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Alex Haley's Queen
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Alex Haley's Queen
QueenVHSCover.jpg
VHS cover of Alex Haley's Queen

Genre
Period
Directed by
John Erman
Produced by
David L. Wolper
Bernard Sofronski
Written by
Alex Haley (novel)
David Stevens (Teleplay)
Starring
Halle Berry
Danny Glover
 Tucker Stone
Jasmine Guy
Tim Daly
Martin Sheen
Paul Winfield
Raven-Symoné
Ann-Margret
Music by
Christopher Dedrick
Editing by
James Galloway
 Paul LaMastra
Country
USA
Language
English
Original channel
CBS
Original run
February 14, 1993  – February 18, 1993
Running time
282 minutes
No. of episodes
3
Preceded by
Roots: The Gift
Alex Haley's Queen (also known as Queen) is a 1993 American television miniseries that aired in three installments on February 14, 16, and 18 on CBS.[1][2] The miniseries is an adaptation of the novel Queen: The Story of an American Family, by Alex Haley and David Stevens. The novel is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, Haley's paternal grandmother.[3] Alex Haley died in February 1992 before completing the novel. It was later finished by David Stevens and published in 1993. Stevens also wrote the screenplay for the miniseries.[4]
Alex Haley's Queen was directed by John Erman, and stars Halle Berry in the title role.[5] It tells the life story of a young woman and it shows the problems which biracial slaves and former slaves faced in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Throughout her life, Queen struggles to fit into the two cultures of her heritage, and at times each side shuns her.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Cast
3 Home media
4 Ratings and viewers
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Plot summary[edit]
The series begins with the friendly relationship between James Jackson Jr. (Tim Daly), the son of the plantation owner, and one of the slaves, Easter (Jasmine Guy), at the Jackson estate, known as Forks of Cypress, near Florence in northern Alabama. James and Easter have grown up together (within the social limits of the plantation culture), and gradually their feelings for each other have developed into romance. Easter is the daughter of an African-American house slave, Captain Jack (Paul Winfield), and his true love, Annie, another slave, who is part-Cherokee, and who is no longer on the Jackson property.
James Jackson Sr. (Martin Sheen), an Irish immigrant who has accumulated considerable wealth, becomes ill and soon dies. Minutes after the death James Jr. retreats to the comfort of the weaving house, where Easter was born, and where she lives and works. James and Easter make love, then, several months later, while they are alone, Easter reveals to him that she is pregnant with his child. Meanwhile, Sally Jackson (Ann-Margret), the new widow, encourages her son, James Jr., to marry the respectable and socially equal Elizabeth "Lizzie" Perkins (Patricia Clarkson), an heiress to a cotton fortune as a daughter of a neighboring planter.
On April 8, 1841, Easter gives birth to a healthy girl. Excited about his new granddaughter, Captain Jack announces to the family and friends during dinner in the "big house" that a slave child has just been born, and he assures James, "Easter's doing just fine". That displeases Lizzie, who is present for the dinner, and who soon becomes James's fiancée. Lizzie, having concluded that the new baby is James's child, excuses herself from the table and throws a fit. Moments later she vows to her mother (Charlotte Moore) that she'll never marry him, but her mother persuades her otherwise. Captain Jack begins to refer to the baby as Princess, but, when James enters the birth in the record book, he writes the name Queen. He also leaves blank the section for the name of the father.
James proposes marriage to Lizzie the next evening after the dinner, Lizzie accepts, and the wedding takes place at the home sometime later. James continues to visit Easter at night, sometimes every night, during both his engagement and his marriage. Although James is Lizzie's husband, he is still in love with Easter. Later Lizzie learns that she has become pregnant. She and James welcome a daughter, Jane, whom Queen attends and serves. Although Jane and Queen are half-sisters, the family does not acknowledge that relationship, because of Queen's status as a slave.

Slavery
COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen TMnr 3912-475.jpg

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James later persuades Easter to let Queen live in the main house, where she can receive training as a lady's maid. Both Easter and Lizzie oppose that plan, but James's word is final, so at age 5 Queen (Raven-Symoné) moves into the mansion. Jane and Queen grow up as friends and playmates. However, the other slave children tease and torment Queen because of her light skin and her ability to read and write. By 1860, several years later, the two young ladies, Queen (Halle Berry) and Jane (Jane Krakowski), have grown up, and they begin to attract the attention of the young men in Florence.
In the next year, 1861, Alabama secedes from the United States, the North declares war against the South, and James enters the Confederate Army and heads northward. While James rides away in a cavalry unit, Easter confirms to Queen that he is her "pappy". On July 21, 1861, during the First Battle of Bull Run, in Prince William County, Virginia, near Manassas, James sustains an injury which causes him to become discharged and sent back home. When James arrives at home, he learns that Jane, his legitimate daughter, has died during an epidemic of diphtheria, and he reaches the weaving house only moments after Easter too, with Queen beside her, dies of diphtheria.
Queen continues to serve the aging ladies, Sally and Lizzie, in the big house, and, in the absence of an overseer, takes over his function also, supervising the remaining field hands, after half of them left and went North.
Soon James forms a regiment, receives a promotion to the rank of colonel, and heads back into the war. Eventually the Union Army reaches Florence and the Jackson plantation, where the Northern soldiers loot and plunder, wantonly destroy property, insult the ladies and the slaves, and brutalize the slaves, for whose benefit they have claimed to fight the war to free them.
During another battle, Col. Jackson sustains another injury, which causes the amputation of his right arm without anesthesia of any type. Captain Jack dies as a free man, with Sally Jackson and Queen beside him.
Missus Jackson advises Queen to go wherever she might wish among the blacks, saying that there is no food and no place for her at the estate, and that she can expect no help from them, despite the known relationship between Queen and the Jackson family. Queen, however, strongly objects, insisting that the plantation is her home, and they are her family. Parson Dick (Ossie Davis), another slave there, warns Queen about the difficulties awaiting mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons in the new free society.
Mr. Henderson (Leo Burmester), the former overseer, and his wife (Linda Hart) have left the Jackson plantation, and they now run a nearby grocery store, where young redneck white men hang out, and James trades. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, however, freely insult James and Queen.
After an unpleasant confrontation at the store with Mrs. Henderson and with several of the tough young white men, Queen runs away and hides until the next morning, then, tired and hungry, she returns home. Queen and Lizzie exchange unkind words, and Queen leaves. While Queen pauses at the grave of her mother, Missus Jackson bids her goodbye and hands her a sum of money. James and Queen meet on the driveway in the front of the house as James returns from a long search for Queen that morning. They speak briefly, then Queen continues walking away.
Queen realizes in Florence how easily she can "pass" as a white lady, so she resolves to do so; there she buys a one-way ticket and rides one or more horse-drawn stagecoaches (on an unlikely journey) to Charleston, South Carolina.
At a charitable soup kitchen Queen meets Alice (Lonette McKee), another fair-skinned young "colored" lady who also passes as white. Alice befriends Queen, takes her into her apartment, cleans her up, teaches her about passing, and takes her to a white dance hall, where she meets Alice's white gentleman friend, George (Dan Biggers), who gets Queen a job in a flower shop.
While at work Queen meets Digby (Victor Garber), an injured former Confederate soldier, who quickly falls for her and soon proposes to her. Queen accepts, then tells Alice, who insists that such a marriage would be foolish and strongly urges Queen to break the engagement.
Queen, naïve and strong-willed, decides to go to Digby's apartment, intending to break off. Digby, after a surprising twist, begins to seduce Queen with some help from a dose of laudanum. While Queen objects and resists, she blurts out that she is a Negro. Digby then flies into a rage, beats her, rapes her, and throws her out.
Queen returns to Alice, who also throws her out, to protect her own position and reputation. The next day, after a miserable night in a camp of black homeless people, Queen staggers into a meeting of a black church, where she receives much help from a kindly woman, who later takes her to the home of two self-righteous and sanctimonious spinsters, Misses Mandy (Sada Thompson) and Giffery, who hire Queen as a live-in maid.
A few days later Davis (Dennis Haysbert), a gardener and a former slave, arrives in the backyard in search of work. Queen and Davis start a friendship, which turns into romance and results in pregnancy. Queen first seeks an abortion, then she decides to keep the child, so she confronts Davis, who invites her to meet him at the railway station, presumably to head north.
Although Queen waits at the station well into the evening, Davis fails to appear, so she dejectedly returns to the old maids. Miss Mandy labels her as a wicked, naughty girl and a fallen sinner, but she and Miss Giffery allow her to remain. In due time the two spinsters, acting as midwives, attend the birth of a healthy boy. Queen wants to give him the name David, but the two women prefer the name Abner. A white minister christens the baby, predictably, as Abner. Misses Mandy and Giffery increasingly take over Abner, apparently intending to raise him as though he were their own. Eventually one night Queen flees and heads north with six-month-old Abner in her arms.
At a crossroads store and lunchroom Queen meets Mrs. Benson (Frances Conroy), an upper-middle-class white mother of a 15-month-old son, for whom she needs a wet nurse. They ride away toward the Benson home, in Beaufort, South Carolina, which is south, not north, of Charleston [and which is on the way to Savannah, Georgia, but not on a direct way to Savannah, Tennessee].
When Queen and Mrs. Benson arrive in Beaufort, they meet Mr. Benson (Richard Jenkins) amid a crowd of angry black former slaves, striking for more pay and more respect, under the vocal persuasion and agitation of Davis, the father of Abner. Later Queen finds Davis, confronts him, berates him for having abandoned her and Abner, then shares his bed until the next morning.
Mrs. Benson deceives Queen and uses her and Abner in such a way as to enable Mr. Benson, a leader among the local Ku Klux Klan, to find and capture Davis. Mrs. Benson, feigning concern for the security of Davis, urges Queen to leave Abner with her in safety and to hurry to Davis and warn him that he is in imminent danger of a "terrible work" of the Klan. Queen goes, and a Klansman follows. When Queen returns to the Benson home, she learns that Abner is absent, and Mrs. Benson says that Abner "is doing God's work tonight". The next morning Queen goes to Davis' cabin, where she finds his hanged and charred body, along with Abner, inside a wooden chicken cage at his father's feet.
In the next scene Queen and Abner, now a toddler of about two years, walk together and, near Savannah, Hardin County, Tennessee, board a small wooden ferryboat, where they meet Alec Haley (Danny Glover), who operates the ferry, along with his son, Henry (Kenny Blank). While crossing a river Alec asks Queen where she wishes to go, and she answers, "North". Alec senses the general nature of Queen's situation and her motive.
Alec gently persuades Queen to ride back to the south side, saying that in the North she would find only "cold weather and cold-hearted Yankees", so Queen acquiesces. Soon Alec introduces Queen to Dora (Madge Sinclair), the cook in the home of Mr. Cherry (George Grizzard), a widower, where she gets a job as a maid.
Queen, brooding over her regrettable experiences, adopts a defensive and disagreeable attitude, which becomes obvious to everyone around her. Dora tells her, "It's high time you figure out who your friends are, Missy", and Mr. Cherry tells her, "You are the most ornery maid I've ever had". Later Alec describes her to herself as "never talking peaceable to a living soul" and "hating the world for whatever the world done to you". However, Queen responds to those helpful words by allowing a friendship to develop between Alec and herself and by changing her attitudes. Soon Mr. Cherry comments, "She really lights up this old place when she smiles", and suggests, "Let's just hope it continues".
The relationship between Queen and Alec grows into romance, which results not only in a wedding, in which Mr. Cherry gives the bride away, but also, eventually, the birth of another child, whom Queen names as Simon. Queen expresses high hopes for Simon's future, and she predicts that he'll become "magnificent".
When Simon (Jussie Smollett) completes the sixth grade, the point at which black boys in the South typically (in the subject setting) drop out of school to start full-time work in the fields, as did Henry and Abner, Simon's teacher comments to Queen that he is "the best student in the district". Alec vigorously argues with Queen against Simon's staying in school, but Queen presents persuasive logic, and he eventually agrees to "waste" one of the three boys. [In the US high schools did not generally exist until about 1910, and they started in the larger, wealthy cities.]
One day Queen takes Abner and Simon back to the Forks of Cypress, the Jackson plantation, to show them where she was raised and to share her memories of her childhood. When they arrive there, the funeral for James Jackson, her father, takes place, and she pays her respect from a distance. Queen then shows her sons the weaving house, where she lived as a girl, along with her mother Easter's grave and the Jackson mansion. Inside the house Lizzie Jackson accosts her bitterly and tells her that she does not belong there, as the mansion was never truly her home. Queen quickly leaves, feeling again sad and rejected by the white side of her family.
In due time Simon becomes the first black boy in Savannah to complete grade school, and, after another major disagreement at home, Simon begins making plans to go to the normal school in Memphis, Tennessee.
Further, Abner announces that he too wishes to go out into the world to make his own way. Alec reluctantly consents, but Queen strongly objects, likely due in part to her bitter memories of the time when the two spinsters in Charleston tried to take Abner away from her.
That confrontation leads to a conflict among Queen on one hand and Alec and Abner on the other, in which Queen emotionally reveals to Abner that Alec is not his real father. Still feeling upset and agitated and allowing her feelings to divert her attention, while stoking the wood-fired cast-iron cookstove, Queen causes or allows a flame to start a fire, which in turn ignites her long dress. Queen runs out of the house and into the surrounding woodland. The fire in the dress dies out, and Queen sustains only minimal physical injuries. However, undoubtedly recalling the frightful scene in which she discovered the charred and strangled body of Davis hanging from a noose, Queen experiences an emotional, mental, or psychological trauma, which then causes Alec to commit her to a mental-health institution, in Jackson, Tennessee, about 50 miles from home.
Alec realizes, and he says to Queen and Abner separately, that Queen's psychological problems result from certain events in her life which she's never discussed with Alec or anyone else.
After several weeks in the depressing "lunatic asylum", someone on the staff sends a request from Queen to Mr. Cherry to visit her. During a meeting at the hospital Queen politely and humbly tells her former employer about Abner's wish to "find his own place in the world". But Queen and Alec have already given all their cash to Simon for his schooling, so Queen asks Mr. Cherry for a loan of $50, which he graciously agrees to make. Queen tearfully thanks him and compliantly returns to her room.
Soon Queen decides that she needs to go home, so that she can see her sons when they leave, and she convinces the man in charge that the time is right. Alec picks her up and takes her home in a wagon. Queen and Alec take Abner and Simon on the ferryboat across the Tennessee River and, on the west side of the stream, they place their sons aboard a carriage bound for Memphis, about 116 miles due west of Savannah. [In truth at the time of the applicable setting there was in Memphis no normal school which enrolled black students; Simon actually went to Lane College, a black school in Jackson, Tennessee, where he met and began to court Bertha George Palmer, from Henning, Tennessee.]
Back at home the aging couple sit on the front porch, and Queen starts to tell Alec about her life, starting with her time as a slave girl with Jane at the Jackson plantation.
Cast[edit]
Halle Berry as Queen
Christopher Allport as Union Officer
Ann-Margret as Sally Jackson
Dan Biggers as George
Leo Burmester as Henderson
Patricia Clarkson as Lizzie
Frances Conroy as Mrs. Benson
Tim Daly as Col. James Jackson Jr.
Ossie Davis as Parson Dick
Victor Garber as Digby
Danny Glover as Alec Haley
Ed Grady as Doctor
John Griesemer as Doctor
George Grizzard as Mr. Cherry
Tim Guinee as Wesley
Jasmine Guy as Easter
Linda Hart as Mrs. Henderson
Dennis Haysbert as Davis
Tommy Hollis as Fred
Richard Jenkins as Mr. Benson
Christine Jones as Sarah Jackson
Jane Krakowski as Jane
Patrick Malone as Simon
Peter Maloney as Perkins
Lonette McKee as Alice
Kenny Blank as Henry (age 11)
Daryl 'Chill' Mitchell as Abner
Charlotte Moore as Mrs. Perkins
Martin Sheen as James Jackson Sr.
Madge Sinclair as Dora
Jussie Smollett as Simon (age 11)
Lorraine Toussaint as Joyce
Eric Ware as Micah
Paul Winfield as Cap'n Jack
Samuel E. Wright as Alfred
Raven-Symoné as Queen (age 5)
Home media[edit]
The series was released on VHS in August 1993 and was later released on DVD in 2000.
Ratings and viewers[edit]
The miniseries averaged a 23.9 rating and 37% share for the three parts.[6]

