priests, we
learned a great deal about
John's ancestry, including the
identity of Manuel's father,
a man named
Sancho Londoño Zapata.
You ever heard that name?
LEGUIZAMO: No.
I have never.
GATES: Well, Sancho is your
seventh great-grandfather,
and he was the corregidor
of Rionegro at the time,
which meant he was the
local administrator for
the Spanish crown.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh wow, so
this is a Spaniard guy.
This is a...
GATES: He was a big deal, man.
Your sev...
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Let me tell
you how big he was.
Your seventh great-grandfather,
when he died in 1765,
was the richest
person in the entire province.
LEGUIZAMO: No.
Get out of here.
Where's my money?
GATES: He was the corregidor.
That was his title.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
GATES: Though John's 7th
great-grandfather was a
powerful official, we know
little about his life, and
nothing at all about his
relationship to John's
7th great-grandmother,
a woman named
Petronila de la Chica Betuma.
But turning back to the compiled
notes of Rionegro's priests,
we discovered
something about Petronila...
She was a Native American.
LEGUIZAMO: "Teresa de la Chica
Betuma was daughter of
Miguel de la Chica, Indian."
Oh, I had a feeling, and his
wife Francisca, he, he liked
the flavor, a little.
"And his wife, Francisca Betuma,
a marriage celebrated
in Rionegro in April of 1673."
That's nuts.
At the same time, Francisca
was the daughter of don
Jeronimo Betuma,
noble Indian of El Peñol.
The daughters of Miguel de
la Chica and Francisca Betuma
were Petronila de la Chica
and Teresa."
GATES: John, according to
this source, your seventh
great-grandmother
was Indigenous.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, yeah, but I
knew, uh, look at me. Yeah.
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: It
came from somewhere.
That's wild.
GATES: And this introduces us
to her parents, who are your
8th great-grandparents,
Miguel de la Chica and
Francisca Betuma, who are
both recorded there as
being also Indigenous.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, In,
they just say Indian.
Isn't that wild?
They just say Indian.
GATES: Yes.
You've also read the name of
your ninth great-grandfather,
Jeronimo Betuma.
LEGUIZAMO: I can't
believe we got a ninth,
a ninth grandfather.
What, are you going to go to
the beginning of time, I mean?
From coming from no history
to having so much history is,
it's, it's unbelievable.
GATES: And read again
how he's described.
LEGUIZAMO: "Noble Indian."
GATES: "Noble Indian."
LEGUIZAMO: That's beautiful.
It's very moving.
I mean I'm very,
I'm, I'm, I'm moved.
I'm getting uh,
uh, teary-eyed here.
Uh, yeah, it's beautiful.
I mean to...
(Sighs).
GATES: What's
it like to see that?
LEGUIZAMO: Well, I feel
very proud, and I mean it's
incredible to know that
that's where I get my
Indigenous blood from.
It's a, the direct name,
the direct person.
GATES: We believe that
Jeronimo, was likely born
sometime in the mid-1600s,
though we can't be certain,
we found him in the census for
Rionegro for the year 1666,
and that's as far as we
could go on this branch of
John's family tree.
However, we weren't done
with his mother's ancestry,
not by a long shot...
Focusing on another of John's
maternal lines, we were able to
trace back to his 15th
great-grandfather,
a man named
Sebastián de Belalcázar,
whose life is exceedingly
well-documented
for a man of this era.
LEGUIZAMO: This is my
15th great-grandfather?
GATES: How 'bout that?
LEGUIZAMO: That's incredible.
What, what, what
does that take us?
Into the 1400s?
GATES: He died around 1551,
in what today is Cartagena.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: Would you please
read the translated section?
LEGUIZAMO: "I, Sebastián
de Belalcázar Adelantado,
Governor", Governor!
"and Captain-General of
these provinces and
district of Popayán
for His Majesty,
do grant and certify by this
instrument my full power of
attorney to you,
Francisco de Rodas,
in all my litigation,
civil or criminal.
