The Sister, Sister alum went into the show not knowing much about her family.

According to NBC News, she was familiar with her mother’s Bahamian roots and her father’s European background, but the rest was a blur.

“We’re going to see what you are,” host Henry Louis Gates Jr. told her in the episode.

Secrets were revealed as Gates Jr. walked the former talk show host through her mother’s roots. Margaret Rolle, Mowry-Housley’s ancestor who was around during the 19th century, was an enslaved field laborer as the Bahamas were “driven by slavery.”

The mom-of-two was devastated to learn of the hardship Rolle dealt with in her life. Her eyes welled with tears after Gates Jr. told her Rolle was listed as a slave in an official document. She was just 9-years-old.

“You want to protect them, you want them to keep that innocence. But for Margaret, that did not exist,” she told Gates Jr.

Rolle had to wait until she was in her teen years to live a free life — though slavery was abolished in the British empire when Rolle was 9, it was a common practice for formerly enslaved people to be forced to work for their owners without pay. Gates Jr. said he estimates Rolle wasn’t fully free until she was 13 years old.

According to the Daily Mail, the actress also reflected on the nuances of being biracial, and how that can be complicated when digesting her past.

“This is what’s crazy about being biracial. I have blood that started it and then I have blood that was enslaved by it,” she said.

Gates than hit Mowry-Housely with a powerful question.

‘What do you think Margaret would’ve made of you?’ he asked.

After taking a moment, she responded.

“She’d be proud,” she said, tearing up.

Gates couldn’t agree more.

“Oh, no question, she would be proud,” he said.

Mowry-Housely then pondered over what Rolle must have gone though in her youth.

“But you just feel sad that she had to go through that as a child. I wonder what she went through to escape her current situation,” she said.

She also discussed how extraordinary finally being free must have been for Rolle.

“Then, to finally be free … and what that felt like, that first breath,” Mowry-Housely said.

According NBC News, Mowry-Housley also learned that several members of Rolle’s family were owned by a British baron named John Rolle. And, in 1830, people who were enslaved by the baron’s estate stood up for themselves during Pompey’s Revolt, which is a historical event.

 

Though the revolt was not successful, Gates Jr. explained that they did cement themselves in history by “providing inspiration and hope for generations.”

“That’s beautiful,” she said in response.

After a discussion filled with new discoveries, Gates asked Mowry-Housley if what she learned changes the way she sees herself.

“You know when you always say, ‘I got it from my mama?’ Well, I definitely see that line of strength picking up and carrying on. That’s what I get out of all of this,” she said.

In the episode, Mowry also learned that one of her white ancestors came to America on the Mayflower.