Episode
Weekly Ratings
 Ranking[a]
Rating
Number of
 Viewers
Rating
Share
Date
Network

Queen Part I #3[7] 24.6 million[8] 36.7 million 24.7%[8] 38%[9] February 14, 1993 CBS
Queen Part II #1[9] 22.4 million[10] 35.0 million[11] 24.1%[12] 37%[12] February 16, 1993 CBS
Queen Part III #3[9] 21.3 million[10] 33.0 million[11] 22.8%[10] N/A February 18, 1993 CBS

^[a] Part I aired a week prior to parts II and III in the ratings.
See also[edit]
Roots (TV miniseries)
Roots: The Next Generations
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Dudek, Duane (February 6, 1993). "Alex Haley's crowning finales to his "Roots"". The Milwaukee Sentinel. p. 1C. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
2.Jump up ^ Fearn-Banks, Kathleen (2009). The A to Z of African-American Television. Scarecrow Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-810-86348-0.
3.Jump up ^ Kujoory, Parvin (1995). Black Slavery in America: An Annotated Mediagraphy. Scarecrow Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-810-83072-8.
4.Jump up ^ Jordan, Tina (May 14, 1993). "In Queen, Alex Haley's Roots Are Showing". ew.com. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
5.Jump up ^ Moore, Frazier (February 14, 1993). "'Queen' Director John Erman is Successful, Invisible - And Used to It". The Bonham Daily Favorite. p. 3. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
6.Jump up ^ Grahnke, Lon (February 24, 1993). "CBS Tightens Hold On Prime-Time Race". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 44. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
7.Jump up ^ "Alex Haley's 'Queen' Lifts CBS To No. 1". Jet 83 (19): 37. March 8, 1993.
8.^ Jump up to: a b "Tops on TV". Newsday. February 18, 1993. p. 58. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
9.^ Jump up to: a b c Gable, Donna (February 16, 1993). "Tim Daly's own roots in `Queen'". USA Today. p. 03.D. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
10.^ Jump up to: a b c "Haley's 'Queen" is a ratings winner". Lakeland Ledger. February 25, 1993. p. 4C.
11.^ Jump up to: a b Margulies, Lee (February 24, 1993). "TV Ratings". Los Angeles Times. p. F11. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
12.^ Jump up to: a b Carmody, John (February 18, 1993). "The TV Column". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
External links[edit]
Queen at the Internet Movie Database
Alex Haley's Queen at AllMovie


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Categories: English-language films
1993 American television series debuts
1993 American television series endings
1990s American television series
African-American genealogy
American television miniseries
CBS network shows
Films about American slavery
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Television programs based on novels
Television series by The Wolper Organization


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Haley%27s_Queen










Alex Haley's Queen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search


Alex Haley's Queen
QueenVHSCover.jpg
VHS cover of Alex Haley's Queen

Genre
Period
Directed by
John Erman
Produced by
David L. Wolper
Bernard Sofronski
Written by
Alex Haley (novel)
David Stevens (Teleplay)
Starring
Halle Berry
Danny Glover
 Tucker Stone
Jasmine Guy
Tim Daly
Martin Sheen
Paul Winfield
Raven-Symoné
Ann-Margret
Music by
Christopher Dedrick
Editing by
James Galloway
 Paul LaMastra
Country
USA
Language
English
Original channel
CBS
Original run
February 14, 1993  – February 18, 1993
Running time
282 minutes
No. of episodes
3
Preceded by
Roots: The Gift
Alex Haley's Queen (also known as Queen) is a 1993 American television miniseries that aired in three installments on February 14, 16, and 18 on CBS.[1][2] The miniseries is an adaptation of the novel Queen: The Story of an American Family, by Alex Haley and David Stevens. The novel is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, Haley's paternal grandmother.[3] Alex Haley died in February 1992 before completing the novel. It was later finished by David Stevens and published in 1993. Stevens also wrote the screenplay for the miniseries.[4]
Alex Haley's Queen was directed by John Erman, and stars Halle Berry in the title role.[5] It tells the life story of a young woman and it shows the problems which biracial slaves and former slaves faced in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Throughout her life, Queen struggles to fit into the two cultures of her heritage, and at times each side shuns her.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Cast
3 Home media
4 Ratings and viewers
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Plot summary[edit]
The series begins with the friendly relationship between James Jackson Jr. (Tim Daly), the son of the plantation owner, and one of the slaves, Easter (Jasmine Guy), at the Jackson estate, known as Forks of Cypress, near Florence in northern Alabama. James and Easter have grown up together (within the social limits of the plantation culture), and gradually their feelings for each other have developed into romance. Easter is the daughter of an African-American house slave, Captain Jack (Paul Winfield), and his true love, Annie, another slave, who is part-Cherokee, and who is no longer on the Jackson property.
James Jackson Sr. (Martin Sheen), an Irish immigrant who has accumulated considerable wealth, becomes ill and soon dies. Minutes after the death James Jr. retreats to the comfort of the weaving house, where Easter was born, and where she lives and works. James and Easter make love, then, several months later, while they are alone, Easter reveals to him that she is pregnant with his child. Meanwhile, Sally Jackson (Ann-Margret), the new widow, encourages her son, James Jr., to marry the respectable and socially equal Elizabeth "Lizzie" Perkins (Patricia Clarkson), an heiress to a cotton fortune as a daughter of a neighboring planter.
On April 8, 1841, Easter gives birth to a healthy girl. Excited about his new granddaughter, Captain Jack announces to the family and friends during dinner in the "big house" that a slave child has just been born, and he assures James, "Easter's doing just fine". That displeases Lizzie, who is present for the dinner, and who soon becomes James's fiancée. Lizzie, having concluded that the new baby is James's child, excuses herself from the table and throws a fit. Moments later she vows to her mother (Charlotte Moore) that she'll never marry him, but her mother persuades her otherwise. Captain Jack begins to refer to the baby as Princess, but, when James enters the birth in the record book, he writes the name Queen. He also leaves blank the section for the name of the father.
James proposes marriage to Lizzie the next evening after the dinner, Lizzie accepts, and the wedding takes place at the home sometime later. James continues to visit Easter at night, sometimes every night, during both his engagement and his marriage. Although James is Lizzie's husband, he is still in love with Easter. Later Lizzie learns that she has become pregnant. She and James welcome a daughter, Jane, whom Queen attends and serves. Although Jane and Queen are half-sisters, the family does not acknowledge that relationship, because of Queen's status as a slave.

