GATES: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Welcome to, Finding Your Roots.
In this episode, we'll meet Viola Davis and Brian Cox; two actors who survived traumatic childhoods... COX: You know, it was pretty awful, really.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
COX: I mean, I grew up without any parental guidance whatsoever.
DAVIS: I entered this world with a big old load.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: I'm the amalgamation of a lot of stories and a lot of secrets.
GATES: To uncover their roots we've used every tool available.
Genealogists helped stitch together the past from the paper trail their ancestors left behind.
COX: It's amazing.
I mean, it really is.
I'm not mad.
(laughter) GATES: While DNA experts utilized the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.
DAVIS: You're uncovering the truth.
I love this.
GATES: And we've compiled it all into a book of life.
COX: Oh wow!
GATES: A record of all of our discoveries.
What's it like to see that?
DAVIS: Awesome.
I mean awesome.
People that made you who you are, like you wouldn't be born... GATES: Yeah.
DAVIS: If it weren't for them.
GATES: That's right.
DAVIS: And yet you don't really know them, then all of a sudden you're seeing it right?
It's pretty incredible.
COX: I mean, I'm sorry, but this is very... Um, it's really something, really is something.
I mean, I wish my ma could be here to see this.
GATES: My two guests grew up in families where the struggle to survive outweighed every other concern, leaving their roots veiled in mystery.
In this episode, we'll pull back those veils, uncovering long-hidden secrets, and shedding light on the ancestors who made Brian and Viola the people they are today.
(theme music playing).
♪ ♪ (book closes) ♪ ♪ WOMAN: Viola, to your left!
(overlapping chatter) GATES: Viola Davis is Hollywood royalty, one of only a handful of actors ever to win an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy, the triple crown of her profession.
But Viola's greatest achievement is her own survival.
Born in South Carolina, she grew up in Rhode Island, where her father had moved to work as a horse trainer.
Unfortunately, the work soon dried up, and her father, an alcoholic who could be abusive, was unable to keep the family out of poverty.
Viola's salvation came from an unlikely source; Television... As a young girl, she saw Cicely Tyson's iconic performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and it changed her life.
DAVIS: I just, I could not believe what I was watching.
It inspired me in a way that nothing else could.
I saw possibility.
I saw hope.
I saw excellence.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
DAVIS: I saw that we have sort of the power that elixir in us, as artists, of transformation.
To see her age from 18 to I think it was 108 or something like that?
GATES: Right.
I was shocked.
DAVIS: I, I, you know what it was, we saw all the shows back in the day.
Sanford and Son, you know, The Jeffer... We saw all those shows and it was entertaining.
It was awesome.
Flip Wilson.
They were great.
But what I saw with Ms. Tyson was artistry.
And for me, that was different because I felt that if I could do that, I could literally make a life.
It was like she blew a hole into this world I was in that was drowning me and she blew a hole into and it, that hole led to the way out.
GATES: It would take Viola some time actually to find that, "Way out."
She was blessed with teachers who encouraged her acting through high school and beyond...
But she was in her early 30's before she landed her first major role, and there were many lean years in between.
Even so, Viola was always confident that she had already endured the worst.
DAVIS: Struggle was relative to me, I always struggled to get food, struggled to stay warm, I mean, listen, a lot of times we didn't go to the Laundromat.
I had to wash clothes by hand with cold water because we never had any hot water and try to hang it up.
And hopefully the clothes would be dry the next day.
So you can go to school a lot of times it wasn't.
So you'd go to school with wet clothes on.
I mean, so you're talking about the struggle of an artist.
I had that down by that point.
(laughter) GATES: Viola no longer has to worry about struggling.
She's in constant demand as an actor, has written a best-selling memoir, and with her husband, runs her own production company.
But when she reflects on her childhood, the pain lingers, even if she's learned to embrace it with a wry wisdom.
DAVIS: I think that when you grow up in poverty, nobody's trying to repress anything.
Everything is right out in the open, all the mess, all the spewl.
And so it becomes a ripe sort of, um, fertile ground for an actor to observe human behavior.
GATES: A laboratory for human nature.
DAVIS: Absolutely.
GATES: Right there in living color in your living room.
DAVIS: Yes.
GATES: My second guest is Scottish actor Brian Cox.
A longtime star of both stage and screen, Brian became a cultural sensation in 2018 when he took on the role of Logan Roy, the deliciously evil patriarch of HBO's hit series, Succession.
LOGAN: You talk about... Love!
You should have trusted me.
ROMAN: Dad why?
LOGAN: Why?
Because it works.
GATES: Logan is an unforgettable creation.
But he couldn't be more different than the man who's brought him to life.
In person, Brian is warm, affable, and possessed by an innate optimism that's carried him through some terrible times.
Indeed, his childhood, much like Viola's, sounds like a chapter out of a Dickens novel.
