You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know?

ISBN 978-0-691-14234-0
with Kwame Anthony Appiah Encyclopedia of Africa: Two-Volume Set. 2007. W.

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Gates has hosted several PBS television miniseries including the history and travel program Wonders of the African World and the biographical African American Lives and Faces of America. (born September 16 1950) is an American literary critic educator scholar writer editor and public intellectual. B.