Slavery
COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen TMnr 3912-475.jpg

Contemporary[show]













Historical[show]































By country or region[show]









































































Religion[show]







Opposition and resistance[show]





















Related[show]


























v ·
 t ·
 e
   
James later persuades Easter to let Queen live in the main house, where she can receive training as a lady's maid. Both Easter and Lizzie oppose that plan, but James's word is final, so at age 5 Queen (Raven-Symoné) moves into the mansion. Jane and Queen grow up as friends and playmates. However, the other slave children tease and torment Queen because of her light skin and her ability to read and write. By 1860, several years later, the two young ladies, Queen (Halle Berry) and Jane (Jane Krakowski), have grown up, and they begin to attract the attention of the young men in Florence.
In the next year, 1861, Alabama secedes from the United States, the North declares war against the South, and James enters the Confederate Army and heads northward. While James rides away in a cavalry unit, Easter confirms to Queen that he is her "pappy". On July 21, 1861, during the First Battle of Bull Run, in Prince William County, Virginia, near Manassas, James sustains an injury which causes him to become discharged and sent back home. When James arrives at home, he learns that Jane, his legitimate daughter, has died during an epidemic of diphtheria, and he reaches the weaving house only moments after Easter too, with Queen beside her, dies of diphtheria.
Queen continues to serve the aging ladies, Sally and Lizzie, in the big house, and, in the absence of an overseer, takes over his function also, supervising the remaining field hands, after half of them left and went North.
Soon James forms a regiment, receives a promotion to the rank of colonel, and heads back into the war. Eventually the Union Army reaches Florence and the Jackson plantation, where the Northern soldiers loot and plunder, wantonly destroy property, insult the ladies and the slaves, and brutalize the slaves, for whose benefit they have claimed to fight the war to free them.
During another battle, Col. Jackson sustains another injury, which causes the amputation of his right arm without anesthesia of any type. Captain Jack dies as a free man, with Sally Jackson and Queen beside him.
Missus Jackson advises Queen to go wherever she might wish among the blacks, saying that there is no food and no place for her at the estate, and that she can expect no help from them, despite the known relationship between Queen and the Jackson family. Queen, however, strongly objects, insisting that the plantation is her home, and they are her family. Parson Dick (Ossie Davis), another slave there, warns Queen about the difficulties awaiting mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons in the new free society.
Mr. Henderson (Leo Burmester), the former overseer, and his wife (Linda Hart) have left the Jackson plantation, and they now run a nearby grocery store, where young redneck white men hang out, and James trades. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, however, freely insult James and Queen.
After an unpleasant confrontation at the store with Mrs. Henderson and with several of the tough young white men, Queen runs away and hides until the next morning, then, tired and hungry, she returns home. Queen and Lizzie exchange unkind words, and Queen leaves. While Queen pauses at the grave of her mother, Missus Jackson bids her goodbye and hands her a sum of money. James and Queen meet on the driveway in the front of the house as James returns from a long search for Queen that morning. They speak briefly, then Queen continues walking away.
Queen realizes in Florence how easily she can "pass" as a white lady, so she resolves to do so; there she buys a one-way ticket and rides one or more horse-drawn stagecoaches (on an unlikely journey) to Charleston, South Carolina.
At a charitable soup kitchen Queen meets Alice (Lonette McKee), another fair-skinned young "colored" lady who also passes as white. Alice befriends Queen, takes her into her apartment, cleans her up, teaches her about passing, and takes her to a white dance hall, where she meets Alice's white gentleman friend, George (Dan Biggers), who gets Queen a job in a flower shop.
While at work Queen meets Digby (Victor Garber), an injured former Confederate soldier, who quickly falls for her and soon proposes to her. Queen accepts, then tells Alice, who insists that such a marriage would be foolish and strongly urges Queen to break the engagement.
Queen, naïve and strong-willed, decides to go to Digby's apartment, intending to break off. Digby, after a surprising twist, begins to seduce Queen with some help from a dose of laudanum. While Queen objects and resists, she blurts out that she is a Negro. Digby then flies into a rage, beats her, rapes her, and throws her out.
Queen returns to Alice, who also throws her out, to protect her own position and reputation. The next day, after a miserable night in a camp of black homeless people, Queen staggers into a meeting of a black church, where she receives much help from a kindly woman, who later takes her to the home of two self-righteous and sanctimonious spinsters, Misses Mandy (Sada Thompson) and Giffery, who hire Queen as a live-in maid.
A few days later Davis (Dennis Haysbert), a gardener and a former slave, arrives in the backyard in search of work. Queen and Davis start a friendship, which turns into romance and results in pregnancy. Queen first seeks an abortion, then she decides to keep the child, so she confronts Davis, who invites her to meet him at the railway station, presumably to head north.
Although Queen waits at the station well into the evening, Davis fails to appear, so she dejectedly returns to the old maids. Miss Mandy labels her as a wicked, naughty girl and a fallen sinner, but she and Miss Giffery allow her to remain. In due time the two spinsters, acting as midwives, attend the birth of a healthy boy. Queen wants to give him the name David, but the two women prefer the name Abner. A white minister christens the baby, predictably, as Abner. Misses Mandy and Giffery increasingly take over Abner, apparently intending to raise him as though he were their own. Eventually one night Queen flees and heads north with six-month-old Abner in her arms.
At a crossroads store and lunchroom Queen meets Mrs. Benson (Frances Conroy), an upper-middle-class white mother of a 15-month-old son, for whom she needs a wet nurse. They ride away toward the Benson home, in Beaufort, South Carolina, which is south, not north, of Charleston [and which is on the way to Savannah, Georgia, but not on a direct way to Savannah, Tennessee].
When Queen and Mrs. Benson arrive in Beaufort, they meet Mr. Benson (Richard Jenkins) amid a crowd of angry black former slaves, striking for more pay and more respect, under the vocal persuasion and agitation of Davis, the father of Abner. Later Queen finds Davis, confronts him, berates him for having abandoned her and Abner, then shares his bed until the next morning.
Mrs. Benson deceives Queen and uses her and Abner in such a way as to enable Mr. Benson, a leader among the local Ku Klux Klan, to find and capture Davis. Mrs. Benson, feigning concern for the security of Davis, urges Queen to leave Abner with her in safety and to hurry to Davis and warn him that he is in imminent danger of a "terrible work" of the Klan. Queen goes, and a Klansman follows. When Queen returns to the Benson home, she learns that Abner is absent, and Mrs. Benson says that Abner "is doing God's work tonight". The next morning Queen goes to Davis' cabin, where she finds his hanged and charred body, along with Abner, inside a wooden chicken cage at his father's feet.
In the next scene Queen and Abner, now a toddler of about two years, walk together and, near Savannah, Hardin County, Tennessee, board a small wooden ferryboat, where they meet Alec Haley (Danny Glover), who operates the ferry, along with his son, Henry (Kenny Blank). While crossing a river Alec asks Queen where she wishes to go, and she answers, "North". Alec senses the general nature of Queen's situation and her motive.
Alec gently persuades Queen to ride back to the south side, saying that in the North she would find only "cold weather and cold-hearted Yankees", so Queen acquiesces. Soon Alec introduces Queen to Dora (Madge Sinclair), the cook in the home of Mr. Cherry (George Grizzard), a widower, where she gets a job as a maid.
Queen, brooding over her regrettable experiences, adopts a defensive and disagreeable attitude, which becomes obvious to everyone around her. Dora tells her, "It's high time you figure out who your friends are, Missy", and Mr. Cherry tells her, "You are the most ornery maid I've ever had". Later Alec describes her to herself as "never talking peaceable to a living soul" and "hating the world for whatever the world done to you". However, Queen responds to those helpful words by allowing a friendship to develop between Alec and herself and by changing her attitudes. Soon Mr. Cherry comments, "She really lights up this old place when she smiles", and suggests, "Let's just hope it continues".
The relationship between Queen and Alec grows into romance, which results not only in a wedding, in which Mr. Cherry gives the bride away, but also, eventually, the birth of another child, whom Queen names as Simon. Queen expresses high hopes for Simon's future, and she predicts that he'll become "magnificent".
When Simon (Jussie Smollett) completes the sixth grade, the point at which black boys in the South typically (in the subject setting) drop out of school to start full-time work in the fields, as did Henry and Abner, Simon's teacher comments to Queen that he is "the best student in the district". Alec vigorously argues with Queen against Simon's staying in school, but Queen presents persuasive logic, and he eventually agrees to "waste" one of the three boys. [In the US high schools did not generally exist until about 1910, and they started in the larger, wealthy cities.]
One day Queen takes Abner and Simon back to the Forks of Cypress, the Jackson plantation, to show them where she was raised and to share her memories of her childhood. When they arrive there, the funeral for James Jackson, her father, takes place, and she pays her respect from a distance. Queen then shows her sons the weaving house, where she lived as a girl, along with her mother Easter's grave and the Jackson mansion. Inside the house Lizzie Jackson accosts her bitterly and tells her that she does not belong there, as the mansion was never truly her home. Queen quickly leaves, feeling again sad and rejected by the white side of her family.
In due time Simon becomes the first black boy in Savannah to complete grade school, and, after another major disagreement at home, Simon begins making plans to go to the normal school in Memphis, Tennessee.
Further, Abner announces that he too wishes to go out into the world to make his own way. Alec reluctantly consents, but Queen strongly objects, likely due in part to her bitter memories of the time when the two spinsters in Charleston tried to take Abner away from her.
That confrontation leads to a conflict among Queen on one hand and Alec and Abner on the other, in which Queen emotionally reveals to Abner that Alec is not his real father. Still feeling upset and agitated and allowing her feelings to divert her attention, while stoking the wood-fired cast-iron cookstove, Queen causes or allows a flame to start a fire, which in turn ignites her long dress. Queen runs out of the house and into the surrounding woodland. The fire in the dress dies out, and Queen sustains only minimal physical injuries. However, undoubtedly recalling the frightful scene in which she discovered the charred and strangled body of Davis hanging from a noose, Queen experiences an emotional, mental, or psychological trauma, which then causes Alec to commit her to a mental-health institution, in Jackson, Tennessee, about 50 miles from home.
Alec realizes, and he says to Queen and Abner separately, that Queen's psychological problems result from certain events in her life which she's never discussed with Alec or anyone else.
After several weeks in the depressing "lunatic asylum", someone on the staff sends a request from Queen to Mr. Cherry to visit her. During a meeting at the hospital Queen politely and humbly tells her former employer about Abner's wish to "find his own place in the world". But Queen and Alec have already given all their cash to Simon for his schooling, so Queen asks Mr. Cherry for a loan of $50, which he graciously agrees to make. Queen tearfully thanks him and compliantly returns to her room.
Soon Queen decides that she needs to go home, so that she can see her sons when they leave, and she convinces the man in charge that the time is right. Alec picks her up and takes her home in a wagon. Queen and Alec take Abner and Simon on the ferryboat across the Tennessee River and, on the west side of the stream, they place their sons aboard a carriage bound for Memphis, about 116 miles due west of Savannah. [In truth at the time of the applicable setting there was in Memphis no normal school which enrolled black students; Simon actually went to Lane College, a black school in Jackson, Tennessee, where he met and began to court Bertha George Palmer, from Henning, Tennessee.]
Back at home the aging couple sit on the front porch, and Queen starts to tell Alec about her life, starting with her time as a slave girl with Jane at the Jackson plantation.
Cast[edit]
Halle Berry as Queen
Christopher Allport as Union Officer
Ann-Margret as Sally Jackson
Dan Biggers as George
Leo Burmester as Henderson
Patricia Clarkson as Lizzie
Frances Conroy as Mrs. Benson
Tim Daly as Col. James Jackson Jr.
Ossie Davis as Parson Dick
Victor Garber as Digby
Danny Glover as Alec Haley
Ed Grady as Doctor
John Griesemer as Doctor
George Grizzard as Mr. Cherry
Tim Guinee as Wesley
Jasmine Guy as Easter
Linda Hart as Mrs. Henderson
Dennis Haysbert as Davis
Tommy Hollis as Fred
Richard Jenkins as Mr. Benson
Christine Jones as Sarah Jackson
Jane Krakowski as Jane
Patrick Malone as Simon
Peter Maloney as Perkins
Lonette McKee as Alice
Kenny Blank as Henry (age 11)
Daryl 'Chill' Mitchell as Abner
Charlotte Moore as Mrs. Perkins
Martin Sheen as James Jackson Sr.
Madge Sinclair as Dora
Jussie Smollett as Simon (age 11)
Lorraine Toussaint as Joyce
Eric Ware as Micah
Paul Winfield as Cap'n Jack
Samuel E. Wright as Alfred
Raven-Symoné as Queen (age 5)
Home media[edit]
The series was released on VHS in August 1993 and was later released on DVD in 2000.
Ratings and viewers[edit]
The miniseries averaged a 23.9 rating and 37% share for the three parts.[6]