COX: You know, it was pretty awful, really, even though I didn't feel it at the time, I've never felt, I've never felt depressed or anything like that about it, but it was, you just learn to cope, you know.
My dad died when I was eight, and my mom had series of mental breakdowns, which meant that she had electric shock treatment and all kinds of things happen to her and she became non-functional.
And so, I grew up without any parental guidance whatsoever.
But, at the same time, during that time, there was this survivalist mechanism which was kicking in, and kind of made me realize that I was okay.
It was hell, but I was okay.
GATES: Brian's, "Survival mechanism," was complemented by his talent.
He was 15 years old when he got a job at the repertory theater in his hometown of Dundee, Scotland, but long before that, he'd known what he wanted to do with his life.
COX: I've always wanted to be an actor.
GATES: Always?
COX: Always.
I had this sensation when I was about three, I think.
And, you know, the biggest celebration was for the Scot's New Year, Hogmanay, we call it, Hogmanay.
And, we do this thing called, first footing, where you go to a person's house just after the bells, the bells are when it announces the new year at midnight.
And, you give a piece of coal and you first foot, you're the first foot in the house.
And, you bring good luck and good fortune and warmth to the house for the rest of the year.
And, it's a tradition that we do, but of course, it's also an excuse to drink a lot, you know.
So, my dad would have these amazing first New Year's Eve do's, where there'd be loads of drunken people who would be in the room, you know.
And we had a tiny apartment and there'd be a lot of singing going on.
And, I would be asked to sing.
And I'll never forget the effect on the room, there was this harmony, this sense of community, that suddenly focused.
And, it's what happens, and it happens in church, it happens in any place of worship, and the theater is also a place of worship... GATES: It is.
COX: In a way.
And I remember thinking, "This is great, I love this, the, the, the power that this gives me."
GATES: Brian's power would soon be obvious to the world.
He made his debut on London's famed West End when he was just 21 years old, and spent decades as a leading man of the British theater before breaking into Hollywood.
Where's he's crafted an array indelible characters.
But looking back on it all, Brian takes the greatest pleasure in the endurance of his own character.
What are you proudest of?
COX: What am I proudest of?
GATES: Yeah.
COX: I think I'm proudest of the fact that the boy is still there.
GATES: Yeah.
That's good.
COX: And I love the fact that the boy has not gone.
GATES: No, that's good.
COX: And I always say that to my students.
I say that to my students, my acting students.
I say, "Please.
Always carry a photograph."
I mean, this is, this is... That's me.
GATES: There you go.
I feel that way.
COX: That's me.
GATES: Yeah.
COX: That's totally who I am.
GATES: Yeah.
COX: That little guy there, smiling, holding that ball.
That's me.
And I don't think I'm any different from that.
That's what I...
I mean, I, I look in the mirror and I go, "Oh, what happened?"
But that's, that's my essence.
GATES: But if you lose that, you've lost everything.
COX: Yeah, exactly.
GATES: I agree.
COX: I'm proud that I haven't lost that little boy.
GATES: Yeah.
COX: And I won't lose him.
GATES: Brian and Viola each grew up under dire circumstances, grappling with the most basic needs, before finding an escape on the stage.
Along the way, they had little time to contemplate their ancestors.
But that was about to change...
I started with Viola.
She was born on a plantation in South Carolina where her mother's family had lived for generations.
And she still feels a deep tie to the place, even though she didn't stay there long.
So when someone asks you, "Viola Davis, who are your people?
Where do you come from?"
What do you say?
DAVIS: I always say I came from Singleton Plantation in St. Matthews, South Carolina.
I was born in my grandmother's, um, sharecropper's house... GATES: Mm-hmm.
DAVIS: And that's usually it.
It, it stops there.
I mean, once we moved to Rhode Island when I was two months old, I sort of lost that connection to my family's house.
GATES: So, you don't think of yourself as a native of Rhode Island?
Though you spent so much time there.
You went to school there.
DAVIS: Yeah.
I, I would call that my home.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
DAVIS: But it's interesting that when I talk about where my home, I always talk about where I was born.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: And I think the disconnect from Rhode Island is just the Black side of me going, "Ah."
It was just hard integrating... GATES: Absolutely.
DAVIS: Into that culture.
So, then I always revert back to my birth.
GATES: Yeah.
And where your people are from.
DAVIS: The purest form.
Yeah.
GATES: While Viola may feel bonded to her mother's people, she knew little about their lives.
We focused first on her mother's parents, Henry and Mozell Logan.
They were both born in St. Matthews, South Carolina.
And we found them in the town's archives, in the year 1942, making a very significant decision.
DAVIS: "Signatures of contracting parties, Henry Logan, Mozell Howell."
GATES: That's your grandparents' marriage certificate.