I grant this instrument before
the Notary in the city of Cali."
GATES: Your 15th
great-grandfather was the
governor and captain-general
of the District of Popayán
for the King of Spain.
His boss was the
King of Spain.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
I can't believe it.
I, you could trace
me that far back.
That's incredible.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: My, my
family's gonna, uh,
use the term bug out.
They're gonna
freak out and bug out.
GATES: Neither John, nor his
family, was likely prepared
for what we discovered next.
Records show that
Sebastián served under
Francisco Pizzaro, the
infamous conquistador who
brutally subjugated
the Incan empire.
Indeed, we found testimony
detailing how Pizzaro sent
Sebastián into what is now
Ecuador to conquer the Incan
city of Quito, and seize any
treasure that he could find.
Much to John's chagrin,
Sebastián did exactly
as he was told...
Your ancestor was able to
obtain vast amounts of gold
for Spain, your ancestor,
not only from the
mines of the area,
but he and his cohort
also melted down what
Inca gold was left in the city.
LEGUIZAMO: I mean, it's one
of the great crimes of, of
history, you know?
I mean the, the incredible
artifacts and, and, and the,
and museum pieces
that were melted.
GATES: Right.
LEGUIZAMO: On one side, we
made them, and the other side,
we melted them, you know?
I'm, I'm, I'm kind,
I'm kind of like
Dr. Jekyll and Hyde in here.
GATES: How does it feel to
know that you descend,
you have blood from,
you share DNA with...
LEGUIZAMO: I, I...
GATES: Both a
conquistador line
and a noble Indigenous line.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
I mean it's wild.
I mean, you, you hear a lot
of, like, great Chicano poets,
activists in the '60s going, I,
I conquered myself, you know?
We, it's
basically that, you know?
Here is my conquistador
grandfather and, and, and
my Indigenous line, line, you
know, and they, they were at,
at odds but also, you know,
mix, mixing up in the, in the,
in the dark.
GATES: There was one
more beat to this story.
After the conquest of Quito,
Sebastian broke with Pizzaro
and went north into what is
today Colombia, where,
under license from the
Spanish crown, he won fame
that would endure for centuries.
LEGUIZAMO: No, get outta here.
A statue.
GATES: Yes.
LEGUIZAMO: That's wild. Wow.
GATES: It's located in
the city of Popayán,
which he founded...
LEGUIZAMO: Oh wow.
GATES: In the year 1537,
three years after the
conquest of Quito.
And Popayán wasn't the
only city he founded.
See that map?
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
GATES: Your ancestor
founded all of those cities.
LEGUIZAMO: No!
That's amazing.
I mean, those are big
cities in Colombia.
GATES: Big cities.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
I mean it's, it's
so unfathomable.
GATES: Well, guess what?
A month ago, protesters
pulled this statue down.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, they did?
GATES: Indigenous protesters.
LEGUIZAMO: I had a
feeling it had to go.
GATES: A month ago,
in September.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, man.
I hope they put
it in a museum.
I mean, maybe it
doesn't need to be...
I mean, I'm not against that.
I understand...
GATES: Sure.
LEGUIZAMO: The horrors of
destroying a people's culture,
language, and religion.
And stealing all that they
had, and now they're living
in, in, in, in squalor.
Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not for
that, you know what I mean?
GATES: Well, I mean, he
was a big target, right?
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
But I'm glad you
got that photo quick.
GATES: Much like John, my
second guest, Lena Waithe,
was about to follow her roots
back centuries to meet ancestors
whose stories, and identities,
had been lost to time.
But this journey began
much closer to home:
with Lena's father,
Lawrence David Waithe...
Lawrence separated from Lena's
mother when Lena was a child,
and though he remained in
her life for several years
afterwards, he died young...
Leaving his daughter with a
host of unanswered questions.