Episode
Weekly Ratings
 Ranking[a]
Rating
Number of
 Viewers
Rating
Share
Date
Network

Queen Part I #3[7] 24.6 million[8] 36.7 million 24.7%[8] 38%[9] February 14, 1993 CBS
Queen Part II #1[9] 22.4 million[10] 35.0 million[11] 24.1%[12] 37%[12] February 16, 1993 CBS
Queen Part III #3[9] 21.3 million[10] 33.0 million[11] 22.8%[10] N/A February 18, 1993 CBS

^[a] Part I aired a week prior to parts II and III in the ratings.
See also[edit]
Roots (TV miniseries)
Roots: The Next Generations
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Dudek, Duane (February 6, 1993). "Alex Haley's crowning finales to his "Roots"". The Milwaukee Sentinel. p. 1C. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
2.Jump up ^ Fearn-Banks, Kathleen (2009). The A to Z of African-American Television. Scarecrow Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-810-86348-0.
3.Jump up ^ Kujoory, Parvin (1995). Black Slavery in America: An Annotated Mediagraphy. Scarecrow Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-810-83072-8.
4.Jump up ^ Jordan, Tina (May 14, 1993). "In Queen, Alex Haley's Roots Are Showing". ew.com. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
5.Jump up ^ Moore, Frazier (February 14, 1993). "'Queen' Director John Erman is Successful, Invisible - And Used to It". The Bonham Daily Favorite. p. 3. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
6.Jump up ^ Grahnke, Lon (February 24, 1993). "CBS Tightens Hold On Prime-Time Race". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 44. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
7.Jump up ^ "Alex Haley's 'Queen' Lifts CBS To No. 1". Jet 83 (19): 37. March 8, 1993.
8.^ Jump up to: a b "Tops on TV". Newsday. February 18, 1993. p. 58. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
9.^ Jump up to: a b c Gable, Donna (February 16, 1993). "Tim Daly's own roots in `Queen'". USA Today. p. 03.D. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
10.^ Jump up to: a b c "Haley's 'Queen" is a ratings winner". Lakeland Ledger. February 25, 1993. p. 4C.
11.^ Jump up to: a b Margulies, Lee (February 24, 1993). "TV Ratings". Los Angeles Times. p. F11. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
12.^ Jump up to: a b Carmody, John (February 18, 1993). "The TV Column". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
External links[edit]
Queen at the Internet Movie Database
Alex Haley's Queen at AllMovie


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Haley%27s_Queen










Queen: The Story of an American Family
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

This article is about the novel. For the TV series, see Alex Haley's Queen.

Question book-new.svg
 This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)



Queen: The Story of an American Family is a 1993 partly factual historical novel by Alex Haley and David Stevens. It brought back to the consciousness of many White Americans the plight of the children of the plantation: the offspring of black slave women and their white masters, who were legally their fathers' slaves. A miniseries adaptation called Alex Haley's Queen and starring Halle Berry in the title role aired on CBS on February 14, 1993.
The noted author Alex Haley (1921–1992) was the grandson of Queen, the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughter of James "Jass" Jackson III (the son of a friend, but not a relative, of Andrew Jackson) and his slave, Easter. The novel recounts Queen's anguished early years as a slave girl, longing to know who her father was, and how it gradually dawned on her that he was her master. After the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 and the subsequent abolition of slavery, Queen was cast out. Jass Jackson would not acknowledge her as his daughter, afraid of compromising the inheritance of his legitimate children and goaded by his wife, who despised Queen. After many adventures, often unpleasant, she married a reasonably successful former slave by the name of Alec Haley, and had one son by him (Simon Haley). Both Alec and Queen had a son each from previous relationship. Simon Haley later went to attend Lane College CME church located in Jackson, TN and earned his Master's degree at Cornell University. He then went on become Dean of Agriculture of AM and N College. He then met his wife, Bertha Palmer and gave his mother, Queen Jackson Haley three grand children. George, who became a lawyer, Julius, an architect, and Alex who became a writer.
Alex Haley, her grandson, was unable to finish writing Queen before he died, and it was completed by David Stevens. While Stevens benefited from the many boxes of research notes and a 700-page outline of the story left behind by Haley, he would later say that his writing was guided mainly by their many long conversations.
See also[edit]
Treatment of slaves in the United States
Slavery in the United States


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Africa

Robert Adams (b. c. 1790 US) ·
 Francis Bok (b. 1979 Sudan) ·
 James Leander Cathcart (1 June 1767 Ire – 6 October 1843 US) ·
 Mende Nazer (1982-) ·
 Thomas Pellow (b. 1705 Eng – ?) ·
 Joseph Pitts (1663–1735?) Englishman captured by pirates from Algeria
 


Caribbean

Juan Francisco Manzano (1797 – 1854, Cuba) ·
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Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 Nigeria – 31 March 1797 Eng) ·
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 Lovisa von Burghausen (1698-1733)
 


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Marie-Joseph Angélique (c. 1710 Portugal – 1734 Montreal)
 


North America:
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Sam Aleckson ·
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 William J. Anderson ·
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 Polly Berry ·
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 Leonard Black ·
 Henry "Box" Brown ·
 John Brown ·
 William Wells Brown ·
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 Ellen and William Craft ·
 Hannah Crafts ·
 Lucinda Davis ·
 Noah Davis ·
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 Ayuba Suleiman Diallo ·
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 Kate Drumgoold ·
 Jordan Winston Early (1814 – after 1894) ·
 Sarah Jane Woodson Early ·
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 Moses Grandy ·
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 Fountain Hughes (1848/1854 VA – 1957) ·
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 Elizabeth Keckley ·
 Boston King ·
 Lunsford Lane ·
 J. Vance Lewis ·
 Jermain Wesley Loguen ·
 Solomon Northup ·
 John Parker (1827 VA – 1900) ·
 William Parker ·
 James Robert ·
 Moses Roper ·
 Omar Ibn Said ·
 William Henry Singleton ·
 Venture Smith ·
 Austin Steward (1793 VA – 1860) ·
 Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – 1853 NY) ·
 Harriet Tubman ·
 Wallace Turnage ·
 Bethany Veney ·
 Booker T. Washington ·
 Wallace Willis (19th century Indian Territory) ·
 Harriet E. Wilson ·
 Zamba Zembola (b. c. 1780 Congo) ·
 See also Treatment of slaves in the US, Exodus narrative in Antebellum America, Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas
 


Books



Non-fiction

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) ·
 The Narrative of Robert Adams (1816) ·
 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) ·
 The Life of Josiah Henson (1849) ·
 Twelve Years a Slave (1853) ·
 My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) ·
 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) ·
 The Underground Railroad Records (1872) ·
 Up from Slavery (1901) ·
 The Slave Community (1972)
 


Fiction

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) ·
 The Heroic Slave (1852) ·
 Clotel (1853) ·
 Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) ·
 The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853?-1861?) ·
 Our Nig (1859) ·
 Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) ·
 Jubilee (1966) ·
 Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) ·
 Underground to Canada (1977) ·
 Kindred (1979) ·
 Dessa Rose (1986) ·
 Beloved (1987) ·
 Middle Passage (1990) ·
 Queen: The Story of an American Family (1993) ·
 Walk Through Darkness (2002) ·
 The Known World (2003) ·
 Unburnable (2006) ·
 The Book of Negroes (2007)
 


Child / Young adult

I, Juan de Pareja (1965) ·
 The Slave-girl from Jerusalem (2007)
 


Essay
To a Southern Slaveholder (1848) ·
 A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853)
 

Related
African-American literature ·
 Caribbean literature ·
 Films featuring slavery ·
 Songs of the Underground Railroad ·
 Book of Negroes (1783) ·
 Slave Songs of the United States (1867)
 

Documentaries
Unchained Memories (2003) ·
 Frederick Douglass and the White Negro (2008)
 




Stub icon This article about a historical novel of the 1990s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.




  


Categories: 1993 novels
American historical novels
American novels adapted into films
African-American novels
Southern United States in fiction
Novels about American slavery
Novels by Alex Haley
1990s historical novel stubs






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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen:_The_Story_of_an_American_Family









Queen: The Story of an American Family
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

This article is about the novel. For the TV series, see Alex Haley's Queen.

Question book-new.svg
 This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)



Queen: The Story of an American Family is a 1993 partly factual historical novel by Alex Haley and David Stevens. It brought back to the consciousness of many White Americans the plight of the children of the plantation: the offspring of black slave women and their white masters, who were legally their fathers' slaves. A miniseries adaptation called Alex Haley's Queen and starring Halle Berry in the title role aired on CBS on February 14, 1993.
The noted author Alex Haley (1921–1992) was the grandson of Queen, the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughter of James "Jass" Jackson III (the son of a friend, but not a relative, of Andrew Jackson) and his slave, Easter. The novel recounts Queen's anguished early years as a slave girl, longing to know who her father was, and how it gradually dawned on her that he was her master. After the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 and the subsequent abolition of slavery, Queen was cast out. Jass Jackson would not acknowledge her as his daughter, afraid of compromising the inheritance of his legitimate children and goaded by his wife, who despised Queen. After many adventures, often unpleasant, she married a reasonably successful former slave by the name of Alec Haley, and had one son by him (Simon Haley). Both Alec and Queen had a son each from previous relationship. Simon Haley later went to attend Lane College CME church located in Jackson, TN and earned his Master's degree at Cornell University. He then went on become Dean of Agriculture of AM and N College. He then met his wife, Bertha Palmer and gave his mother, Queen Jackson Haley three grand children. George, who became a lawyer, Julius, an architect, and Alex who became a writer.
Alex Haley, her grandson, was unable to finish writing Queen before he died, and it was completed by David Stevens. While Stevens benefited from the many boxes of research notes and a 700-page outline of the story left behind by Haley, he would later say that his writing was guided mainly by their many long conversations.
See also[edit]
Treatment of slaves in the United States
Slavery in the United States


[show]
v ·
 t ·
 e
 
Alex Haley's Roots


















[hide]
v ·
 t ·
 e
 
Slave Narratives


Slave Narrative Collection ·
 Captivity narrative
 

Individuals
 by continent
 of enslavement



Africa

Robert Adams (b. c. 1790 US) ·
 Francis Bok (b. 1979 Sudan) ·
 James Leander Cathcart (1 June 1767 Ire – 6 October 1843 US) ·
 Mende Nazer (1982-) ·
 Thomas Pellow (b. 1705 Eng – ?) ·
 Joseph Pitts (1663–1735?) Englishman captured by pirates from Algeria
 