DAVIS: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to see that?
DAVIS: Awesome.
I mean, you know, people that made you who you are, like you wouldn't be born if it weren't for them.
GATES: That's right.
DAVIS: And yet you don't really know them, then all of a sudden you're seeing it right?
It, it's pretty incredible.
GATES: They were married on September 19th, 1942.
Henry was 22.
Your grandmother Mozell was just 15.
DAVIS: Same age as my mom and dad, when they got married.
GATES: Yep.
That's right.
Same spread.
DAVIS: Same age.
Wow.
GATES: The Logan's were married for 37 years, and had at least 18 children together.
But as we scoured the records that they left behind, we noticed something unusual.
A secret that Viola's grandfather Henry had largely kept to himself.
In his social security application, filed in the early 1940's, Henry's father is listed as being a man named, Gable Logan.
But when Henry passed away in 1979, his obituary said something very different.
DAVIS: "He was the son of the late John Young, and Mrs. Corrine Ravenel Logan."
Ooh.
(groaning) GATES: Well, according to this obituary, Henry's father was a man named John Young, not Gable Logan.
Did your mom ever talk about this?
DAVIS: Never.
GATES: Mm, isn't that interesting, that silence?
DAVIS: Silence is always interesting to me.
GATES: Records show that Henry's mother Corrine married Gable Logan in 1912, and that they were still married when Henry was born in May of 1920.
But, of course, that doesn't prove that Gable was Henry's father.
So we set out to see what else we could learn about Gable and Corrine, and we found a surprise.
Could you please turn the page?
DAVIS: Oh, Corrine.
What're you doing?
(laughs) GATES: Viola, this record is dated July 18th, 1919.
Would you please read the transcribed section?
DAVIS: "Passenger list of colored casuals returning to the United States, port of departure, Brest, France, to Camp Mills, New York.
Arrived; July 18th, 1919.
Name Logan Gable, address St. Matthews, South Carolina."
GATES: Any idea what you're looking at?
DAVIS: He must have served during, this would be World War I, right?
GATES: That's right.
That's a list of Black soldiers returning from serving in France, during World War I, and Gable Logan was on that ship.
Did you know?
DAVIS: No.
Nobody talks about that.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: Yeah.
GATES: Well, it's certainly possible that Gable got off the ship and went home to his wife and conceived your grandfather.
However, there's just one problem.
(laughter) Do you see where the men on the ship were headed?
DAVIS: Camp... GATES: They were coming back to Camp Mills.
DAVIS: Camp Mills, yep, I see it right there, "Camp Mills."
GATES: Gable got off his ship and went to a military base in Long Island, New York, and we found no evidence that he ever went back to South Carolina.
DAVIS: Wow.
GATES: So, what do you think happened?
DAVIS: I think Corrine, uh, I don't know, got bored, had a disconnect, and, um, went with someone else while he was away.
And I think that that was a very short-lived relationship.
GATES: Viola's theory was seemingly supported by the 1920 census for South Carolina, where we saw Corrine living with her parents just four doors away from a familiar name.
DAVIS: "John Young."
Bing!
"Head, Black, age 35, married."
(sighs) "Occupation, farmer, Josephine, wife, Black, age 27."
GATES: Recognize any names there?
DAVIS: Yeah, John Young.
GATES: What's it like to see that?
DAVIS: It's, it's like life, you know, it's people getting with other people who are married.
It's the mess of relationships, and the mess of, you know, love, sex.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
DAVIS: Um, yeah.
GATES: Lust... DAVIS: It's truth.
GATES: Yep.
Lust, desire.
DAVIS: Yeah.
GATES: At this point, it seemed quite likely that Henry's father was John Young, and not Gable Logan.
But we had to be certain, so we turned to DNA.
Since Viola's mother is one generation closer to Henry, we asked her take a DNA test.
We then compared her genetic profile to millions of other profiles in publicly available databases, and we saw that she had no matches to anyone in the extended Logan family, meaning that Henry definitely was not Gable's son.
But that still left us with a question.
Now, of course, the fact that Gable wasn't Henry's father does not mean that John Young was.
DAVIS: Exactly.
GATES: So, we returned to the DNA databases and immediately noticed a cluster of matches that were all related to your mother through one couple.
And based on the amount of DNA that your mother shares with the descendants of that couple, we confirmed that they were your mother's great grandparents, biologically.
Genetically, linked to your mother through one of their children.
In fact, a son, to be exact.
DAVIS: Wow.
GATES: That son is Henry's father.
And that son is your mother's biological grandfather.
You want to meet him?
DAVIS: Yes, absolutely.
GATES: Could you please turn the page?
Viola, would you please read the name in the box with a yellow border on the chart in front of you?
DAVIS: "John Young."
GATES: John Young.
DAVIS: Yeah.