WAITHE: He came around on
weekends, you know, for a
little while, and then, and
that was cool, and it was
totally normal, and then it
stopped, and I didn't really
understand why, and I think
there were things that were
going on that maybe they
didn't think a child should
know, so all I knew was the,
the weekend visits stopped,
and, and then, when I was
15, uh, he died suddenly.
GATES: Yeah.
WAITHE: And I just sort of
didn't know, I didn't know
what to make of it.
It's just a very
odd thing to hear.
Even if you haven't seen a
parent in a long time, there's
still something that shifts in
the universe that a person who
helped make you
is no longer here.
And I think I was just sort of
very lost and didn't know what
to make of it, uh, and
I think I still don't.
GATES: You carry
the Waithe name.
Do you know
where it comes from?
WAITHE: I do not.
GATES: Lena's father was
born in Boston in 1951.
As we set out to trace his
roots, we expected that they
would lead us into the
American south, as do the
roots of most of my
African American guests.
And, indeed, Lawrence's mother
has ancestry in Tennessee,
Alabama and Georgia.
But when we turned to
Lawrence's father, we found
ourselves in New York City,
where, in 1921, a man named
Winston Waithe
stepped off a ship.
Winston is Lena's
great-grandfather.
And, according to the
passenger list of his ship,
he wasn't coming to New York
from Charleston, or New Orleans,
or anywhere in
the United States.
He, and this whole line of
Lena's ancestry, was from
Barbados, in the West Indies.
WAITHE: Wow. Barbados.
GATES: So, you had no
idea of any of this?
WAITHE: No.
GATES: Nothing, where they came
from or how they came to the,
well, obviously, if you didn't
know where they came from,
you hadn't ever...
WAITHE: Yeah.
GATES: Thought about
how they got here.
WAITHE: Absolutely.
GATES: What's it like
for you to see that?
WAITHE: That's the interesting
thing, I never thought of my
ancestors as immigrants.
GATES: Oh, right.
WAITHE: Yeah, because, you
know, you know, we, you think,
well, we didn't
want to come here.
You know, there's a
difference, you know, being
brought over here against
your will versus, you know,
choosing to come,
so I think that's the
most shocking thing.
GATES: Yeah, we were
unwilling immigrants, right?
WAITHE: Yeah.
GATES: Not you.
WAITHE: Yeah, I know.
So interesting.
GATES: In Winston's day,
Barbados was an English colony,
and Lena wondered why
her ancestor would leave
his homeland to take a
chance in segregated America.
The answer, it seems,
was economic...
WAITHE: "The Barbados have
become so full of people that
the English government offers
a cash bonus to any inhabitant
who will agree to leave
the island and stay away
for five years."
"Ordinarily, the offer is $20,
but when Barbados people are
least inclined to leave their
island it is raised to $25."
Wow.
So, they were kind
of bribed to go away?
GATES: Yeah.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: They had an
overcrowding problem,
and they go, "Here's 25 bucks,
you know, like you all..."
WAITHE: "Get out."
GATES: "Get out," right?
WAITHE: "Go somewhere." Wow.
GATES: The English government
was paying people to leave.
And I didn't even know.
I mean, until we did the
research of your family tree,
I didn't even know that
anybody was doing this.
WAITHE: This is crazy.
GATES: Winston was 17 years
old when he left Barbados.
But the cash offer wasn't
the only incentive
drawing him north.
Wages were higher in
the United States.
And there may have been
another factor as well:
Winston wasn't the first in
his family to make the move.
As evidenced by the
passenger list of the ship
that brought him here.
WAITHE: "Whether going to join
a relative or friend, father,
Mr. E. Waithe,
123 Houston Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts."
GATES: So, you know
what's going on here?
Your great-grandfather Winston
came to the United States on
his way to be
with his father...
WAITHE: Oh.
GATES: Who was already here.
WAITHE: Got it.
GATES: Your great-great
grandfather Edward Waithe,
who was living in my beloved
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
not that far from my house.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: So, your
great-grandfather wasn't the
first immigrant on
your family tree.
WAITHE: Hmm. Wow.