Caribbean

Juan Francisco Manzano (1797 – 1854, Cuba) ·
 Esteban Montejo (1860-1965, Cuba) ·
 Mary Prince ·
 Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – June 30, 1853 NY) ·
 Marcos Xiorro (c. 1819 - ???, Puerto Rico)
 


Europe

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 Nigeria – 31 March 1797 Eng) ·
 Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (c. 1705 Bornu – 1775 Eng) ·
 Roustam Raza ·
 Lovisa von Burghausen (1698-1733)
 


North America:
 Canada

Marie-Joseph Angélique (c. 1710 Portugal – 1734 Montreal)
 


North America:
 United States

Sam Aleckson ·
 Jordan Anderson ·
 William J. Anderson ·
 Jared Maurice Arter ·
 Solomon Bayley ·
 Polly Berry ·
 Henry Bibb ·
 Leonard Black ·
 Henry "Box" Brown ·
 John Brown ·
 William Wells Brown ·
 Peter Bruner (1845 KY – 1938 OH) ·
 Ellen and William Craft ·
 Hannah Crafts ·
 Lucinda Davis ·
 Noah Davis ·
 Lucy Delaney ·
 Ayuba Suleiman Diallo ·
 Frederick Douglass ·
 Kate Drumgoold ·
 Jordan Winston Early (1814 – after 1894) ·
 Sarah Jane Woodson Early ·
 David George ·
 Moses Grandy ·
 William Green (19th century MD) ·
 Josiah Henson ·
 Fountain Hughes (1848/1854 VA – 1957) ·
 John Andrew Jackson ·
 Harriet Ann Jacobs ·
 John Jea ·
 Thomas James (minister) ·
 Paul Jennings (1799-1874) ·
 Elizabeth Keckley ·
 Boston King ·
 Lunsford Lane ·
 J. Vance Lewis ·
 Jermain Wesley Loguen ·
 Solomon Northup ·
 John Parker (1827 VA – 1900) ·
 William Parker ·
 James Robert ·
 Moses Roper ·
 Omar Ibn Said ·
 William Henry Singleton ·
 Venture Smith ·
 Austin Steward (1793 VA – 1860) ·
 Venerable Pierre Toussaint (1766 Saint-Dominque – 1853 NY) ·
 Harriet Tubman ·
 Wallace Turnage ·
 Bethany Veney ·
 Booker T. Washington ·
 Wallace Willis (19th century Indian Territory) ·
 Harriet E. Wilson ·
 Zamba Zembola (b. c. 1780 Congo) ·
 See also Treatment of slaves in the US, Exodus narrative in Antebellum America, Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas
 


Books



Non-fiction

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) ·
 The Narrative of Robert Adams (1816) ·
 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) ·
 The Life of Josiah Henson (1849) ·
 Twelve Years a Slave (1853) ·
 My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) ·
 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) ·
 The Underground Railroad Records (1872) ·
 Up from Slavery (1901) ·
 The Slave Community (1972)
 


Fiction

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) ·
 The Heroic Slave (1852) ·
 Clotel (1853) ·
 Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) ·
 The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853?-1861?) ·
 Our Nig (1859) ·
 Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) ·
 Jubilee (1966) ·
 Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) ·
 Underground to Canada (1977) ·
 Kindred (1979) ·
 Dessa Rose (1986) ·
 Beloved (1987) ·
 Middle Passage (1990) ·
 Queen: The Story of an American Family (1993) ·
 Walk Through Darkness (2002) ·
 The Known World (2003) ·
 Unburnable (2006) ·
 The Book of Negroes (2007)
 


Child / Young adult

I, Juan de Pareja (1965) ·
 The Slave-girl from Jerusalem (2007)
 


Essay
To a Southern Slaveholder (1848) ·
 A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853)
 

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African-American literature ·
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 Songs of the Underground Railroad ·
 Book of Negroes (1783) ·
 Slave Songs of the United States (1867)
 

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Unchained Memories (2003) ·
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen:_The_Story_of_an_American_Family










Roots: The Gift
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search


Roots: The Gift
Roots The Gift.jpg
Genre
Period piece
Directed by
Kevin Hooks
Produced by
David L. Wolper
Bernard Sofronski
Written by
D.M. Eyre Jr.
 (based on Roots by Alex Haley)
Starring
LeVar Burton
Louis Gossett Jr.
Country
United States
Language
English
Original channel
ABC
Release date
11 December 1988
Running time
100 minutes
Preceded by
Roots: The Next Generations
Roots: The Gift is a 1988 television film. It is the third installment of the Roots series, which traces the maternal family history of African American author Alex Haley, starting with his fourth great-grandfather Kunta Kinte. The film premiered on ABC on 11 December 1988, with AT&T as the sole national sponsor for the broadcast. LeVar Burton and Louis Gossett Jr. reprise their respective roles of Kunta Kinte and Fiddler. The film takes place between the second and third episodes of the original Roots miniseries.
The film was crafted as a Christmas movie.[1] As one of the characters explains, the gift mentioned in the title is freedom.
Roots: The Gift is notable also in the sense that it features four actors who portrayed major characters in Star Trek television shows: LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation), Avery Brooks (Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Kate Mulgrew (Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager), and Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager).[2][3]


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Cast
3 Production
4 DVD release
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Plot summary[edit]
In December 1775, Cletus Moyer (Brooks) is a free black Northerner in colonial America, working with a pre-Underground Railroad network to help slaves escape captivity. In the days just prior to Christmas, a group of bounty hunters led by Hattie Carraway (Mulgrew) captures Moyer near the Parker plantation in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Because of his capture, dozens of slaves who have already left their plantations in escape attempts are in danger of being captured as well. Moyer implores two slaves from the nearby Reynolds plantation to take his place: Kunta Kinte (Burton), a Mandinka in his mid-twenties who was captured in what is now the Gambia, and Fiddler (Gossett), an elderly man who was born into slavery. Kunta is eager to help (and to escape himself), but Fiddler is unwilling, fearful of the consequences if they are caught.
After an unsuccessful slave revolt elsewhere in the colony, Moyer and two slaves are hanged by Carraway's men on Christmas Eve, prompting Fiddler to set aside his fear and help Kunta lead the runaway slaves to freedom. Although the pair successfully leads the runaways that night to their next stop on the escape route (a boat waiting at the river) there is only room for one of them, and since neither one wants to go without the other, they decide to both stay. That decision forced them to return to the Parker plantation and manufacture an excuse for their temporary absence. Nevertheless, Kunta and Fiddler are left with the satisfaction of knowing that they helped to give a group of fellow slaves the best Christmas gift of all: freedom.
Cast[edit]
LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte
Louis Gossett, Jr. as Fiddler
Shaun Cassidy as Edmund Parker, Jr.
Jerry Hardin as Dr. William Reynolds
Kate Mulgrew as Hattie Carraway
Avery Brooks as Cletus Moyer
Michael Learned as Amelia
John McMartin as Edmund Parker, Sr.
Annabella Price as Sarah Parker
Fran Bennett as May
Tim Russ as Marcellus
Introduction by Alex Haley
Production[edit]
Following a brief introduction by Alex Haley, the film opens with a replay of a memorable scene from the second episode of the original Roots miniseries: Following the first of many unsuccessful escape attempts, a prideful Kunta is publicly and mercilessly whipped until he agrees to assume the English name "Toby", which was selected for him by his new owner. Afterwards, Fiddler tends to the semi-conscious Kunta, telling him "You know who you be" and that it does not matter what anyone else calls him.
DVD release[edit]
In 2007, Warner Bros. released Roots: The Complete Collection, a 10-disc DVD collection containing Roots: The Gift, along with the earlier Roots and Roots: The Next Generations miniseries.
See also[edit]
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Shirley, Don (December 10, 1988). "TV Review: A Disappointing Package in 'Roots: The Gift'". Los Angeles Times.
2.Jump up ^ When the film first aired in December 1988, The Next Generation was in its second season, while the premieres of Deep Space Nine and Voyager were both years away.
3.Jump up ^ In 1992, Jerry Hardin appeared as Samuel Clemens in "Time's Arrow", the two-episode story arc from the fifth season finale and sixth season premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
External links[edit]
Roots: The Gift at the Internet Movie Database


[show]
v ·
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 e
 
Alex Haley's Roots


















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Films directed by Kevin Hooks














  


Categories: American Broadcasting Company network shows
American television films
African-American films
Films set in Virginia
Films set in the 1770s
Films set in the Thirteen Colonies
Television prequel films
Roots (TV miniseries)
1988 television films
American Christmas films
Films about race and ethnicity
Films directed by Kevin Hooks
Films about American slavery
English-language films
The Wolper Organization films


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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Gift










Roots: The Gift
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search


Roots: The Gift
Roots The Gift.jpg
Genre
Period piece
Directed by
Kevin Hooks
Produced by
David L. Wolper
Bernard Sofronski
Written by
D.M. Eyre Jr.
 (based on Roots by Alex Haley)
Starring
LeVar Burton
Louis Gossett Jr.
Country
United States
Language
English
Original channel
ABC
Release date
11 December 1988
Running time
100 minutes
Preceded by
Roots: The Next Generations
Roots: The Gift is a 1988 television film. It is the third installment of the Roots series, which traces the maternal family history of African American author Alex Haley, starting with his fourth great-grandfather Kunta Kinte. The film premiered on ABC on 11 December 1988, with AT&T as the sole national sponsor for the broadcast. LeVar Burton and Louis Gossett Jr. reprise their respective roles of Kunta Kinte and Fiddler. The film takes place between the second and third episodes of the original Roots miniseries.
The film was crafted as a Christmas movie.[1] As one of the characters explains, the gift mentioned in the title is freedom.
Roots: The Gift is notable also in the sense that it features four actors who portrayed major characters in Star Trek television shows: LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation), Avery Brooks (Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Kate Mulgrew (Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager), and Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager).[2][3]


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Cast
3 Production
4 DVD release
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Plot summary[edit]
In December 1775, Cletus Moyer (Brooks) is a free black Northerner in colonial America, working with a pre-Underground Railroad network to help slaves escape captivity. In the days just prior to Christmas, a group of bounty hunters led by Hattie Carraway (Mulgrew) captures Moyer near the Parker plantation in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Because of his capture, dozens of slaves who have already left their plantations in escape attempts are in danger of being captured as well. Moyer implores two slaves from the nearby Reynolds plantation to take his place: Kunta Kinte (Burton), a Mandinka in his mid-twenties who was captured in what is now the Gambia, and Fiddler (Gossett), an elderly man who was born into slavery. Kunta is eager to help (and to escape himself), but Fiddler is unwilling, fearful of the consequences if they are caught.
After an unsuccessful slave revolt elsewhere in the colony, Moyer and two slaves are hanged by Carraway's men on Christmas Eve, prompting Fiddler to set aside his fear and help Kunta lead the runaway slaves to freedom. Although the pair successfully leads the runaways that night to their next stop on the escape route (a boat waiting at the river) there is only room for one of them, and since neither one wants to go without the other, they decide to both stay. That decision forced them to return to the Parker plantation and manufacture an excuse for their temporary absence. Nevertheless, Kunta and Fiddler are left with the satisfaction of knowing that they helped to give a group of fellow slaves the best Christmas gift of all: freedom.
Cast[edit]
LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte
Louis Gossett, Jr. as Fiddler
Shaun Cassidy as Edmund Parker, Jr.
Jerry Hardin as Dr. William Reynolds
Kate Mulgrew as Hattie Carraway
Avery Brooks as Cletus Moyer
Michael Learned as Amelia
John McMartin as Edmund Parker, Sr.
Annabella Price as Sarah Parker
Fran Bennett as May
Tim Russ as Marcellus
Introduction by Alex Haley
Production[edit]
Following a brief introduction by Alex Haley, the film opens with a replay of a memorable scene from the second episode of the original Roots miniseries: Following the first of many unsuccessful escape attempts, a prideful Kunta is publicly and mercilessly whipped until he agrees to assume the English name "Toby", which was selected for him by his new owner. Afterwards, Fiddler tends to the semi-conscious Kunta, telling him "You know who you be" and that it does not matter what anyone else calls him.
DVD release[edit]
In 2007, Warner Bros. released Roots: The Complete Collection, a 10-disc DVD collection containing Roots: The Gift, along with the earlier Roots and Roots: The Next Generations miniseries.
See also[edit]
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Shirley, Don (December 10, 1988). "TV Review: A Disappointing Package in 'Roots: The Gift'". Los Angeles Times.
2.Jump up ^ When the film first aired in December 1988, The Next Generation was in its second season, while the premieres of Deep Space Nine and Voyager were both years away.
3.Jump up ^ In 1992, Jerry Hardin appeared as Samuel Clemens in "Time's Arrow", the two-episode story arc from the fifth season finale and sixth season premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
External links[edit]
Roots: The Gift at the Internet Movie Database