Wow.
It makes me know that I entered this world with a big old load from the moment I came out of my mother's womb.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: I'm the amalgamation of a lot of stories and a lot of secrets.
GATES: The truth of Henry's paternity likely stayed hidden in no small part because of the events that followed.
His mother Corrine died of tuberculosis in 1926, when Henry was just six years old.
And when we looked for his father, John Young, we found him in the 1930 census, living far from St. Matthews.
DAVIS: "Charlotte City, North Carolina.
John Young, head, age 46.
Occupation, janitor apartment house.
Josephine, wife, age 37.
John Jr., son, age, eight.
Place of birth, South Carolina.
Julius, son, age four.
Place of birth, South Carolina."
GATES: Sometime between 1926 and 1930, John Young, his wife Josephine, and their two young sons, your grandfather's half-brothers... DAVIS: Yeah.
GATES: Moved from St. Matthews to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Do you think that John's relationship with Corrine may have had something to do with this move?
DAVIS: Oh, absolutely.
You know, you got to, you got to bury your secrets.
GATES: That's right.
Can't be living four doors away from that heifer.
I could hear that conversation.
"Huh?
You don't think I know?
Look at that baby.
That baby looks just like you."
(laughter) How do you imagine Henry felt?
His mother dies, and then his father, his biological father moves away.
DAVIS: Abandoned.
GATES: Yeah.
DAVIS: And he was probably labeled unwanted.
GATES: That's right.
DAVIS: Yeah.
GATES: What's it like to learn all this, to see all this?
DAVIS: I think that all of us want to create a past that benefits us and our fantasies.
GATES: Yes.
DAVIS: I think because the other is too hard to process, we like stories that are going to elevate us.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: You know, um, we're not so good with messy truth.
GATES: No.
DAVIS: And, uh, this is a messy truth.
GATES: Like Viola, Brian Cox was about to confront a messy truth within his family tree.
His mother's father, a man named James McCann, died long before Brian was born, after a troubled life.
Growing up, Brian's mother had told him that James had served in the military, and had distinguished himself.
But Brian's many efforts to investigate this story had come to nothing, even a photo of James that Brian recalled from his childhood had disappeared.
COX: They had this giant photograph of this guy with red hair and my mother told me he was a drill sergeant in the army and, and that was my grandfather and I don't know what ever happened to that photograph.
You know, it's gone in the mist of time but it's just been that nagging thing in my life.
GATES: Oh, and it's so frustrating, isn't it?
COX: Yeah.
GATES: And you say, "I know I saw it."
COX: Yeah, and I saw it and I saw it and it was there and yet when we were investigating, we couldn't find any, any records of his at all.
GATES: Well, I want to show you what we found.
COX: Oh!
GATES: Okay?
COX: Yeah.
GATES: Would you please turn the page?
COX: Sure.
GATES: Brian, this is a record from the National Archives... COX: Oh, my God!
Sorry.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
COX: "Sergeant..." "James McCann ranked Sergeant enlistment 26 of the July '08."
GATES: So you've been looking for that record, I think.
COX: I have.
Wow.
It's amazing, I mean it really is.
I'm not mad.
(laughter) I did have a grandfather who was a Sergeant, you know, at least that much I know.
GATES: James' military career was difficult to research because many British service records were lost during the second World War.
But we got lucky because were able to uncover pension documents for Brian's grandfather.
They showed that James enlisted in the Black Watch, also known as the Royal Highlanders.
This was a fateful decision.
In 1915, at the height of World War I, the Highlanders ended up on the front lines in France... (explosion) Where they endured some of the worst combat in modern history.
Fighting in a maze of earthen trenches, sometimes knee-deep in mud and sewage.
Now I'm sure you've heard of the infamous Western Front... COX: Yeah, yeah.
GATES: But did you realize that your grandfather had served there?
COX: No.
I had no idea.
GATES: How would you have fared?
How would you have processed that experience?
COX: Yeah, no.
GATES: No?
COX: We, we were spared that.
GATES: Yeah.
COX: We've been spared that.
GATES: I would've been crushed.
COX: Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, it's beyond imagination.
GATES: Could you please turn the page?
COX: Sure.
GATES: Brian, these are excerpts from the war diary of the 9th battalion of the Black Watch from late 1915 and early 1916.
Now we believe that your grandfather was in that battalion at the time.
Would you please read the transcribed section.
COX: "December 11th, battalion went into the trenches.
The trenches were full of water, two feet deep in places.
February the 20th, between 9:00 and 10:00 pm, heavy artillery firing was heard to the south.
March 18th we were heavily shelled at 11:00 am and again from 5:30 to 7:00 pm.
Gas from the shells was distinctly noticed."
Yeah, wow.
GATES: And we believe your grandfather was there.
COX: Yeah.
