Roots, Revisited

1
Roots, Revisited

• Dr. Earl F. Mulderink III
• Associate Professor of History
• Southern Utah University
• February 24, 2004
• Black History Month
• History 2920/4920

2
Roots, Revisited

• Alex Haleys Life
• The Book
• The Mini-Series
• The Context
• Legacies of Roots
• Final Words

3
Alex Haley, 1921-1992

• Born to Simon and Bertha Haley in
• Ithaca, New York
• Studied at Elizabeth City Teachers College in
  North Carolina, 1937-1939
• Enlisted in Coast Guard in 1939, eventually
  becoming Chief Journalist
• Celebrated author and journalist
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

4
Roots, The Book

• Published in 1976 to great acclaim
• 1.5 million copies in hard cover, millions more
  in paperback
• Translated into 37 languages
• Awarded Pulitzer Prize in 1977
• Phenomenal success with great impacts on
  history, literature, popular culture, media,
  collective memory, and national psyche

5
Roots Was Americas Story

• 1750 Kunta Kinte is born in Juffure at the
  African west coast
• 1765 Kunta is captured into slavery, endures
  the Middle Passage, and is sold to John Waller in
  Virginia
• 1776 Kunta ("Toby) escapes for the fourth time
  
• 1790 "Toby" Kinte and his wife Bell have a new
  owner, and a daughter, Kizzy.
• 1820 Kizzys husband escapes, while she and son
  George sold to Tom Lea
• 1827 Now 18, Chicken George marries another
  slave, Matilda, and eventually have 8 children.
  Fourth son, Tom, apprentices as a blacksmith
• 1855 Indebted Tom Lea sends George to England
  and sells other slaves
• 1861 The American Civil War begins and George
  comes back to the U.S. as a free man. He marries
  Irene, and they will have 8 children.
• 1865 The War ends, slavery is abolished, but
  white racism endures. Tom and his father George
  head to Henning, Tennessee. Tom's youngest
  daughter Cynthia is 2 years old in 1866, and 20
  years later she marries Will Palmer.
• 1895 Bertha George is born to Cynthia and
  Will, and later marries Simon Alexander Haley in
  1920. They have a boy in 1921 Alexander Haley,
  the author of Roots.

6
Roots, The Mini-Series

• ABC mini-series "Roots" broadcast in January
  1977 reached average audiences from 28.8 million
  to 36.3 million households.
• Cast included LeVar Burton, Ben Vereen, John
  Amos, Leslie Uggams, Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson,
  Edward Asner, and Harry Rhodes.
• Historian Les Brown wrote that Roots emptied
  theaters, filled bars, caused social events to be
  canceled and was the talk of the nation during
  the eight consecutive nights.
• Roots was seen in 85 percent of the nation's
  households, and thirty cities officially observed
  "Roots Week." Teachers taught Roots in their
  classrooms, and socialites gave dinner parties
  centered around watching it.
• The Sunday night finale reached 100 million
  viewers.
• By week's end, Roots had toppled Gone With the
  Wind (shown on TV just a year earlier) from its
  perch at the top of the nation's ten most watched
  programs.

7
The Context

• Frenzy compares to Harry Potter craze
• Gone with the Wind dominated in Americans image
  of slavery
• Hattie McDaniel's portrayal of Scarletts mammy
• First black person to receive an Oscar
• Character personified the bossy, but loyal
  stereotype that seemed to amuse white people
• Or worse, Burroughs views of Tarzan and Africa
• Historians ranked GWTW as favorite movie in
  1994 survey

8
Legacies

• Haley said in a radio interview just a month
  before his death, "To this day, people,
  particularly African-American people but white
  people as well, will just totally, unexpectedly
  walk up and not say a word, just walk up and hug
  you and then say 'Thank you.'"
• In Newsweek (September 1976) Haley called his
  writing "faction" to acknowledge the mix of fact
  and fiction. "Every one of us goes back
  ancestrally to someone who lived in one of those
  African villages, was caught, brought across the
  ocean and worked on a plantation, went through
  the Civil War," Haley told Newsweek. "That's the
  saga of the whole race."

9
Legacies

• LEVAR BURTON As an African-American in this
  country, in school I never got this perspective
  before. I never got history from the black point
  of view. And I think that was true, not just for
  me but for most Americans.
• DR. JAMES HORTON There was a quite well
  developed slave underground of information which
  flowed from the north into various parts of the
  south. And people, any, any slaves or free blacks
  who traveled, were very important parts of this
  underground communication system.
• DR. CAROLINE HOLMES I know African-Americans for
  the first time were able to see their African
  history in a proud way. Through the character of
  Kunta Kintay and his family and Jufarai, I know I
  visited Jufarai. Many people visited Africa after
  following behind Alex Haley's footsteps.

10
Legacies

• Alex Haley wrote the Foreword to Ethnic
  Genealogy A Research Guide, published by
  Greenwood Press of Westport, Connecticut in 1983
  and edited by Jessie Carney Smith. Haley wrote
• Young and old alike find that knowing one's
  roots, and thus coming better to know who one is,
  provides a personally rewarding experience. But
  even more is involved than uncovering a family
  history, for each discovered United States family
  history becomes a newly revealed small piece of
  American history. Stated simply a nation's
  history is only the selective histories of all of
  its people. It is only through an unfolding of
  the people's histories that a nation's culture
  can be studied in its fullest meaning.

11
Legacies

• Kinte/Haley Foundation http//www.kintehaley.org/
  index.html
• The mission of the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley
  Foundation is to spread Alex Haley's vision of
  celebrating ethnic diversity, while honoring
  mankind's common, universal experiences and
  bonds. The Foundation is dedicated to the
  creation of educational programs, cultural
  experiences, and research materials which support
  its mission and encourage greater study and
  awareness of African-American culture, history,
  archeology, and genealogy. The Foundation
  encourages people of all ethnic backgrounds to
  search for their "roots."

12
Legacies

• Twenty-fifth Anniversary Showing of Roots,
  January 2002
• Plagiarism in Roots Litigation and bad press
• Widow loses rights to Roots, September 2002
• NASCAR entry in early 2004
• DNA testing for African genetic roots

13
Final Words . . .

• Haleys message makes this work a lasting
  contribution to American letters. "As Anne Frank
  The Diary of a Young Girl personified the
  Holocaust," says Lisa Drew, "so Alex Haley's
  Roots made human the shame and tragedy of slavery
  and its effect on the United States.
• Haley ends Roots with his fathers funeral and
  writes So Dad has joined the others up there.
  I feel that they do watch and guide, and I also
  feel that they join me in the hope that this
  story of our people can help alleviate the
  legacies of the fact that preponderantly the
  histories have been written by the winners.
• Haleys work will endure as a testament to the
  human spirit his own and of all
  African-Americans that is justly celebrated
  during Black History Month.