[show]
v ·
 t ·
 e
 
Alex Haley's Roots


















[show]
v ·
 t ·
 e
 
Films directed by Kevin Hooks














  


Categories: American Broadcasting Company network shows
American television films
African-American films
Films set in Virginia
Films set in the 1770s
Films set in the Thirteen Colonies
Television prequel films
Roots (TV miniseries)
1988 television films
American Christmas films
Films about race and ethnicity
Films directed by Kevin Hooks
Films about American slavery
English-language films
The Wolper Organization films


Navigation menu



Create account
Log in



Article

Talk









Read

Edit

View history

















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Contents
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Random article
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Upload file
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This page was last modified on 31 October 2014, at 23:32.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
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Powered by MediaWiki
 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Gift









Roots: The Next Generations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search


Roots: The Next Generations
RootsNextGen.jpg
Genre
Period piece
Created by
Alex Haley
Directed by
John Erman (eps. 1, 3, 4, 7)
Charles S. Dubin (ep. 2)
Georg Stanford Brown (ep. 5)
Lloyd Richards (ep. 6)
Produced by
Stan Margulies
Starring
James Earl Jones
Dorian Harewood
Irene Cara
Stan Shaw
 Georg Stanford Brown
Debbi Morgan
Music by
Gerald Fried
Budget
US$16.6 million
Country
United States
Language
English/Mandinka
Original channel
ABC
Original run
February 18, 1979  – February 24, 1979
Running time
840 minutes
No. of episodes
7
Preceded by
Roots (TV miniseries)
Followed by
Roots: The Gift
Roots: The Next Generations is a television miniseries, introduced in 1979, continuing, from 1882 to the 1960s, the fictionalized story of the family of Alex Haley and their life in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, USA. (Henning is about 48 miles north of Memphis, which is on the Mississippi River and in the southwest corner of the state, and which was then the largest city in it.) This sequel to the 1977 miniseries is based on the last seven chapters of Haley's novel entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family plus additional material by Haley.
Roots: The Next Generations was produced with a budget of $16.6 million, nearly three times as large as that of the original.[1]


