'GMA' anchors share their American experiences as the nation turns 250

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary this Fourth of July, the " Good Morning America " family is reflecting on their own American journeys.

"GMA" co-anchors Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos and Michael Strahan each shared the history of their families' journeys in America and their perspectives as the nation celebrates a milestone.

Read below for more on the anchors' conversations with their families as they look into their pasts.

Robin Roberts

Robin Roberts' family's journey includes the military service of her late father, Lawrence Roberts, who served as a Tuskegee Airman, a role he took on after his mother reached out to a local New Jersey politician to help sponsor his entry into the military.

While in college at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Lawrence Roberts met a fellow student, Lucimarian, whom he would go onto marry. Together, they raised Robin Roberts and her three siblings, Sally-Ann, Lawrence, who goes by Butch, and Dorothy.

"Education was such a big part of her life," Butch Roberts told "GMA" about their late mother, who served on the State Board of Education in Mississippi, where the Roberts family lived. "Her parents, her grandparents, none of them had an education beyond high school, and so she was the first in the family to do that."

Lucimarian Roberts' grandfather, J.M. Tolliver, owned a 120-acre farm in Alabama and was also a preacher who founded a church in Akron, Ohio, after moving there for work, according to the family.

As they reflected on their own family’s experience, the Roberts siblings also spoke of the importance of preserving history.

"It is vital to know where we came from. We all stand on someone's shoulders," Butch Roberts said, later adding, "If we don't investigate, if we don't write these things down, if we don't share them with the family, they're lost forever."

George Stephanopoulos

George Stephanopoulos' family's journey to the U.S. began in the birthplace of democracy, Greece, where some of his mother's relatives were imprisoned for protesting the Nazi occupation of the country during World War II.

Stephanopoulos was named after his paternal grandfather, a missionary priest who left the Peloponnesian village of Neochori in 1938 for the U.S.

"He was sent by the church to minister to basically the entire West," Stephanopoulos said. "He ended up in Montana, and he served all the Greek populations that had migrated over to the western part of the United States."

Stephanopoulos' maternal grandfather sailed in 1912 from Patras to America, where he worked on railroads and cooked and cleaned for work until moving to Rochester, Minnesota, where he opened a shoe repair business.

Stephanopoulos' parents, the late Rev. Dr. Robert G. Stephanopoulos and the late Presvytera Nikki Stephanopoulos, met at a church convention and welcomed their second child, George, in Fall River, Massachusetts.

"In the Greek church priests obviously can get married. You just have to get married before you're ordained," George Stephanopoulos said. "So my dad finished his time at seminary, they got married and then started their lives."

The Stephanopoulos family would grow to include four children, who were primarily raised in Cleveland, Ohio.

"I've always felt so lucky because I feel like I get the best of both worlds," George Stephanopoulos said of his heritage. "I'm fully American, and fully Greek."

He continued, "The Greek Americans of my parents' generation were really intent on preserving the traditions, the faith, the community that the Greeks brought to this country. At the same time, by taking advantage of all the opportunities here, we assimilated but also preserved the best of our traditions."

Michael Strahan

Michael Strahan's family's history in America began when his paternal third great-grandmother, Winnie Shankle, was brought to Texas as a result of slave trading amid the cotton boom of the early 19th century.

Strahan learned from relatives that his paternal third great-grandfather James Shankle was a runaway slave who traveled 400 miles on foot from Mississippi to reunite with Winnie Shankle in Texas, and arranged to be purchased by Winnie Shankle's owner so that they could stay together. The couple would go onto have six children.

When they were freed following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the Shankles began buying their own land -- ultimately more than 4,400 acres -- and started their own community in Texas.

The community, called Shankleville, is one of more than 500 settlements, known as Freedom Colonies, established in America after the Civil War. Pieces of his ancestors' settlement still stand today, according to Strahan.

"James and Winnie Shankle were ambitious people, so as soon as former slaves were able to own land, they started buying land," he said. "They became farmers."

On his mother's side, Strahan said his great-great-great grandmother, Harriet Meade, was a widow with nine children.

"From my genealogy report that I did, I know she had kids with William Bishop, who was a white man," Strahan said. "He was a widow, and to show that it was a consensual relationship, they named the son after him."

Strahan's maternal grandparents were farmers in rural Texas. His parents, Louise Traylor Strahan and the late Gene Strahan, had six children, whom they raised in Texas and around the world due to Gene Strahan's U.S. Army career.

Michael Strahan lived in Germany from the ages of 9 to 16, when he returned to Houston to play football, at the suggestion of his dad.

Within six months of living in Houston with his uncle, Michael Strahan was recruited to play college football. After college, he was drafted by the New York Giants, with whom he would go onto win Super Bowl XLII.

"I am living the ultimate American dream, many times over," Michael Strahan said. "But it's just not a dream that I can live, so many other people can live it as well, as long as I feel like they believe and they work towards it."

He continued, "The American dream is real, and I'm living proof of it."

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