LeVar Burton was beaten with one punch while tracing his family’s ancestors on the Jan. 16 episode of the hit PBS series “Finding Your Roots.”
Burton rose to fame as a child actor in Alex Haley’s television adaptation of “Roots,” a show cited by host Henry Louis Gates as an inspiration for the PBS show, and went on to star in “Star Trek” and host “Reading Rainbow “. “.
On the PBS show, discover a hidden family secret. Burton learned that his great-grandmother on his mother’s side, Mary Sells, was raised by a man she thought was her biological father, but he was not. (Burton knew Sells when he was a young boy.)
Sills was the biological daughter of a white farmer named James Henry Dixon who had a wife and family at the time of her birth.
“And it was the other family on the other side,” Burton said in shock.
“Did you expect that? Did you have any idea that you had a white ancestor?” Gates asked the star.
The 66-year-old shook his head and laughed.
“No, no. I have no idea. So grandma was half white. Great,” he said.
Gates then reveals that Dixon served in the Confederate Army as a teenager.
“Are you kidding me? Oh my God, oh my God. I didn’t see that coming,” Burton said.
Gates said Dixon likely never saw combat because he was part of the small reserve force, which was mostly used for guard duty. However, he noted that Dixon still served in an army whose purpose was to protect slavery. Then, later in life, Dixon fathered a child with a woman born into slavery.
“I often wonder about white men of that period and how they justified to themselves their relationships with black women, especially those living in an unbalanced power dynamic. There had to be a strong separation emotionally and mentally,” Burton said while processing the news.
“So it’s possible in my mind that he was thinking about it and was conflicted at worst, and perhaps repentant at best. Then there’s the possibility that he didn’t think about it at all,” he continued.
“True and we’ll never know. They could have been in love. It could have been a terrible thing. We don’t know,” Gates answered.
Burton was amazed by the discoveries made by Gates and his team.
“Now I would have fought you five minutes ago if you had told me I had a white grandfather,” he said.
“You can fight me, but that’s the truth and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Gates joked.
To go along with their playful banter, Burton referenced the character he once played on Roots.
“What? Kunta got white descent? What? Come now, skip,” he says.
All joking aside, Gates was curious to know how Burton felt when he heard he had a member of the Confederate Army in his family lineage.
“There are some conflicts going on inside me right now, but also, strangely enough, I feel like there’s a path opening up… In this moment right now, I think we, as Americans, need to have this conversation about who we are and how we got here.” . But I see that we are very polarized politically and racially.”
Gates agreed and said, “Well, we don’t talk to each other.”
“So I was looking for an entry point to talk to white America,” Burton explained.
“Well, that door just opened,” Gates replied.
“Here he is,” Burton said.