Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.

Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

The first slave to read and write was the first to run away.

Like the amazing story of Anthony Johnson. This man was a slave, then became free, accumulated 250 acres, and even had his own slave, a black man who took him to court in Virginia in 1654.That man argued that he should be freed like an indentured servant. But Johnson, who we believe was a pure African from Angola, said, "No way, you're my slave." And the court agreed.