Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It was adapted into a hugely popular, 12-hour television miniseries, Roots, in 1977, and a 14-hour sequel, Roots: The Next Generations, in 1979.
Plot introduction
Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives—including his Grandmother Cynthia, whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865—Alex Haley purported to have traced his family history back to "the African," Kunta Kinte, captured by slave traders in 1767. For generations, each of Kunta's enslaved descendants passed down an oral history of Kunta's experiences as a free man in Gambia, along with the African words he taught them. Haley researched African village customs, slave-trading and the history of African Americans in America—including a visit to the griot (oral historian) of his ancestor's African village—to produce this colourful and imaginative recreation of his family's history from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century which led him back to his heartland, Africa.
Characters in "Roots"
* Kunta Kinte – original protagonist: a young man of the Mandinka people, grows up in the Gambia in a small village called Juffure and is raised as a practising Muslim before being captured and enslaved. Renamed "Toby"
* Master Lord Calvert – plantation owner who buys Kunta (called John Reynolds in the TV series)
* Dr. William Waller – doctor of medicine and John's brother: buys Kunta from him (called William Reynolds in the TV series)
* Belle Waller – cook to the doctor who Kinte marries (called Belle Reynolds in the TV series)
* Kizzy Waller – daughter of Kinte and Belle (called Kizzy Reynolds in the TV series)
* Missy Anne – Dr. Waller's niece, who lives on his brother's plantation but visits Dr Waller regularly. She befriends Kizzy and teaches her the basics of reading/writing by playing "school".
* Tom Lea – slave owner in North Carolina to whom Kizzy is sold (called Tom Moore in the TV series)
* George Lea – son to Kizzy and Tom Lea, he is called "Chicken George"
* Matilda – who George marries
* Tom Murray – son of Chicken George and Matilda (called Tom Harvey in the TV series)
* Cynthia – the youngest of Tom and Irene's eight children (grand daughter of Chicken George)
* Bertha – one of Cynthia's children; mother of Alex Haley
* Simon Alexander Haley – professor and husband of Bertha; father of Alex Haley
* Alex Haley – author of the book and central character for last 30 pages; great-great-great-great-grandson (7 generations) of Kunta Kinte.
Literary significance and criticism
Historical marker in front of Alex Haley's boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee (2007)
Haley earned a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1977 for Roots and the television miniseries garnered many awards, including nine Emmys and a Peabody.
Haley's fame was marred, however, by charges of plagiarism. After one trial, in which he admitted that passages of Roots were copied from The African by Harold Courlander, Haley settled out-of-court for $650,000. Haley claimed that the appropriation of Courlander's passages had been unintentional. In 1988, Margaret Walker also sued Haley, claiming that Roots violated the copyright for her novel Jubilee. Walker's case was dismissed by the court.
Additionally, the veracity of those aspects of the story which Haley claimed to be true have been challenged. Although Haley acknowledged the novel was primarily a work of fiction, he did claim that his actual ancestor was Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now The Gambia. According to Haley, Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery where he was given the name Toby and, while in the service of a slavemaster named John Waller, went on to have a daughter named Kizzy, Haley's great-great-great grandmother. Haley also claimed to have identified the specific slave ship and its specific voyage that transported Kunta Kinte from Africa to North America in 1767.
In the concluding chapter of Roots Alex Haley stated:
“ To the best of my knowledge and of my effort, every lineage statement within Roots is from either my African or American families' carefully preserved oral history, much of which I have been able conventionally to corroborate with documents. Those documents, along with the myriad textural details of what were contemporary indigenous lifestyles, cultural history, and such that give Roots flesh have come from years of intensive research in fifty-odd libraries, archives, and other repositories on three continents. ”
Haley goes on to say that most of the dialogue and necessary incidents are novelized, based on what he knew took place and what the research led him to feel took place.
Genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills and historian Gary B. Mills revisited Haley's research and concluded that his claims were not true. According to the Millses, the slave named Toby who was owned by John Waller could be definitively shown to have been in North America as early as 1762. They further said that Toby died years before the supposed date of birth of Kizzy.
There have been suggestions that the griot in Juffure, who, during Haley's visit there, confirmed the tale of the disappearance of Kunta Kinte, had been coached to relate such a story.
Although a friend of Haley's, Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the general editors the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, has acknowledged the doubts about Haley's claims, saying, "Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship. It was an important event because it captured everyone's imagination."
There is no doubt, however, that Roots led to a surge of interest in family genealogy across the country.
Scholarship
* Gerber, David A. “Haley’s Roots and Our Own: An Inquiry Into the Nature of a Popular Phenomenon.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 5.3 (Fall 1977): 87-111.
* Hudson, Michelle. "The Effect of 'Roots' and the Bicentennial on Genealogical Interest among Patrons of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History," Journal of Mississippi History 1991 53(4): 321-336
* Ryan, Tim A. Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008.
* Skaggs, Merrill Maguire. “Roots: A New Black Myth.” Southern Quarterly 17. 1 (Fall 1978): 42-50.
* Taylor, Helen. “‘The Griot from Tennessee’: The Saga of Alex Haley’s Roots.” Critical Quarterly 37.2 (Summer 1995): 46-62.
Television and audio adaptations
Roots was made into a hugely popular television miniseries that aired over eight consecutive nights in January 1977. ABC network television executives chose to "dump" the series into a string of airings rather than space out the broadcasts, because they were uncertain how the public would respond to the controversial, racially-charged themes of the show. However, the series garnered enormous ratings and became an overnight sensation. Approximately 130 million Americans tuned in at some time during the eight broadcasts. The concluding episode on January 30, 1977 has been ranked as the fourth most watched telecast of all time by the Nielsen corporation.
The cast of the miniseries included LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte, Leslie Uggams as Kizzy and Ben Vereen as Chicken George. A 14-hour sequel, Roots: The Next Generations, aired in 1979, featuring the leading African-American actors of the day. In December 1988, ABC aired a two-hour made-for-TV movie: Roots: The Gift. Based on characters from the book, it starred LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte, Avery Brooks as Cletus Moyer, Kate Mulgrew as bounty hunter Hattie Carraway, and Tim Russ as house slave Marcellus (Coincidentally, all four actors have become prominent as leading actors in the Star Trek franchise).
In August 2006, author Ilyasah Shabazz, (daughter of Malcolm X) recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy' campaign encouraging reading of Alex Haley's books to commemorate Haley's 85th birthday.
In May 2007, BBC America released Roots as an audiobook narrated by Avery Brooks. The release coincided with Vanguard Press's publication of a new paperback edition of the book, which had gone out of print in 2004, and with Warner Home Video's release of a 30th anniversary DVD boxed set of the mini-series.