GATES: What's it like to learn
this information about
two generations of
your blood ancestors?
WAITHE: I mean, it's,
it's really beautiful.
It feels like I have a sense
of, a newer sense of identity.
GATES: So, are you
going to visit Barbados?
WAITHE: I must, for sure.
I can't wait.
GATES: And you probably have
cousins all over there, and
I bet they're looking
at your film saying...
WAITHE: They're like,
"You look familiar."
Wow.
GATES: We now set out to
see what we could learn about
Lena's roots in her
newfound ancestral home.
We knew that we faced
a steep challenge...
Doing genealogy in the West
Indies can be very difficult
because many vital
records have been lost.
But in Lena's
case, we got lucky.
We uncovered a wedding
record from the year 1880
that allowed us to add
two more generations to
her family tree...
WAITHE: "The Parish
Church of Christ Church.
When married, March 27.
Name and surname, William
Moore Waithe, age 38 and
Charlotte Ann Warner, age 37.
Father's name and
surname, Primus Waithe."
GATES: William Moore Waithe is
your third great-grandfather.
He was born almost
200 years ago in 1830
in Christ Church Barbados.
And you just read the name of
his father, Primus Waithe.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: Primus Waithe is your
great-great-great-
great-grandfather.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: He was born
around 1792 also in Barbados.
Remember when George
Washington was president of
the United States?
WAITHE: Oh, man, it's amazing.
Yes.
GATES: Your fourth
great-grandfather.
WAITHE: I love
that name, Primus.
GATES: Primus, it's cool.
WAITHE: That's a strong name.
GATES: This record not only
lists the names of Lena's
direct ancestors, it places
them in a specific parish in
Barbados, a parish
known as Christ Church...
And this would tie Lena to a
terrible chapter in
Barbados' history.
As we pored over the
archives of Christ Church,
we discovered a slave register
from the year 1817,
indicating that Lena's fourth
great-grandfather Primus was
the human property of someone
with a very familiar name...
He was enslaved by a woman
named Mary Murrell Waithe.
WAITHE: Whoa.
GATES: And that is where
you get your surname from.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: The Waithe family.
WAITHE: It was always
such an odd last name,
like, growing up.
GATES: Mhm.
WAITHE: It wasn't like the
other, like other Black kids
I was around, like, like
Washington or Johnson,
and things like that, it was
always a, people always
struggled with
spelling it, pronouncing it.
Like, I was just always trying
to tell people understand it,
but I, yeah, wow.
GATES: What's it
like finally to know?
WAITHE: You know, it's all,
it's, it's painful because
your name is such a huge
part of your identity,
so for someone to put their
identity onto your family,
it just feels, uh, unjust.
GATES: Lena's family wasn't
alone: over the course of the
transatlantic slave trade,
roughly 600,000 Africans were
shipped to Barbados.
More than came to the
entire United States.
Most ended up on sugar
plantations, where conditions
were utterly hellish...
Scholars told us that Primus
likely worked six days a week,
doing 12 hour shifts of the
hardest labor, clearing land,
digging holes, and cutting
the sugar cane, all the while
dealing with oppressive
heat and poor sanitation.
It was both terrifying, and
deadly, as massive numbers
died of exhaustion,
starvation, and disease.
Indeed: the average life
expectancy of an enslaved
male worker on a sugar
plantation was between
seven and nine years...
Before the opening of the
West Indies and the growing
cultivation of sugar there...
WAITHE: Uh-hum.
GATES: Only rich people in
Europe could have sugar.
WAITHE: Oh, wow.
GATES: The West Indies
made sugar the world's
first commodity crop.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: And sugar was gold.
People made vast fortunes,
but to harvest that sugar,
they needed free, cheap labor.
And that labor, of
course, came from Africa.
WAITHE: Yeah.
GATES: What's it like
to hear those numbers?
WAITHE: Just to think about
their lives and them not being
able to explore themselves or
step into themselves or
have the time to get to know
themselves because they were
just being worked
to death, literally.