GATES: What's it like to read those words to think of your grandfather actually living through that, experiencing that horror?
COX: I, I think that explains a lot.
It's not a fantasy, it's a reality and he lived with that harsh reality.
You know, I mean, apparently he was a drunk.
He drank and, and I, I think it all makes sense.
It just makes sense and he, I mean, he didn't live very long.
He died at the age of 50.
So he didn't live long, you know.
And it doesn't excuse anything but it fills in a lot about what he was going through and what he went through and how he didn't deal with it, how he couldn't cope with it.
GATES: Very few men could cope with what James endured.
He and his fellow soldiers were subjected to near constant bombardment... (explosions) And some of the shells contained poison gas.
It would settle in the trenches.
Men who breathed too much would find their lungs blistered and burned, if they survived at all.
It was one of the most gruesome weapons ever seen on a battlefield.
And James may have been one of its victims, five months after he arrived in France, he found himself in Harley Hill Hospital in Yorkshire, England.
COX: "James McCann, Sergeant age 39, cough, short of breath.
Four days no duty."
GATES: Your grandfather was admitted to the hospital for issues related to his lungs.
Did you ever hear anything about that?
COX: No.
Wow.
No, and this is all new.
GATES: His diagnosis was that he was short of breath and he was coughing.
So let's see why, could you please turn the page?
Brian, this is your grandfather's pension card issued to him after the war.
Would you please read the transcribed section?
COX: "Cough and dyspnea, chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
Degree of disarmament 30%."
GATES: So you know what this means, we spoke to a scholar who told us that your grandfather's symptoms are typical of gas poisoning.
COX: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to learn this?
COX: It...
It's relieving actually, because it's like a ghost has been laid for a while finally, you know?
GATES: Ah, good.
COX: You know, that, that hadn't been laid.
You know, that had been so, um, debatable, you know, and, and especially that he, he had a particularly bad rap.
You know, he was a drunk.
You know.
He wasn't... And nobody's taken into account any of this.
GATES: Yeah, it wasn't his fault.
COX: No.
No.
I mean, and that's how he survived and oh boy.
GATES: James likely suffered from his symptoms for the rest of his short life.
But records show that this wasn't the end of his military career.
COX: "James McCann ranked Sergeant discharged 30/10/1918."
GATES: James was honorably discharged just 12 days before the end of the war.
We believe that after his hospital stay, he remained in Britain and assisted in training new recruits and if you look to your left, did you know that your grandfather received four honors for his service?
COX: No.
GATES: The 1914/15 star.
The British War Medal.
The Victory Medal and the Silver War Badge.
COX: Wow.
GATES: Those are photos of the awards your grandfather won.
COX: We, we never saw these.
Oh.
Gosh.
Wow.
It's, um...
It's incredibly moving.
It really is.
I mean, it's just, I mean, you now, this man whose life has been kind of traduced and debased and this and that about him and then you realize that this is exactly what he did.
GATES: He's a hero.
COX: Yeah.
Wow, that's, um...
I have to say, it's just amazing.
I mean, I'm sorry, but this is very...
I know, this really something, really is something.
I mean, I wish my ma could be here to see this.
I wish my ma could just see all this about dad.
This validates his life, you know, and, uh, his life was pretty unvalidated until this point.
And this is a, this is a major, major, major thing for him.
And I am so, so grateful for this, I can't tell you.
GATES: Much like Brian, Viola Davis was about to discover that she has an ancestral connection to a terrible war.
Her great-great-grandfather, a man named Emanuel Howell, was born into slavery sometime around 1840.
Searching for evidence of his life, we found him in an unexpected place; the state archives of South Carolina, on a pension application asking to be compensated for time spent with the Confederate Army.
DAVIS: "I served in the war between the states, as servant.
I served in army about one year, remaining faithful to the Confederacy throughout the said war, and my conduct since the war has been such that I am entitled to a pension under the above act.
Sworn and subscribe; Emmanuel his Mark Howell."
Wow.
GATES: Viola, have you ever heard of a, a Black person getting a pension for being a servant for the Confederates?
DAVIS: No, not at all.
GATES: No.
And we hadn't neither.
(laughter).
GATES: What's it like to learn that?
DAVIS: It tells me that I was born at the right time.
GATES: We both were.
DAVIS: But it also proves to me that somebody paid a price for me to be here.
GATES: Absolutely.
DAVIS: Yeah.
GATES: Viola wondered how her ancestor could possibly have ended up in such a difficult situation.
His pension application contains a clue.
It lists several witnesses to his service, including a White man named H.C., or Hamilton Pauling.
Digging deeper, we discovered that Hamilton was a Confederate soldier.
He joined the Rebels when he was 16 years old.
And we believe that his parents owned Viola's ancestor, and compelled him to accompany their son into battle.