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary 1.1 Chapter 1 - 1880s
1.2 Chapter 2 - Turn of the 20th Century
1.3 Chapter 3 - World War I
1.4 Chapter 4 - The Great Depression
1.5 Chapter 5 - World War II
1.6 Chapter 6 - Postwar
1.7 Chapter 7 - The 1960s
1.8 Epilogue
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Broadcast history 4.1 Episode list
4.2 Ratings and viewers
4.3 TV One
5 DVD release
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Plot summary[edit]
For the first part of the story, see Roots
Chapter 1 - 1880s[edit]
The story resumes in 1882, 12 years after the arrival of "Chicken George" Moore (Avon Long) and his family in Henning, in West Tennessee. George, elderly and showing his age, moves in with Tom Harvey (Georg Stanford Brown), one of his sons, along with Tom’s wife, Irene (Lynne Moody), and their two daughters, Elizabeth and Cynthia. Tom, a great-grandson of Kunta Kinte, has become a leader of the black community in Henning. Although he has established a working relationship with the town's white leader, Col. Frederick Warner (Henry Fonda), a former officer in the Confederate Army, race relations are strained, due in part to the new Jim Crow laws and similar influences.
Col. Warner's younger son, Jim (Richard Thomas), meets and falls in love with Carrie Barden (Fay Hauser), an attractive young African-American schoolteacher and a graduate of Fisk University, a black school in Nashville (the capital of the state and in Middle Tennessee). Tom has taken the lead in hiring Carrie for the local school for the black children. Col. Warner disapproves of the relationship between Jim and Carrie, so he seeks to persuade Tom to fire Carrie or to close the school. After an argument between Tom and his older daughter, Elizabeth (Debbi Morgan), about his refusal to accept her suitor, John Dolan (Brian Stokes Mitchell), because he is half white, Tom decides to allow Carrie to continue teaching. Jim and Carrie marry in Memphis, then Col. Warner disinherits Jim (by removing him from his will), but he says that he will ensure that no harm comes to the couple from the hoodlum white element of the town. Jim, with his new bride, receives a warm welcome to the local black church.
A year later, Chicken George dies in 1883 at age 77, and the family bury his body beside that of his wife, Mathilda "Tildy", who died in 1875 at age 67.
Chapter 2 - Turn of the 20th Century[edit]
In August 1896, 13 years later, Elizabeth, Tom's older daughter, arrives from Kansas City, Missouri, for an extended visit, amid tension between Tom and Elizabeth, due to Tom's rejection of her suitor years before.
Cynthia "Cinthy" (Bever-Leigh Banfield), Tom's younger daughter, meets and falls in love with Will Palmer (Stan Shaw), an ambitious and hard-working young man; after a properly supervised courtship the couple marry in their church.
Andrew Warner (Marc Singer), an unemployed playboy and the older son of Col. Warner, becomes interested in politics, and he eventually opposes his father in the public arena.
While Will works for Bob Campbell (Harry Morgan) at his lumberyard, he does so in such an enthusiastic, industrious, and effective way that he attracts the attention of both Col. Warner and T.J. Calloway (John Carter), the local banker. Because of Campbell's increasing problems with alcohol and his decreasing attention to his business, and after Campbell's default on his loan from the bank, Calloway forecloses, takes over the lumberyard, sells it to Will, and finances his purchase. Thus the R. Campbell Lumber Company becomes the W.E. Palmer Lumber Company.
By this time Jim and Carrie already have a son, named Frank "Frankie" (Marcus Chong), and they live peacefully and happily in the black community of Henning.
However, in the atmosphere of the growing anti-black attitudes in the South during the 1890s, racial tension increases in Henning too, as several incidents demonstrate. For example, Tom suddenly becomes turned away when he again applies to register to vote, and he forcefully insists that every time since the Civil War he has voted without interference, in both Alamance County, North Carolina, and in Lauderdale County, Tennessee.
Will and Cinthy rejoice over the birth of their daughter, Bertha George, named in part in honor of Chicken George, one of her great-grandfathers.
Chapter 3 - World War I[edit]
By September 1914, after 17 more years, telephones, electricity, and automobiles have arrived in Henning, both the town and Will Palmer's lumber company have grown, both Tom and Irene Harvey have died, as has Mrs. Warner, and Andrew Warner, the colonel's older son, now serves as a member of the US House of Representatives.
Dr. Frank Warner (Marcus Wyatt), the son of Jim and Carrie Warner, has completed undergraduate college, medical school, an internship, and a residency, and he's about to start his medical practice. Cinthy calls him "the first colored doctor in the county".
Will has prospered well enough that Will and Cynthia send their daughter, Bertha (Irene Cara), to Lane College, a black school in Jackson, Tennessee.
Col. Warner, frail and confused, collapses on a street while Jim, Carrie, and Frank are present nearby. They rush to him, and Frank starts to treat him. However, Earl Crowther (Paul Koslo), the Warner chauffeur, and a gang of rednecks take charge, ignore both Jim and Frank and nudge them aside, and insult Frank, who predicts that the colonel will die before they get him to the white physician. He does indeed die.
At the college Bertha meets and soon falls in love with Simon Alexander Haley (Dorian Harewood), a waiter in the dining room and a son of a sharecropper, who lives and works near Savannah, Hardin County, Tennessee, about 116 miles due east of Memphis. Simon, who greatly admires Booker T. Washington, quotes to Bertha from his writings, including these words: "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges to come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing". Referring to Washington, Simon says, "I have formed my life in his image".
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) resurges in Henning. They burn a cross, hold a parade, and burn down the clothing store of a Jewish merchant, Mr. Goldstein (Jiří Voskovec), who has moved to Henning from Chicago, Illinois, and who returns there.
Simon leaves Lane College, and he has made plans to continue his education at the Agricultural and Technical (A&T) College of North Carolina (which later becomes renamed as the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) State University), in Greensboro, North Carolina. He has applied to enroll in the school and has arranged to work on the campus to pay for his room and board.
His father, Alec Haley (Hal Williams) has promised him $50 to pay for his tuition, but now he tells him that he cannot keep his promise because of the recent poor crops due to floods and boll weevils. To avoid becoming an indebted sharecropper himself, Simon works the summer as a railway porter for the Pullman Company. He works with an older porter, Dad Jones (Ossie Davis), who becomes his fatherly friend and—in one instance with another porter—his protector. During one trip Simon meets and talks with a kindly and wealthy passenger, R.S.M. Boyce (James Daly), an executive of the Curtis Publishing Company, the publisher of The Saturday Evening Post and several other well-known magazines. They discuss Simon's plans and difficulties. When Boyce steps off the train, he hands to Simon a generous tip and one of his business cards, inviting him to inform him of his progress. When Simon leaves his position to return to school, he learns that Dad was fired for discussing unionization of the porters with a labor spy. When Simon arrives at the college, he learns that Boyce has already paid for the coming year in full for his textbooks, tuition, and room and board.
Simon and Bertha continue in keep in touch with each other, and Bertha and her parents, Will and Cynthia, travel to Simon's graduation, where he will receive his bachelor's degree in agriculture. When the family arrives at the campus, Bertha receives a message that Simon and six of his classmates have just left and enlisted in the US Army for service in the World War (the "Great War", later renamed as World War I). The young couple see each other briefly when Simon and his all-black platoon of recruits board a train to go to the next stage in his life.
During May 1918 Simon receives his basic training in an all-black company at Camp Grant, Illinois, near Rockford, about 85 miles west-northwest of Chicago, then he, in an all-black outfit, goes to France and takes part in the fighting against the German Army of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Before Simon goes overseas, Bertha meets Simon in Chicago for a weekend (after Cinthy pleads Bertha's case with Will, who first has vigorously opposed such a trip but eventually allows it).
While Simon is in the Army in France, Cousin Georgia Anderson (Lynn Hamilton), from Kansas City, visits Will and Cinthy, and she reveals that Chicken George fought with the Union Army during the Battle of Fort Pillow, due west of Henning, on the Chickasaw Bluffs, overlooking the Mississippi River. (That point implies that he survived the infamous Massacre of Fort Pillow.)
In July 1918 Simon receives word in France that his father has died in a hospital in Memphis; in due time, after the end of the war, Simon returns to the U.S.
Andy Warner raises his political sights even higher, and he becomes elected to the US Senate.
After the Army discharges Simon, on his way back home to Henning, he and several friends stop at the home of one of them in Knoxville, in East Tennessee. While they are there, the Knoxville Riot of 1919 (a part of the Red Summer of 1919) takes place. Earl Crowther, now an aide to Sen. Andrew Warner, goes to Knoxville to take part in the mischief, and he dies there (at the hands of one of Simon's Army buddies).
Simon arrives in Henning and receives a robust welcome, especially from Bertha, and the young couple move ahead with the plans for their wedding.
Will builds an attractive bungalow for Bertha and Simon, assuming that they will settle in Henning, but without asking about their own plans.
On the first Sunday after the completion of the house, the wedding takes place in their church building, then everyone adjourns to the front lawn of the new home for the reception, and a number of white friends and neighbors join them. Among them are Sen. Andy Warner and his fancy new wife, from Washington, DC, and New York City, who arrive in a Rolls-Royce open touring car with a chauffeur.
Afterward Mr. and Mrs. Simon Haley motor away in a Ford Model T to Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, where Simon will start working on his master's degree in agriculture.
Later Will and Cinthy move into the bungalow. (The house still stands; it's now known as the Alex Haley House and Museum, and, as a state-owned historic site, it's open to the public.)
In November 1921 Simon and Bertha return to Henning to visit Will and Cinthy, and they surprise them with their three-month-old son, Alexander Murray Palmer Haley, whom Will promptly carries outside, lifts up, and ceremonially shows the Moon, in a tradition which was first portrayed in the first Roots series by Omoro Kinte and baby Kunta Kinte in The Gambia in West Africa in 1750 (though, in the first Roots, the tradition was a naming ritual, where the father held the naked child to the stars, gave the child a name, and said, "behold the only thing greater than yourself.").
Chapter 4 - The Great Depression[edit]
Late in the summer of 1932, after 11 more years, during the Great Depression, Simon, Bertha, and their children stay temporarily in the bungalow with Will and Cynthia. At age 10 Alex (Christoff St. John, who later respelled his first name as Kristoff) has two younger brothers, George (Stevan Crutchfield), named for Chicken George, and Julius (Ticker Thompson). While working at Will's lumberyard, Simon unsuccessfully tries to show Will better methods for bookkeeping and inventory control, but Will regards and uses him as a manual laborer.
Shortly, however, Simon receives a special-delivery letter offering him a job as a professor of agriculture at the State Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) Institute for Negroes, in Normal, Alabama. (The school later becomes renamed as the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) University; the campus and the former town of Normal, named for the normal school established there, now lie within the city limits of Huntsville.)
Simon promptly and joyfully accepts his appointment, and he and his family move to Normal in their Chevrolet four-door sedan.
Not only does Prof. Haley teach his students in the classrooms and laboratories, but he also approaches the local farmers and, with little success, tells them about techniques which would enable them to replenish the soil and to produce better crops, using simple techniques, such as crop rotation. He meets Lyle Pettijohn (Robert Culp), the county agricultural agent and a son of a sharecropper in Greene County, Tennessee, so the two of them easily find mutual interests and objectives.
However, both Simon and Pettijohn meet resistance and incite violent reprisals by the white landowners.
Soon afterward Will dies in Henning.
While Bertha is out of town with the two younger sons for the funeral, Simon and Alex spend some special time together, during which Simon says to him, "There's one thing poor people have in common no matter who they are, they have no education. Education is the key; it's the way up, the way out. That's why you must do well in school Alex, not only for yourself but to help others as well".
In May 1933 Bertha starts to show subtle signs of a threatening illness, and those symptoms continue during a summer vacation with the aging Cynthia (Beah Richards) in Henning.
When Simon and his family return to Normal, they find that his antagonists have broken in, damaged their home, and destroyed much of their property.
One afternoon Simon returns to his home and learns that Bertha has experienced a relapse in her illness, and that her condition has become serious. Minutes later, because of internal bleeding due to an undisclosed problem, Bertha dies in Simon's arms while Alex watches.
Soon Simon drives his three sons to Henning, where the boys move into the bungalow with Cynthia and Elizabeth. On the front porch of the bungalow Alex listens to Cynthia, Elizabeth, and sometimes Cousin Georgia, while they retell the stories about Kunta Kinte, Kizzy, Chicken George, Tom, and the others.
Shortly afterward Grandma Cinthy shows Alex a large cross-section disc cut from the trunk of a redwood tree in California, and she explains it to him. Will has marked the annual rings of the trunk in such a way as to indicate the years when various relatives had been born, and when several major world events had occurred.
Chapter 5 - World War II[edit]
On 1 May 1939, seven years later, at age 17 Alex (Damon Evans) arrives in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where Simon now lives with Zeona (Diahann Carroll), his second wife, and where he now teaches agriculture at the Elizabeth City State Teachers College (a black school, later renamed as the Elizabeth City State University). Alex promptly sees that Zeona is pregnant. Although he was bright enough to enter college at age 15, his academic work has become so lackluster and mediocre that he has dropped out of the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) College (another black school, later renamed as the Alcorn State University), near Lorman, Mississippi. Simon strongly encourages Alex to enlist in one of the branches of the armed forces, in the expectation that two or three years of military life will cause and allow him to gain maturity.
In August 1939 Alex enlists in the US Coast Guard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and he reports directly aboard a cutter, USCGC Mendota (WHEC-69), without receiving the benefit of any boot camp or other basic training. However, Percival "Scotty" Scott (John Hancock), a gruff but kindly steward's mate first-class, the leading petty officer in the wardroom area among the mess attendants and steward's mates, takes Alex in tow. Alex begins as a mess attendant, starting on the career path toward his becoming a steward's mate, one of the few ratings available to black enlisted men in either the Navy or the Coast Guard during the era of World War II (WW2). (The real USCGC Mendota (WHEC-69) served 1945-73.)
While attending a church-sponsored dance for servicemen and local ladies, Alex meets Nan Branch (Debbie Allen), a timid, attractive, naïve, single young woman, and they continue to meet at the church dances. On the eighth such meeting Alex proposes marriage to Nan, and she accepts. They soon marry, then they visit Simon, Zeona, and their new baby, in Elizabeth City. Simon expresses disapproval because Alex has departed from his plan for him, and Zeona urges Simon to stop interfering.
Meanwhile on 7 December 1941 the Empire of Japan attacks the USA at Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii, thus drawing the US into the new war. By this time Scotty has advanced to the rate of chief petty officer (chief steward's mate).
By July 1942 Alex and Chief Scott are somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean aboard USS Murzim (AK-95), an ammunition ship, one of several Naval vessels manned by Coast Guard crews during WW2. Scotty asks Alex why he receives so many letters, and he answers, in effect, that, if he wishes to receive letters, then he must write letters – to friends and relatives back home. Then, at Scotty's request, Alex writes a love letter for Scotty to a girlfriend in Auckland, New Zealand, where the ship will make a port visit about two months later. The letter works so well that Scotty sets up Alex to write love letters for other shipmates for one dollar apiece. Thus Alex enters the writing business. (The real USS Murzim (AK-95) served 1943-46.)
While at sea Alex receives the news that Nan has given birth to a girl, and that she has given her mother's name, Lydia, to their baby. Alex expresses his pleasure about his new fatherhood, yet he says that he had wanted to give the girl the name of Cynthia, his maternal grandmother.
World War II ends, and both Simon and Alex start thinking about their respective plans for Alex. Simon makes a train journey to California, where he meets Alex at the Coast Guard Station on Yerba Buena Island, in the San Francisco Bay. Alex has advanced to the rate of petty officer first-class (steward's mate first-class). Simon and Alex articulate a sharp disagreement about the differences between their plans for Alex; Simon wants him to return to academia, but Alex intends to stay in the Coast Guard at least until he decides or discovers what else he should do. (Simon expresses a dream that Alex might become even a president of a university.)
Alex returns to the East Coast and to Nan and Lydia, and Nan again becomes pregnant. Alex requests and gets an assignment in New York City, so that he can live and work closer to the editors there, because of his intense interest in writing and his goal to become a published author.
Chapter 6 - Postwar[edit]
In November 1946 he and his family, in their Ford woodie station wagon, head northward to his next duty station, and they encounter not only racial discrimination but also frustration and disappointment while seeking a room in a motel or "auto court". Alex starts working, writing press releases in the public-relations (PR) office of the Coast Guard in Manhattan. While off duty he starts writing proposed articles and submitting them to magazines, but he receives only rejection slips.
Cdr. Robert Munroe (Andy Griffith), the officer in charge of the PR office, a Southerner with 30 years of experience in journalism, dismisses Alex's early writings as amateur but takes an interest in Alex, his work, and his plans, and he offers him constructive advice and guidance.
Alex continues to work hard on his writing, both on duty and off duty. He spends so much time on his own writing that Nan begins to complain, saying that he neglects her and their two children, Lydia (Kim Fields) and Billy (Joel Herd), by giving them so little time and attention.
While on annual leave from the Coast Guard, Alex and his family visit Cynthia, Elizabeth, and Cousin Georgia in the bungalow in Henning, and, partly with the encouragement of Grandma Cinthy, he starts to feel a need or wish to learn more about the roots of his family. (During that visit Cinthy tells Alex that the old slice from the redwood tree has become hauled away to a dump because insects had begun reducing it to sawdust.)
Alex continues to feel much frustration and disappointment about his lack of success in civilian commercial writing.
Alex seeks and in 1949 receives a change of his rating from steward's mate first-class to journalist first-class, and he remains as a journalist (no longer in the wardroom area). Later he advances to the rate of chief petty officer (chief journalist, the first chief journalist in the Coast Guard), and he continues as a chief journalist for the remainder of his 20-year military career.
On Christmas Eve 1950 Mel Klein (Milt Kogan), an independent writer on an assignment from a magazine editor, consults Alex, to get some statistics to go into a new article about the Coast Guard, and Alex asks Mel for advice. Mel tells him about Coronet, a small-format magazine (somewhat similar to the Reader's Digest), which, according to Mel, can't get enough short (600-word) human-interest stories.
In response to Mel's advice Alex that same night dives into his work after hours in the office and submerges himself in his writing and rewriting – to the extent that he loses sight of his special duties to his family that special night – to take home the gifts and the tree, for which Nan and the kids have prepared a place in their apartment, and which they have awaited and anticipated.
Sometime after sunrise on Christmas Day, Alex finally arrives at their apartment – barely in time to see Nan and their children as they walk out and step into a taxicab – because Nan has decided to leave Alex and to move in with her mother in her home. Nan and Alex later divorce.
Chapter 7 - The 1960s[edit]
In October 1960 Simon, Alex (James Earl Jones), George (Howard Rollins), and others gather in Henning for the funeral and burial of Aunt Lizzie. George is an attorney and a state senator (and the second black graduate of the School of Law at the University of Arkansas), Julius is an architect, and Alex is, as he describes himself, a professional writer with a respectable living. Simon implies that he does not feel as pleased with the accomplishments of Alex as he does with those of his two younger brothers.
In 1960, Alex meets Malcolm X (Al Freeman Jr.), and later he interviews him and a number of other notable people, including George Lincoln Rockwell (Marlon Brando), while writing for Playboy and the Reader's Digest.
Alex, as a co-author, writes also The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and he finishes it several weeks before the assassination of the subject person.
While Alex makes another visit in Henning, Cousin Georgia encourages him and his curiosity about his family heritage, then Alex continues his research – to the National Archives, a private source in North Carolina, a historical society in Annapolis, the headquarters of the United Nations, and eventually to the village of Jufureh in The Gambia in West Africa, where he listens to a native griot (a tribal oral historian), who tells about a young Mandinka man, Kunta Kinte, who went out to fetch wood to make a drum and then became captured, and who was never again seen.
Thus Alex concludes that he has truly discovered his ancestor and his history in Africa.
Epilogue[edit]
As with the original, the new series again concludes with a postscript by Alex himself, who encourages viewers to explore their own genealogy, in part by interviewing their older relatives, consulting written records, and holding family reunions.
For the first part of the story, see Roots
Cast[edit]
Georg Stanford Brown - Tom Harvey
Lynne Moody - Irene Harvey
Debbi Morgan - Elizabeth Harvey
Beah Richards - Cynthia Harvey Palmer (older)
Henry Fonda - Colonel Frederick Warner
Olivia de Havilland - Mrs. Warner
Richard Thomas - Jim Warner
Marc Singer - Andy Warner
Stan Shaw - Will Palmer
Fay Hauser - Carrie Barden
Irene Cara - Bertha Palmer Haley
Avon Long - Chicken George Moore
Roger E. Mosley - Lee Garnet
Paul Koslo - Earl Crowther
Harry Morgan - Bob Campbell
Dorian Harewood - Simon Haley
Ruby Dee - Queen Haley
Hal Williams - Alec Haley
Greg Morris - Beeman Jones
Brian Stokes Mitchell - John Dolan
Ja'net Dubois - Sally Harvey
Slim Gaillard - Sam Wesley
George Voskovec - Mr. Goldstein
Jason Wingreen - Judge Quartermain
Charles Robinson - Luke Bettiger
Ossie Davis - Dad Jones
Kene Holliday - Detroit
Albert Popwell - Fader
John Rubinstein - Lieutenant Hamilton Ten Eyck
Bernie Casey - Bubba Haywood
Pam Grier - Francey
Roosevelt Grier - Big Slew Johnson
James Daly - RSM Boyce
Percy Rodriguez - Boyd Moffatt
Robert Culp - Lyle Pettijohn
Dina Merrill - Mrs. Hickinger
Brock Peters - Ab Decker
Bever-Leigh Banfield - Cynthia Palmer (young adult)
Paul Winfield - Dr. Horace Huguley
Lynn Hamilton - Cousin Georgia
Kristoff St. John - Alex Haley (child)
Logan Ramsey - D.L. Lewis
Dennis Fimple - Sheriff Duffy
Damon Evans - Alex Haley (age 16-28)
Debbie Allen - Nan Branch Haley
Andy Griffith - Commander Robert Munroe
Diahann Carroll - Zeona Haley
Rafer Johnson - Nelson
Carmen McRae - Lily
John Hancock - Scotty
Telma Hopkins - Daisy
Kim Fields - Lydia Haley
Milt Kogan - Mel Klein
James Earl Jones - Alex Haley (age 39-46)
Howard Rollins - George Haley
Marlon Brando - George Lincoln Rockwell
Al Freeman, Jr. - Malcolm X
Barbara Barrie - Dodie Brattle
Linda Hopkins - Singer
Bobby Short - Pianist
Lee Chamberlin - Odile Richards
Norman Fell - Bernie Raymond
James Broderick - Dr. Lewis
Michael Constantine - Dr. Vansina
Johnny Sekka - Ebau Manga
Zakes Mokae - African Minister
Claudia McNeil - Sister Will Ada
Bianca Ferguson - Sophia
Philip Michael Thomas - Eddie Franklin
Production[edit]
Producers Stan Margulies and David L. Wolper were initially reluctant to make a sequel to the 1977 miniseries, but later agreed to do it.[1] Writer Ernest Kinoy then originally wrote an outline for Roots: The Next Generations based on the final seven chapters of Alex Haley's book Roots: The Saga of an American Family and about 1,000 pages worth of family recollections that Alex Haley dictated into a tape recorder.[1]
The producers aimed for casting high quality actors, and basically had no trouble signing the people they wanted because of the success of the first miniseries.[1] While Georg Stanford Brown reprises his role as Tom Harvey, James Earl Jones was selected partially due to his physical resemblance to Haley. Wanting to also participate in the miniseries, Marlon Brando basically just called out of the blue and asked for a small yet memorable role; he was cast as George Lincoln Rockwell[1] and won an Emmy Award for his performance.
Broadcast history[edit]
Episode list[edit]
Roots: The Next Generations originally aired on ABC as 7 two-hour episodes for consecutive nights from February 18 to February 24, 1979.