GATES: Mmm.
WAITHE: It's, it's devastating,
and it's so disturbing.
It doesn't matter how
much of it you read,
you're still, I think there's
just a level of, uh,
just of not being able
to understand that will,
I don't think it will ever come.
It's not meant
to be understood.
GATES: Slavery dominated
Barbados for more than
two centuries, but the
Africans who were caught up
in this ruthless system
didn't succumb in silence.
There were many
acts of resistance,
both small and large...
And, in the spring of 1816,
one of them shook the world.
WAITHE: "On Easter Sunday,
April 14, an insurrection of
the slaves at
Barbados broke out.
An account received on Monday
states that 41 estates were
actually destroyed, and that
the insurrection appeared to
be very extensive, and
the slaves most ferocious.
The Negroes first
proceeded to demolish
the overseers' houses.
They then destroyed the
sugar-pans and all the
implements, which they could
gain possession of,
also all the Negro huts."
Wow. Wow.
Well, be still my heart.
Wow.
Well, I love that.
GATES: The "insurrection," as
newspapers called it, came to
be known as Bussa's Rebellion,
the biggest slave revolt in
the history of Barbados.
It lasted three days before
it was put down by the
British army, leaving dozens of
plantations destroyed and
miles of sugar fields burned.
Lena's fourth
great-grandfather was
24 years old at the time.
He likely knew about the
plans, and he most certainly
saw smoke from the burning
fields, but we don't believe
that he played an active role
in the revolt, for one very
simple reason, he survived.
Although Christ Church
was one of the parishes
impacted by the rebellion, all
people who were known to have
participated were executed,
but Primus wasn't,
Primus lived to father your
third great-grandfather
William in 1830.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: If Primus had been
involved, we would just erase
you right now and you
would just disappear.
WAITHE: Wow. Wow.
Whew. Wow.
GATES: What do you
make of all this?
WAITHE: Oh, it's so
interesting because I wonder
if he wanted to be involved
but was too afraid or, wow.
I'm sure there was some
survivor's remorse, uhm,
but I'm grateful he did.
GATES: I'm
grateful he did, too.
Lena, unfortunately, Primus
would never know freedom.
WAITHE: Oh.
GATES: He would never ever
be released from bondage.
He died enslaved in Barbados
sometime between 1829 and
1832, and slavery is not
abolished throughout the
British Empire until 1834,
so just before the
Abolition of Slavery.
WAITHE: It would've been
beautiful if he could've
seen that, but I'm happy,
but I'm happy he saw
the fires instead.
GATES: Yep.
We had a final
detail to share.
The same archives in Christ
Church that held a record of
Primus' enslavement also
held another record,
of a far more
optimistic nature...
WAITHE: "When born,
1867, August 8.
Child's Christian name,
Edward Albert.
Surname, Waithe."
GATES: Any idea what
you're looking at?
WAITHE: I don't.
GATES: That's the
baptismal record for your
great-great-grandfather...
WAITHE: Oh, wow.
GATES: Edward Waithe.
Edward Waithe was
Primus's grandson.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: And he wasn't only the
first immigrant ancestor on
your Waithe line, remember
he comes to Boston in 1905?
WAITHE: Uh-hum.
GATES: He was also the first
person on your family tree,
on the Waithe line,
to be born free.
WAITHE: Wow. Wow. 1867.
GATES: Does it change the
way you think of your father's
family and your
relationship to it?
I mean, are you
more of a Waithe now?
WAITHE: I'm happy I know
where the name comes from.
Um, I think I'm mostly filled
with gratitude for all these
amazing human beings who,
you know, lived and worked and
raised their children, and
uh, fought, and survived.
GATES: The key word, survived.
WAITHE: Yeah.
By the skin of their teeth.
GATES: We'd already traced John
Leguizamo's mother's family
back to the early 1500s,
revealing his
ancient roots in
his native Colombia.
