So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features.

I didn't feel particularly close to my father.

I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.

My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.

Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.

For as long as I can remember, I have been passionately intrigued by 'Africa,' by the word itself, by its flora and fauna, its topographical diversity and grandeur; but above all else, by the sheer variety of the colors of its people, from tan and sepia to jet and ebony.

There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.