DAVIS: Wow.
GATES: Can you imagine?
DAVIS: Oh.
Yeah.
GATES: So, you're a Black man, you're a slave, and then they force you to go off to the Confederacy to protect the son who's fighting to keep you enslaved.
DAVIS: Exactly.
GATES: This by the way, was not uncommon.
Many Southern soldiers brought their enslaved men with them into the army.
They didn't fight.
They weren't given guns.
Instead, they were used as teamsters, cooks, blacksmiths and so on.
And of course, they had no say in their master's decision to take them to war.
Your great-great grandfather would've been about 23 years old at the time Hamilton enlisted.
DAVIS: Wow.
GATES: How do you think he felt?
It's the middle of the war must have been terrifying.
He had to be rooting for the Union to beating the Confederates, right?
Because that was the only way he was going to be, be free.
DAVIS: Absolutely.
GATES: But he had to put his life on the line, taking care of his ostensible owner.
DAVIS: Absolutely.
GATES: That's a bad position to be forced to be in.
DAVIS: Yeah.
It's a horrible position.
It's, you know, it, it, it speaks to the invisibility of our humanity and our lack of choices.
And I think that, you know, for our survival so long, I think that with African Americans, we've sucked down some major trauma in order to muster on.
GATES: We have no idea how Emmanuel survived his time with the Confederate Army, and we can only guess how he felt about it.
But as we turned to the records of the Pauling family, we saw exactly what they thought of him.
In 1863, John Pauling, Hamilton's father, wrote out his will, describing how Emanuel, and his other human property, were to be divided among his heirs.
DAVIS: It's like, you know, it's like mentioning your, I don't know, your, your dining room table... GATES: Yes.
DAVIS: In your last will and testament.
GATES: That's right, "My antique chandelier, my piano, Emmanuel."
DAVIS: Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
GATES: My horse, Trigger.
DAVIS: Exactly.
GATES: It's cold.
DAVIS: Exactly.
GATES: The whole system was designed to demean us, to rob us of our humanity.
DAVIS: Absolutely.
GATES: And it had an effect that we see being played out in our people over and over again.
DAVIS: Time and time again, absolutely.
GATES: Yeah.
DAVIS: And I think that there is no explaining where we are as people and where we are as a country, without blowing the lid off of this.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: You know, the same country, the same place that gave me an Oscar, gave me an Emmy, gave me two Tony's, gave me a really good life is also the same country that enslaved my ancestors and saw them as property.
GATES: One and the same.
DAVIS: It hurts my soul, it really does.
GATES: This story has a complex ending.
In February of 1865, the Union Army passed by St. Matthews on their way to Columbia, South Carolina, and it's likely that Viola's ancestors were freed soon after.
But as Viola knows all too well, freedom brought a fresh set of challenges.
DAVIS: That means you're no longer a slave, but then you're what?
GATES: And then you're what?
DAVIS: What opportunities are there out there?
Where do you go?
What do you do?
I mean, then, you know, you're walking straight into the Black codes in Jim Crow.
You're walking into just another evolution of, of slavery.
So, I don't have any romantic notions of what that is.
I know how my family life played out after that, I was born in my grandmother, my grandfather's, um, home in Singleton Plantation.
GATES: Right.
DAVIS: You know, um.
I know, you know, a lot of people say, "Viola, how did you make it out of poverty?"
And literally someone did a study and they said that how you make it out of dire circumstances usually is you have one person in your life that believes in you... GATES: Uh-huh.
DAVIS: That shows you how to succeed and how to fail.
That, that's, that's just the factor.
You know, and I still ask the question, "My ancestors, how did you survive?
Who was that one person?
What was that one thing?"
I don't know.
GATES: Viola's question has a harsh answer.
After emancipation, her ancestor didn't receive any help from anyone.
Instead, Emmanuel signed a sharecropping contract with the man who had enslaved him, and went back to work in fields that he'd likely been working since he was a child.
Even so; surveying Emmanuel's life, Viola chose to find a note of hope.
What's it like to learn that?
DAVIS: You know, I will say this.
This is a day that I'm proud of me, and I'm proud because I think that me, my sister, Deloris, my sister, Diane, a lot of my family members have broken generational curses, because we dared to dream big.
And we dared to just, just dig in deep in the dirt and filth and trauma of our childhood and want better for our lives.
And not that any of our relatives didn't want better, they all did.
But my story is different, and I'm proud of that.
GATES: Turning from Viola back to Brian Cox, we left South Carolina for Scotland, only to find more stories of people trapped in poverty.
Indeed, almost all of Brian's ancestors were farmers or laborers who struggled their entire lives just to put food on the table.
And among them, was one man who struggled with more than that.
Brian's great-great-grandfather, Harriot Walker, was born in rural Scotland in 1815, as a teenager, he moved to what is now the city of Dunfermline and found work as a weaver.
