Kara Walker is the first visual artist to be featured in the PBS television series Finding Your Roots, which follows celebrities and cultural figures as they trace their genealogy. Walker appeared in the first episode of the third season on Tuesday, 5 January 2016, along with the political analyst Donna Brazile and the television actor Ty Burrell. The artist’s work often explores the tension between race and identity in America and the lasting implications of the slave trade, although her direct relatives believed that their ancestors were free before the Civil War started in 1861. “My mother’s side of the family always thought they had been teachers, educators, or ‘people who did’”, not slaves, Walker says. The family tale was confirmed in the show with an 1861 city census for Charleston, South Carolina, which lists one of Walker’s ancestors as “Henry Fordham, f.p.c.,” an acronym for “free person of colour”, and a term that the artist admits to never having seen before. The show will re-air later this month, check PBS.com for listings.
