Poet Elizabeth Alexander learns how her grandfather came to the United States from Jamaica, in this video from Faces of America. To uncover specific details, historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. travels to Ellis Island and meets with Catherine Daly to shed light on Alexander’s grandfather and his entry into New York harbor. Through what they unearth, Alexander learns that her grandfather’s emigration from Jamaica to the United States was more sophisticated than the story of stowing away on a banana boat her grandfather told her as a child.