But work isn't all he found.
COX: "In the sheriff court held at Dunfermline, appeared Harriot or "Harriet" Walker, accused of the crimes of willful mischief, breach of the public peace and of assault and wound into the effusion of blood and severe injury of the person with stones or other missiles without cause or provocation on the public street or within the precincts of a dwelling house."
Oh boy.
So he was a bit of a rabble rouser, was he?
GATES: In 1833, Harriot was convicted of willful mischief, breach of the public peace and aggravated assault.
He was only 17 years old.
COX: Yeah, I know.
GATES: What's it like to read that?
COX: Well, it's very funny.
I keep thinking of my 17 year old.
I have a 17 year old, and I could well believe that he might be in the same position.
(laughter) GATES: Harriot's conviction did not seem to change him.
In 1837, he was back in a Dunfermline courtroom, charged once again with assault for a his role in a brawl.
COX: Wow.
GATES: So we want to see how this trial went.
Remember, he had already been convicted once.
Would you please turn the page?
COX: God.
How old is he now?
GATES: 21.
COX: He's 21 now?
GATES: Yeah.
He was 17, three and a half years later.
COX: Three and a half, okay.
GATES: Brian, this is a newspaper article published in Perth, Scotland on the 13th of April, 1837.
Would you please read the transcribe section?
COX: "Harriot Walker and John Henderson from Dunfermline charged with aggravated assault.
The panels plead guilty.
Lord Gillies after suitable admonition sentenced the prisoners to six months in Kirkaldy jail."
GATES: Six months in jail.
COX: Wow.
GATES: What's it like to learn that?
COX: Well... (laughter) It's providing a rich mixture.
GATES: It is, indeed.
COX: You know, having had a heroic grandfather and now having a, an errant great-grandfather, it's, uh, it's something else.
GATES: When Harriot arrived at Kirkaldy jail, he was likely in for a terrible shock.
Most Scottish jails at the time had appalling conditions, and opportunities for rehabilitation were virtually nonexistent.
But Harriot mended his ways.
By 1851, he'd married, and was helping to support a family by laying slate tiles in the tiny town of Leslie, Scotland.
So sounds like he was on the straight and narrow, right?
Let's see what happened next.
Could you please turn the page?
Brian, here are two newspaper articles.
Would you please read these transcribed sections?
COX: "On April the 3rd, 1866, Harriot Walker was fined two pounds, 12 shillings for being on the lands of Rylaw, armed with a gun in pursuit of game."
(laughter) "October the 31st, 1872, Horatio Walker was convicted of having stolen the slater's trowel, sentenced 14 days."
Oh, dear.
GATES: Oh.
COX: Oh, my God.
GATES: Now, these crimes are very different from the crimes that your ancestor was committing as a young man.
He's not out carousing and beating people up when he's inebriated anymore.
He seems to be committing petty thefts and poaching, perhaps, of course, to support his family.
At the same time, even if he's just trying to get by, these are still crimes.
COX: Yes, of course.
I mean, clearly he can't stop misbehaving himself.
Clearly he's, throughout his life he's always been on the fiddle, as we would say back home.
He's always been on the fiddle in one way or another.
GATES: Yeah.
COX: He, he just sounds naughty.
He sounds like a naughty man, you know, who's not going to change his ways.
GATES: No.
COX: But there's something sweet about it as well.
GATES: I know.
COX: I don't...
I don't know what it is, but I get a sweetness of it.
GATES: He's lovable.
COX: There's a lovableness of him.
GATES: Yes.
COX: Yeah.
I do get that.
I mean, my, my other grandfather, he's more complicated because of what he went through.
GATES: Yes.
COX: But this guy is just, there was just something about, he just said, "Oh, bugger it.
I'm just doing it.
I'm going to steal that thing.
And I... To hell with it," you know?
GATES: Unfortunately, Harriot's story was about to darken significantly.
When he was 77 years old, he was charged with stealing a pair of boots.
Alone and impoverished, he found himself in the Dunfermline poorhouse, where he met a cruel end.
COX: "Cause of death, general disability."
GATES: Yeah.
COX: Worn out.
GATES: One month after being admitted to the poorhouse.
Looking back on his life, what do you make of Harriot?
COX: It's kind of unreal.
I mean, I'm having to get my head around it really, because it's so new.
And I've been so worried about my other grandfather and his fate.
So coming to this, it's just like a it, it's a bit like a slap in the face, you know... GATES: Hmm.
COX: With a, with a, a wet cloth, you know, uh.
That you just thought, "Oh, well that's bad.
And it couldn't be any worse than that."
And then you get to something like this and you go, "Jesus Christ."
I mean, you know, it's, it's, I mean, really horrific.
It's horrific.
And it's horrific that he cannot break it.
