Wanda Sykes was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. Her family moved to Maryland when she was in third grade.

Marion Louise (née Peoples), her mother, was a banker, and Harry Ellsworth Sykes, her father, was a United States Army colonel who worked at the Pentagon. Harry is the name of her older brother.

Sykes’ family history was researched for a 2012 edition of Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr., a PBS genealogy show.

Her ancestry may be traced back to a court case in 1683 between her ancestor, Elizabeth Banks, a free white woman, and an indentured servant who gave birth to a multiracial kid, Mary Banks, fathered by a slave, who earned her mother’s freedom.

According to historian Ira Berlin, a specialist on the history of American slavery, the Sykes family history is “the only such case that I am aware of in which it is possible to track a black family formed in freedom from the late 17th century to the present.”

Wanda Sykes Nationality

Wanda Sykes is an American by nationality.

Where Is Wanda Sykes Originally From?

Wanda Sykes is from Portsmouth, Virginia, United States.