Find out what Don Cheadle, Tina Turner, Linda Johnson, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Maya Angelou and Tom Joyner have in common; that they are the fine individuals who are the willing subjects of this incredible 4 part series.

What it is, is an oddysey that delves deep into the past in the hopes of unlocking the history of the African-American. It does this by pretty much singling out the most common basic link to unlocking that history. And that's to focus on it's building block, the African-American people themselves.

While exploring deeper into this history, we find that their ancestors along with many others weren't victims per se. They were a people who accomplished plenty while having to confront crushing odds. They became legislators and farmers. They became educated and opened businesses. They built their own churches and could have quite possibly been one out of the 4 1/2 million blacks in the south that were free prior to the civil war.

There was a conspiracy of silence to protect these free blacks by both, black and white extremists. The whites were protecting the identity of free black people who owned property and were actually paying property tax in Virginia. Sadly, these blacks were living between 2 worlds. While they had more rights than slaves, they still had less rights than white citizens.

The host of the series, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. then pulls each participant and takes them into the past and at times very emotional road to the heritage of these actors, actresses, performers and radio personalities; tracing their ancestors through pretty much whatever evidence that still exists today.

Chris Rock, never short of cracking a timely joke or 2 was at a loss for words at times. Here we see the comedian having to deal with frustration, anger and sorrow that his ancestors must have experienced during that turbulent time.

Rock had an ancestor that actually served in the South Carolina legislature "after" the Civil War. It was pointed out by Henry Gates and I'm sure unbeknownst to many of us that for nearly 10 years after the war and emancipation that there were black legislators. Many of them from Southern states.

But when the presidential election of 1876 deadlocked between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, the Republicans cut a deal wherein they would get the White House in return for letting Southern white Democrats regain virtually ABSOLUTE POWER under the guise of "states' rights."

This culminated in the birth of nearly 100 years of segregation. A system that really was in its own way as heartless and corrosive as slavery. Masters who freed their slaves were rare exceptions. For instance, following Tom Joyners' lineage, he discovered that his great grandparents were actually on the verge of being set free when their master placed in his will that they be freed. But the laws changed and his great grandparents ended up dying eventually as slaves before the process could go through. How tragic was that?

Right away, within the first 1/2 hour, the doc touches on every emotional component in one's being. Anger, frustration, sorrow, happiness, redemption and finally the truth.

And the truth traces the lineage of the descent of these celebs' families from an ancestor or ancestors in their family tree. The great appeal of this program is actually seeing the response of our stars to the most intimate and detailed info of their past. While it seemed to me that all involved came away from it with more insight into what their ancestors had gone through, there was one among them that seemed to somewhat glamorize the process and it was my man Don Cheadle.

His response to the entire process seemed to underscore one sad irony discovering that his slave ancestors were actually owned by Chocataw Indians! His immediate observation that here are the two groups that suffered more than any other from America's racial cruelty and intolerance, yet members of one group had enslaved members of the other.

This documentary does uncover some terrible tales. But like most things we find out more and more information about. The more one knows about all of it, the better the chances that someday, we will begin to sort the entire mess out.

For more info, go to the official site below...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/