He couldn't break it because he had nothing.
I mean, this is the thing, this is the poverty thing.
These people had nothing.
GATES: As it turns out, Harriot was not the only one of Brian's ancestors to suffer this fate.
His maternal great-grandfather, Patrick McCann, also passed away in a poorhouse, and on his father's side, Brian's great-great-grandfather, a man named Francis Boyland, followed a similar path.
Brian, this is a record from the Dundee City archives, dated 1864, would you please read the transcribed section?
COX: "Francis Boyland, 66 widower, place of birth Ireland, day of admission, 22nd of February, 1864."
And what is this?
GATES: Well, just like your maternal ancestors, Harriot Walker and Patrick McCann, your great-great grandfather Francis was admitted to the poorhouse.
(laughs) COX: There's no shaking it off.
GATES: Mm.
No.
COX: It, it surrounds you.
GATES: But what's it like to know that so many of your ancestors ended up in that same way?
COX: I think this is what my motivating force is.
You know, my motivating force is, there's something in my DNA that says, "Listen Cox, you're going to break that cycle."
GATES: Yeah.
COX: And you're going to break it well and true.
GATES: What do you think they would've made of you?
COX: I think they would've said, "Finally, somebody's got it right."
I mean, you know, I don't want to be arrogant about that, and, you know, and that's the pride goes before the fall.
So I'd have to be careful.
GATES: Yeah, knock on wood now.
COX: Exactly, knock on wood.
No, but I think they would've gone, "Well, this kid's trying to work it out.
He's really looking at the, the whole kit and caboodle," and saying, "What does it, what sense does it make?"
GATES: Mm-hmm.
COX: And I think that's all we require, is just to make sense of our lives, to make, to, to give our lives perspective, you know, and what our life is about and what is the gift that we've got of life, and how do we best serve that gift.
And I, and I think I'm very fortunate in that way.
But I do think it's because of these people.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
COX: You know, I couldn't have done it without any of these.
GATES: No.
COX: I couldn't be anywhere without this heritage as depressing and as sad as it is, because it's really quite tragic, a lot of it, you know.
But they didn't see it that way.
GATES: No.
Right.
COX: They just get on with it.
They just dealt with it day in, day out, day in for, you know, 300 years for Christ's sake.
GATES: And that's a form of triumph.
COX: Yeah.
GATES: You know?
COX: Yeah, it's triumph over adversity.
GATES: The paper trail had run out for Brian and Viola.
DAVIS: Oh, my goodness.
GATES: It was time to show them their full family trees.
COX: Wow.
GATES: Now filled with names they'd never heard before.
DAVIS: This is beautiful.
GATES: For each, it was a moment of awe.
Offering the chance to see how their own lives were part of a larger family story.
COX: I feel incredibly blessed.
GATES: Hmm.
COX: I, you know, and it makes me even more respectful of what, you know, that, how lucky I am.
GATES: More appreciative, more humble about it.
COX: Absolutely.
I just think, "Jesus Christ, Brian Cox, you, you really are a lucky son of a gun."
GATES: I feel the same way.
COX: You know?
GATES: Yeah.
COX: That's an incredible feeling to come out of all this.
DAVIS: I feel like my whole life is a big kiss to them.
GATES: Yes.
DAVIS: Do you know what I'm saying?
GATES: I do.
DAVIS: I just want to bow down to every nick and scrape and trauma and whip and chain and say just, "You have no idea how much I love you for taking the pain for me."
GATES: My time with my guests was running out, but there were surprises still to come.
When we compared their DNA to that of other people who've been in the series, we found matches for both.
Evidence within their own chromosomes of distant cousins who they didn't know they had.
For Viola, this meant an unexpected connection to a woman she's long admired.
You ready to meet your cousin?
DAVIS: Yes.
GATES: Please turn the page.
DAVIS: Anita Hill?
GATES: Anita Hill.
DAVIS: Oh my goodness.
(laughter) GATES: Viola and Anita share a long identical stretch of DNA on their ninth chromosome, a sure sign of a shared ancestor.
DAVIS: I knew she was a kindred spirit, even when I met her.
I'm like, "You're a kindred spirit."
GATES: Yeah!
Brian's new cousin is a famed comedian, who's also spent time on the stage.
Please turn the page, you'll meet your DNA cousin.
COX: Jim?
GATES: Jim Gaffigan.
COX: We worked together.
He's my DNA cousin?
GATES: He is your DNA cousin.
You and Jim share a long identical stretch of DNA on your fifth chromosome.
And this shared DNA was passed down from a distant common ancestor somewhere in the thicket of your family tree.
COX: That's great.
GATES: Yeah!
COX: That's pretty amazing.
GATES: That's the end of our journey with Brian Cox and Viola Davis.
Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of Finding Your Roots.