Now, turning to his paternal
ancestry, we found ourselves
facing a mystery.
Growing up, John knew
his father's mother,
María Emilia Leguizamo, but
never met his father's father,
his own grandfather, he
didn't even know his name.
We were starting,
essentially, from scratch...
Have you ever heard much
about your grandfather?
LEGUIZAMO: I, I mean the only
thing I heard was that he was
a chicken farmer, and
he had a lot of kids.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
What do you know about
his relationship
to your grandmother?
LEGUIZAMO: To my grandma?
Well, I, I think, I don't know.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: I, I don't, I
have no, no stories of him.
I, I don't really have,
nothing was passed down
to me about him.
I think my father and him were
estranged, and uh, so, I, I,
I, I, I knew, I knew nothing.
GATES: Lacking first-hand
knowledge, John told me that
he had long ago made an
assumption: he believed his
grandfather was Puerto Rican,
based on the fact that there's
a barrio called "Leguizamo"
in one of Puerto Rico's
largest cities.
But we could find no evidence
of John's family on the island,
and his DNA does not show any
trace of Puerto Rican heritage.
Instead, John's father's roots
lie in the same place as his
mother's: Colombia....
And the solution to the
mystery lay in the nexus
between his grandfather's
name, and his unusual life...
LEGUIZAMO: "Name of deceased,
Martin Vargas-Cualla,
place of death, Houston, Texas,
date of death, July 29, 1975.
Occupation,
self-employed merchant,
Birthplace, Bogotá, Colombia,
citizen of what country,
Colombia."
GATES: Have you
ever seen that before?
LEGUIZAMO: No.
Who is that?
GATES: John, this is
the death certificate of
your grandfather.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh wow.
GATES: He died in Houston,
Texas, on July 29, 1975.
He was 80 years old.
LEGUIZAMO: Now, now,
why don't I have, I'm not,
he's not Legui, Leguizamo.
GATES: Right.
LEGUIZAMO: He's Vargas.
I'm not Vargas.
I'm Leguizamo.
GATES: Your grandmother
was not married to Martin.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, there you go.
GATES: Okay?
She was one of several women
with whom he had children and
who lived at his properties.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, wow, my, my
grandmother lived in his,
one of his properties?
GATES: Yes.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, okay.
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: So, we didn't take
my grandfather's name 'cause
that, otherwise
I'd be a Vargas.
GATES: You got it.
LEGUIZAMO: Uh-huh.
GATES: But she was there.
She was living...
she had children on
his property, but...
LEGUIZAMO: He
didn't claim them.
He didn't claim, he didn't,
he didn't claim my father.
GATES: Yeah. Right.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah.
That's where all the
confusion comes...
GATES: There you go.
You got it.
LEGUIZAMO: So, I
should be a Vargas.
I should be
John Alberto Vargas.
Johnny Vargas.
GATES: Johnny Vargas.
LEGUIZAMO: Johnny Vargas.
GATES: This record indicates
that John's grandfather
was a "merchant."
John had heard he was
also a chicken farmer.
Both were true, in part.
It seems that Martin was
actually successful in
many realms, and made a
substantial fortune as a
rancher and a businessman.
This made him a
prominent figure in Colombia.
Indeed, we found newspaper
articles dating back to the
1950s detailing his
very colorful career...
LEGUIZAMO: "Don Martin Vargas
Cualla is a character
out of a novel.
A familial or academic setback
threw him into the capital
city when he was
beginning his adolescence.
For ten pesos, he bought two
old horses that he later sold
at 25, and that
was the beginning.
Animals and lands allowed him
to multiply in a world that
was his own, estate after
estate, beasts, and cattle.
The previous owner of those
old horses is a breeder of
beautiful specimens and
a creator of riches."
GATES: Any word of this...
LEGUIZAMO: No, no.
GATES: Never passed
down in your family?
LEGUIZAMO: No. Nobody...
GATES: Why?
LEGUIZAMO: I, I don't,
I don't know what was
going on in my family.
