OPRAH WINFREY: Digging Up Roots

By Karu F. Daniels, AOL Black Voices

Oprah Winfrey is keeping Alex Haley's tradition of 'Roots' alive, 30 years after the groundbreaking miniseries made television history.

The billionaire media maven is the subject of two major projects, to debut next week, tracing her lineage in an unflinchingly revealing style; On Jan. 23, the new book 'Finding Oprah's Roots' will arrive in bookstores via Crown Publishers, and on Jan. 24, 'Oprah's Roots' will premiere on PBS (check local listings).

Both projects were spearheaded by prominent African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr (one of the founders of Black Voices). The acclaimed Harvard University professor assembled an elite team of historians and geneticists, to shed fascinating light on Winfrey's family background and simultaneously offers a user-friendly methodology for tracing one's own family tree through both mediums.

Last year, when the four-part 'African American Lives' premiered on PBS in February, the series was hailed by critics and attracted millions of viewers., who were especially drawn to the powerfully moving discussions between Gates and Winfrey, which revealed the struggles and accomplishments of her ancestors.

"Our first African American Lives series made for riveting viewing and was a life-changing experience for each of the participants, myself included," said Gates. "Now, with an in-depth focus exclusively on my friend Oprah Winfrey, we bring to life in even greater detail the remarkably rich and always inspiring stories of her ancestors."

The new program features a wealth of previously unseen material, including portions of Gates' original 'African American Lives' interview with Winfrey and new revelations about her family history.

Winfrey, who was just named the richest woman in show business by 'Forbes' magazine, fully cooperated with Gates on both projects.

A major discovery includes tracing her DNA all the way back to the Kpelle people of Liberia, the tribe of her first female African ancestor sold into slavery. Other points of her history include how her great-great grandfather Constantine Winfrey, born a slave but determined to teach himself to read, and wily enough to strike a bargain with a white landowner; how her great-grandmother Amanda Bullocks, the self-educated sole female trustee of her community's first school and how her grandfather Elmore, who defied the local sheriff-and the Ku Klux Klan-by harboring Civil Rights workers.

But all that glitters isn't gold.

In the new book 'Finding Oprah's Roots,' the media maven's true lineage is revealed. In 'Finding...' documents are unveiled about how a relative of Winfrey's shot and killed his own brother over a custody battle in 1931. The tome also offers accounts of her tumultuous adolescence which included molestation, promiscuity and unexpected pregnancy.

"Knowing your family history is knowing your worth -- your whole worth," Winfrey says in the special. "It's about everything that everybody gave up for you."

"I feel empowered to say, 'This is who you are, this is where you've come from. You've come from strength and power and endurance and pain and suffering and triumph. You've come from all of that. And so imagine now how much more you can be.'"

A special DVD of 'Oprah's Roots' will retail in March, and will feature 30 minutes of excerpts from the broadcast plus more than an hour of additional comments and research guidance from genealogists, historians and geneticists featured in the program and in the original 'African American Lives' series.

"Through our genealogical research into Oprah's roots, viewers will see how census records, land deeds, archival newspapers and maps, tombstone inscriptions, and even the estate records of slave holders can help locate their own ancestors," added Gates. "And just as importantly, they'll see how fascinating and dramatic historical investigation and discovery can be."