Alex Haley would be proud. More than 30 years after his successful book “Roots” soared genealogy research to new heights, Harvard professor and genealogist Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is carrying the torch and getting set to light the fire of the popular hobby again.

If you missed Dr. Gates’ PBS programs “African American Lives” in 2006, and the follow-up “Oprah’s Roots” in 2007, you won’t want to miss “African American Lives 2″, coming in February. In his previous programs, Gates revealed amazing details about the lives of ancestors who persevered through the bonds of slavery to produce descendants whose names are among the world’s most famous in their fields.

In his previous programs, Gates called on other genealogists to help him dig into records and tell the stories of ancestors like Oprah’s great-great grandfather Constantine Winfrey. Shortly after receiving his freedom following the Civil War, Winfrey became a landowner in Mississippi by making a deal with a white landowner to pay him in cotton instead of cash. Both men made good on the deal, and Winfrey made a comfortable life for himself in a time-period when others like him continued to struggle.

The emotional reactions of his subjects when Gates presents facts like that about their ancestors, is only one reason to watch the upcoming episodes. Another is to hear the explanation of how those facts were found. It’s an important guide and reminder for anyone tracing their roots. In “Oprah’s Roots,” Gates and his associates traced Winfrey’s family back five generations in the South by finding the wills of the white people who owned her family, as well as property tax information and estate division records.

“African American Lives 2,” airs February 6-13, at 9:00 ET on PBS. Comprising four episodes, Gates is joined by poet Maya Angelou, author Bliss Broyard, actors Don Cheadle and Morgan Freeman, theologian Peter Gomes, publisher Linda Johnson Rice, athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, radio personality Tom Joyner, comedian Chris Rock, rock ‘n’ roll legend Tina Turner and college administrator Kathleen Henderson, who was selected from more than 2,000 applicants to have her family history researched and DNA tested alongside the series’ well-known guests.

“These discoveries about our ancestors are fascinating stories that everyone, regardless of race, can identify with and draw inspiration from,” said Gates, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. “They’re stories that together offer a new understanding of not only the African-American experience, but also of race in America.”

Episode one, “The Road Home” (2/6, 9:00 p.m.), focuses on participants’ ancestors in the early 20th century. Stories include the tragic account of Tom Joyner’s great-uncles who, in 1915, were convicted by an all-white jury and executed in the electric chair for a crime that new evidence suggests they did not commit, and Bliss Broyard, who lived her life unaware that her father, renowned New York Times critic Anatole Broyard, was a light-skinned black man who chose to “pass” as white. She learned of her African-American roots upon her father’s death in 1990.

Episode two, “A Way Out of No Way” (2/6, 10:00 p.m.), continues tracing the guests’ lineages back through the late 1800s to the Civil War, featuring such stories as Chris Rock’s maternal great-great-grandfather, Julius Caesar Tingman, a black Civil War veteran who was twice elected to the South Carolina State Legislature; and Don Cheadle’s ancestors, who had been enslaved by Chickasaw Indians and brought to Oklahoma on the tail end of the “Trail of Tears,” the forced relocation of Native Americans during the 1830s.

Episode three, “We Come From People” (2/13, 9:00 p.m.), reveals stories of participants’ ancestors during the early years of the United States, such as a riveting account of life in slavery by Morgan Freeman’s great-grandmother, discovered within the records of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, and Peter Gomes’ ancestors, who were freed and supported by Quaker families in Virginia in the late 1700s.

DNA analysis leads to fascinating discoveries about participants’ lineages in episode four, “The Past Is Another Country” (2/13, 10:00 p.m.). A groundbreaking study links Professor Gates to a powerful ancient Irish warlord, while evidence suggests Peter Gomes’ direct paternal line traces back to a Portuguese Jew who fled the country in the early 1500s to escape the Inquisition.

A book by Professor Gates, In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, will be published by Crown, a division of Random House, in spring 2008. Incorporating the family histories of all the participants from his PBS programs, the book presents further discoveries not included in the broadcasts while weaving the narratives into an unprecedented tapestry of the African-American experience. In cooperation with seven public television stations across the country, a far-reaching educational outreach effort will guide K-through-12 teachers in the use of the broadcast program, Web site and educational print materials in standards-based classroom instruction.