LeVar Burton Gets a Shock From His Family Tree

In unraveling celebrities' family trees, PBS' Finding Your Roots brings surprising discoveries, some welcome, some not so welcome. For former Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton, it appears to have been a bit of both. In an episode aired Tuesday, host Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. informed the Roots star that a great-great-grandfather was a white man who served in a subset of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Asked if he ever thought he had a "white direct ancestor," LeVar groaned, "Noooooooo! No, I had no idea!" "I'd have fought you five minutes ago if you had told me that I had a white great-great-grandfather," he added, per Rolling Stone.

The great-great-grandfather was James Henry Dixon. Born in 1847, he served in the North Carolina Confederate Junior Reserves as a teenager, but appears not to have engaged in battle, per USA Today. He went on to marry a white woman, with whom he had several children. Burton's great-grandmother, Mary Sills, was a product of his extramarital relationship with a former enslaved woman. "So you have an ancestor who served with the Confederacy," Gates told Burton. "Are you kidding me? Oh my god. I did not see this coming," responded Burton. "What?! Kunta got white ancestry. What?! Come on now, Skip!" continued Burton, referring to himself by the name of his Roots character.

He said he felt some internal conflict at the discovery but "oddly enough, I feel a pathway opening up," he continued. "I see that we are so polarized politically, emotionally, and racially. We are not talking to each other. So, I've been looking for an entry point to talk to white America. Here it is." Burton also learned a grandfather and great-grandfather worked as school superintendents, "foreshadowing Burton's role as host of an educational show, Reading Rainbow," per USA Today. "It fills me with great pride that I have inherited this mantle of educator," Burton said, bursting into tears. "I'm very proud of that." Of the experience, he added, "I am forever changed." (More LeVar Burton stories.)