I mean, uh, was it, were, were
the people just not proud or,
or, or, or because they were,
or because he was a natural
instead of a legitimate son?
GATES: Mhm.
LEGUIZAMO: I think, a lot of my
father's own, demons, kind of...
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: Haunting
him his whole life.
'Cause he was always,
my father was always,
never satisfied with what,
what he did, never, always
constantly questing for more,
always trying to be better,
always trying to...
GATES: Hey, I come from
people, I had a fortune,
I want to get it back.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Somehow disappeared.
LEGUIZAMO: 'Cause
he never got it.
He never got it 'cause he wasn't
legitimate to, to the will.
GATES: Right, you got it.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
That's crazy.
GATES: It turns out that
Martin wasn't the only
prominent figure on this
branch of John's tree.
Moving back two generations,
we came to a man named
Higinio Cualla.
Higinio is John's
great-great-grandfather,
and his obituary, published
in Colombia in 1927,
is a litany of impressive
accomplishments.
LEGUIZAMO: "Yesterday passed
away Don Higinio Cualla,
at the age of 87 years.
Bogotá will always
remember with gratitude
the best of our mayors.
His love for the city, his
commitment to the common good,
the enthusiasm with which he
worked on all hours for the
progress of the capital
can never be forgotten.
He was the real initiator
of the development of
modern Bogotá.
Many of the improvements
that we enjoy today
are owed to him.
It is a shame that his grand
spirit did not continue to
inspire his successors."
GATES: Pretty
amazing, isn't it?
LEGUIZAMO: As a
mayor of Bogotá?
GATES: For 16 years.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: From 1884 to 1900.
LEGUIZAMO: That's wild.
I, we, but we never,
nobody ever acknowledged that.
Nobody ever passed that down to
me, telling me that, you know,
I'm the son of, I'm, I'm the
great-grandson of a mayor.
GATES: Yeah!
How do you feel about that?
LEGUIZAMO: I, I, my chest
is pumped up a little bit.
I do feel a little, uh,
boastful, and I'm gonna
have to try to calm myself.
GATES: This obituary claims
that Higinio helped modernize
Bogotá, and the historical
record bears that out.
After taking office in 1884,
the Cualla administration
helped bring electricity to
the city, built trolley lines,
a theater, and an aqueduct,
all the while fixing roads and
establishing a tax to
help the city's poor.
LEGUIZAMO: Wow.
GATES: He truly
was industrious.
LEGUIZAMO: And he
was compassionate:
"Shelter for beggars".
GATES: And on the left,
there's a monument.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, did they
knock that one down, too?
GATES: It's another
monument, a monument...
Now, the good news,
it's still standing.
LEGUIZAMO: Oh, it is?
Yeah, he, he didn't
do anything dastardly.
GATES: And you've
never seen that before?
LEGUIZAMO: No, I mean
who would've thunk?
GATES: But look at this.
Your 15th great-grandfather
Sebastián was a statue.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Your great-great-
grandfather, a statue.
That's amazing.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: How do you think
these stories got lost?
I mean you have two sets
of stories that got lost.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, all, all of it.
I mean I, I, I think that's a
lot, uh, really true for a lot
of Latin people, and you know,
uh, the conquest was a brutal
thing where people were, you
know, you were destroying a
culture, you're mixing with
it, you're, they're, they're
sexually attracted, so you're
creating a, a new culture,
but it, but, but at that same
time, things are being hidden.
There's a lot of shaming.
There's a lot of hiding
and, and I don't know.
I think it, that doesn't
totally disappear that easily
over a couple of centuries,
and I think that's part of it.
There's a lot of stuff that's
hidden, and I think there's a
lot of shame in, in, in
the conquest, and, and that
continues and perpetuates,
sort of like a PTSD.
GATES: Turning to DNA, we can
see how this complex history
is reflected in
John's own chromosomes...
His admixture indicates
that he's a blend of
Native American, European and
sub-Saharan African...
