Free Republic

LeVar Burton got a glimpse into his lineage in “Finding Your Roots” and discovered something about his ancestors that shocked him. The former “Reading Rainbow” host, freedom-to-read advocate and actor knew little about his lineage. He’d been estranged from his father, Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, since he was 11, and his mother, Erma Gene Christian, had been tight-lipped about her own history. Burton said it was “impossible” to get her to open-up about her upbringing.

Ben Affleck tried to sell his sprawling Greek Revival “imitation” plantation — the site of his elaborate wedding to Jennifer Lopez Saturday — three years after revelations surfaced that one of his ancestors was a slave-owning Georgia sheriff. In 2015, the Hollywood actor tried to suppress details about Benjamin Cole, a relative on his mother’s side who owned several slaves in Chatham County, near his 87-acre Hampton Island property. Affleck purchased the property in 2003, according to reports. The revelations about Cole were made on PBS’s “Finding Your Roots” hosted by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Affleck put...

Movie star Ben Affleck has another nine slaveholder ancestors from Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, according to publicly available Census records and genealogy research conducted by Breitbart News. Last week, Affleck admitted that he successfully pressured Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to edit his Georgia slaveholding ancestor, Benjamin Cole, out of an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” that featured his family history. This brings the number of Affleck’s known slaveholder ancestors to 12, who owned a total of 214 slaves. The relative ease with which Breitbart News was able to find these nine additional slaveholding...

PBS says an episode of "Finding Your Roots" that omitted references to Ben Affleck's ancestor as a slave owner violated public TV standards. In a statement Wednesday, PBS said it's postponing the show's third season and delaying a commitment to a fourth year until it's satisfied with improvement in the show's editorial standards. The public TV service launched an investigation after it was reported that Affleck requested the 2014 episode not reveal his ancestor was a slaveholder. The review found that co-producers violated PBS standards by allowing improper influence on the show's editorial process and failed to inform PBS or...

<p>A multiracial group of police officers on Friday stood with the white officer who arrested a prominent black Harvard scholar and asked President Barack Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick to apologize for comments the union leaders called insulting.</p> <p>Obama said Wednesday that Cambridge police "acted stupidly" during the disorderly conduct arrest of his friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his own home near Harvard University. Gov. Deval Patrick said Gates' arrest was "every black man's nightmare."</p>

Washington, DC: --- As Black History Month draws to a close, the web site The Root has chosen to publish a hateful article that demeans black conservatives solely for their political views -- grouping them with brutal dictators, convicted criminals and self-centered celebrities. This has drawn a stinging rebuke from Project 21 member Bob Parks. "It doesn't take much for liberals to call black conservatives 'self-hating,'" noted Parks, "but what is it called when someone decides that blacks deemed inappropriate should be wholly removed from history? What kind of egos are we talking about here?"The Root is operated by The...

NBC-owned television stations in cities across the nation just teamed up with a nonprofit “journalism” group funded by a billionaire husband and wife team who not only spent millions campaigning for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org. The nonprofit, ProPublica, will contribute to the news operations of all NBC owned-and-operated stations, including those in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, the network announced Monday. The NBC affiliates will get early access to investigative reports from ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public...

Ben Affleck went searching for his roots and ended up finding more than he bargained for. And he admits it. "After an exhaustive search of my ancestry for Finding Your Roots, it was discovered that one of my distant relatives was an owner of slaves," Affleck wrote on Facebook Tuesday, breaking his silence on the controversy kicked up by a leaked Sony email that revealed the actor specifically requested that that limb of his family tree be left out of his episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots. "I didn't want any television show about my family to include...

Ben Affleck persuaded the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules. The new Batman star, who supports a number of liberal causes, objected to the ancestry TV show airing how his distant relations were racist, leaked Sony emails reveal. Instead viewers were shown heartwarming stories of how his third grandfather was a mystic in the Civil War and how his sixth grandfather was a patriot who fought in the American Revolution. Daily Mail Online has reviewed a transcript of the show...

Ben Affleck asked the producers of PBS’ Finding Your Roots television show to edit out details of an ancestor who owned slaves, according to a Sony internal email exchange leaked this week. In an email sent to Sony CEO Michael Lynton shortly before the show’s second season premiere, Harvard professor and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote that an unnamed “megastar” had asked producers to “edit out something about one of his ancestors – the fact that he owned slaves.”

The film star Ben Affleck asked television chiefs to hide the fact that one of his ancestors was a slave owner, according to a newly published batch of hacked emails involving the media giant Sony.

Ben Affleck insisted on censoring the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” the Sony email hack has revealed. In a hacked Sony email from July 22, 2014, now available on WikiLeaks, the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., writes to Sony USA chief Michael Lynton asking for advice: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to...

Ben Affleck has at least three ancestors who owned slaves including a wealthy landowner who bought a young boy who he appears to have set to work in his tanning business. The Batman star's distant family can be traced to Connecticut and in 1728 they paid 80 pounds for a slave called Tobe who they kept until he was grown up. The bill of sale refers to Tobe as a 'negro boy' which the previous owner 'sold as my proper estate'. Tobe's owner was called Nathaniel Stanley and was known as a smart man of 'respected piety and evangelical sentiments'...