And when we looked at his
mitochondrial DNA, the genetic
fingerprint that's passed down
from mother-to-child across
generations, we were able
to pinpoint the geographic
origins of his direct
maternal ancestors.
You want to guess?
Was she European,
was she African,
or was she Indigenous?
LEGUIZAMO: I
would say Indigenous.
GATES: Okay. But why?
LEGUIZAMO: Because the
conquistadors were,
were mostly male.
GATES: Uh-huh.
LEGUIZAMO: And, and, and the
women that they had affairs
with were mostly
Indigenous or African.
Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: Please turn the page.
Very good guess.
LEGUIZAMO: Aha. Tsssssss...
GATES: Your maternal
haplogroup or, or clan
is called B2d.
The map there shows
your where your direct
maternal ancestors came from.
As you can see, they all
came from the Americas.
LEGUIZAMO: Yeah,
Indigenous, yeah, yeah.
GATES: How does
it make you feel?
LEGUIZAMO: I mean, uh, it's
beautiful to know about my,
you know, that I'm related to
the Aztecs and the Mayas
and the Incas.
Uh, uh, I take
great pride in that.
GATES: Yeah.
LEGUIZAMO: And to know that
I, I, I am a quarter of that
and... is, is amazing.
GATES: While John was
delighted by his DNA results,
they were not a
complete surprise.
But that wasn't the
case with Lena Waithe.
When we examined her
mitochondrial DNA,
believing it would take
us back to Africa,
we found ourselves somewhere
completely unexpected...
You descend from
a Native American woman.
WAITHE: What?
GATES: One of your umpteenth
great-great-grandmothers
was a Native American.
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: Isn't that cool?
WAITHE: That's a
huge surprise.
I, I, uhm, wow.
I, I wasn't expecting that.
GATES: Neither was I.
Lena's mitochondrial DNA ties
her to a subgroup of what's
known as "haplogroup B",
one of four major
Native American haplogroups.
This means that Lena's direct
maternal ancestors crossed
into North America more
than 15,000 years ago.
Causing Lena to
re-imagine, once again,
her family's story...
You're descended from
willing immigrants,
and unwilling immigrants.
WAITHE: Unwilling immigrants.
GATES: Right.
WAITHE: Yeah, I thought it
was all unwilling, so yeah.
GATES: And, and on one line,
your mother's, mother's line,
somebody was sitting here
watching when all
these people showed up.
WAITHE: Yeah, absolutely.
GATES: Black, white,
and, and in-between.
WAITHE: And, and I'm sure
she wasn't happy about it,
but you know...
All right, I'm
gonna walk taller now.
I am, now that I know.
GATES: The paper trail had
run out for each of my guests.
It was time to unfurl
their full family trees...
WAITHE: Wow.
GATES: Now filled with names
they'd never heard before.
LEGUIZAMO: That's
a lot of people.
GATES: Giving each the chance
to reflect on the incredible
journeys that had
produced their families,
and their identities...
LEGUIZAMO: You know, you
feel empowered in some way.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: You feel like you
have this, all these people
behind you, all these
ancestors, you know?
You just don't, you don't
feel like you're just some
spontaneous
generation, you know?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
LEGUIZAMO: That's beautiful.
Thank you.
GATES: Does anything that
we've shared change anything
about the way
you see yourself?
WAITHE: I think it has.
I, even though I knew I have
a, a last name that can kind
of give you, me a hint that
I come from, you know,
an island or Caribbean, but
I think I've always just
thought of myself as, and
my ancestors as American.
GATES: Right.
WAITHE: As... you know...
and thinking of, knowing that
my ancestors are immigrants,
and, and chose to come to
this country, just gives me
a whole new perspective.
GATES: You're from elsewhere.
WAITHE: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
I'll take it.
GATES: That's the end of our
journey with Lena Waithe and
John Leguizamo.
Join me next time when we
unlock the secrets of the past
for new guests, on another
episode of
Finding Your Roots.