Episode
Approximate time period
Featured Kinte family member(s)

Chicken George
Tom and Irene Harvey
Elizabeth Harvey
Cynthia Harvey Palmer
Will Palmer
Bertha Palmer Haley
Simon Haley
Alex Haley
Part I 1882 – 1883 Yes Yes Yes Yes    
Part II 1896 – 1897  Yes Yes Yes Yes   
Part III 1914 – 1917   Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 
Part IV 1917 – 1921   Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 
Part V 1932 – 1933   Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Part VI 1939 – 1950   Yes Yes   Yes Yes
Part VII 1960 – 1967       Yes Yes
Ratings and viewers[edit]
The miniseries was watched by an estimated 110 million[2][3][4][5][6] viewers and averaged a 30.1 rating[4] and 45% share[4] of the audience.

Episode
Weekly Ratings
 Ranking[5][a]
Number of
 Households
Number of
 Viewers
Rating
Share
Date
Network

Part I #8 N/A 65 million[7] 27.8%[7] 41%[7] February 18, 1979 ABC
Part II #9 22 million[3] 65 million[8] 29.5%[3] N/A February 19, 1979 ABC
Part III #4 24.4 million[3] 70 million[8] 32.7%[3] 50%[8] February 20, 1979 ABC
Part IV #6 23.7 million[3] N/A 31.8%[3] N/A February 21, 1979 ABC
Part V #7 23.6 million[3] N/A 31.7%[3] N/A February 22, 1979 ABC
Part VI #10 21.5 million[3] N/A 28.9%[3] N/A February 23, 1979 ABC
Part VII #11 N/A N/A 28.6%[3] N/A February 24, 1979 ABC

^[a] Part I aired a week prior to the rest of the series in the ratings.
TV One[edit]
In July and September 2007, the network TV One reran the series hosted by several of the original cast including Lynne Moody, Dorian Harewood, Stan Shaw, Kristoff St. John, and Irene Cara.
DVD release[edit]
The miniseries was released on DVD by Warner Bros. on October 9, 2007
See also[edit]
Alex Haley's Queen
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Rich, Frank (February 18, 1979). "Television: A Super Sequel to Haley's Comet". Time. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
2.Jump up ^ "ABC Soard in Ratings With 'Roots' Sequel". Schenectady Gazette. February 24, 1979. p. 12. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
3.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l "110 million see 'Roots' video special". The Tuscaloosa News. March 1, 1979. p. 8. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
4.^ Jump up to: a b c "'Roots' Ratings Dip". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 28, 1979. p. 29. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
5.^ Jump up to: a b Hanauer, Joan (February 28, 1979). "ABC Takes "Roots" Again". The Bryan Times. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
6.Jump up ^ Museum of Broadcast Communications
7.^ Jump up to: a b c "Sunday's 'Roots II' Tops 2 Movies But 'Mork & Mindy' Leads Nielsens". Toledo Blade. February 20, 1979. p. P-4. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
8.^ Jump up to: a b c Harrison, Bernie (February 24, 1979). "Final 'Roots" Series May Lose Viewers". The Times-News. p. 11. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
External links[edit]
Roots: The Next Generations at the Internet Movie Database
Roots: The Next Generations at AllMovie
Roots: The Next Generations at TV.com


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Categories: 1970s American television series
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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Next_Generations










Roots: The Next Generations
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Roots: The Next Generations
RootsNextGen.jpg
Genre
Period piece
Created by
Alex Haley
Directed by
John Erman (eps. 1, 3, 4, 7)
Charles S. Dubin (ep. 2)
Georg Stanford Brown (ep. 5)
Lloyd Richards (ep. 6)
Produced by
Stan Margulies
Starring
James Earl Jones
Dorian Harewood
Irene Cara
Stan Shaw
 Georg Stanford Brown
Debbi Morgan
Music by
Gerald Fried
Budget
US$16.6 million
Country
United States
Language
English/Mandinka
Original channel
ABC
Original run
February 18, 1979  – February 24, 1979
Running time
840 minutes
No. of episodes
7
Preceded by
Roots (TV miniseries)
Followed by
Roots: The Gift
Roots: The Next Generations is a television miniseries, introduced in 1979, continuing, from 1882 to the 1960s, the fictionalized story of the family of Alex Haley and their life in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, USA. (Henning is about 48 miles north of Memphis, which is on the Mississippi River and in the southwest corner of the state, and which was then the largest city in it.) This sequel to the 1977 miniseries is based on the last seven chapters of Haley's novel entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family plus additional material by Haley.
Roots: The Next Generations was produced with a budget of $16.6 million, nearly three times as large as that of the original.[1]


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary 1.1 Chapter 1 - 1880s
1.2 Chapter 2 - Turn of the 20th Century
1.3 Chapter 3 - World War I
1.4 Chapter 4 - The Great Depression
1.5 Chapter 5 - World War II
1.6 Chapter 6 - Postwar
1.7 Chapter 7 - The 1960s
1.8 Epilogue
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Broadcast history 4.1 Episode list
4.2 Ratings and viewers
4.3 TV One
5 DVD release
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Plot summary[edit]
For the first part of the story, see Roots
Chapter 1 - 1880s[edit]
The story resumes in 1882, 12 years after the arrival of "Chicken George" Moore (Avon Long) and his family in Henning, in West Tennessee. George, elderly and showing his age, moves in with Tom Harvey (Georg Stanford Brown), one of his sons, along with Tom’s wife, Irene (Lynne Moody), and their two daughters, Elizabeth and Cynthia. Tom, a great-grandson of Kunta Kinte, has become a leader of the black community in Henning. Although he has established a working relationship with the town's white leader, Col. Frederick Warner (Henry Fonda), a former officer in the Confederate Army, race relations are strained, due in part to the new Jim Crow laws and similar influences.
Col. Warner's younger son, Jim (Richard Thomas), meets and falls in love with Carrie Barden (Fay Hauser), an attractive young African-American schoolteacher and a graduate of Fisk University, a black school in Nashville (the capital of the state and in Middle Tennessee). Tom has taken the lead in hiring Carrie for the local school for the black children. Col. Warner disapproves of the relationship between Jim and Carrie, so he seeks to persuade Tom to fire Carrie or to close the school. After an argument between Tom and his older daughter, Elizabeth (Debbi Morgan), about his refusal to accept her suitor, John Dolan (Brian Stokes Mitchell), because he is half white, Tom decides to allow Carrie to continue teaching. Jim and Carrie marry in Memphis, then Col. Warner disinherits Jim (by removing him from his will), but he says that he will ensure that no harm comes to the couple from the hoodlum white element of the town. Jim, with his new bride, receives a warm welcome to the local black church.
A year later, Chicken George dies in 1883 at age 77, and the family bury his body beside that of his wife, Mathilda "Tildy", who died in 1875 at age 67.
Chapter 2 - Turn of the 20th Century[edit]
In August 1896, 13 years later, Elizabeth, Tom's older daughter, arrives from Kansas City, Missouri, for an extended visit, amid tension between Tom and Elizabeth, due to Tom's rejection of her suitor years before.
Cynthia "Cinthy" (Bever-Leigh Banfield), Tom's younger daughter, meets and falls in love with Will Palmer (Stan Shaw), an ambitious and hard-working young man; after a properly supervised courtship the couple marry in their church.
Andrew Warner (Marc Singer), an unemployed playboy and the older son of Col. Warner, becomes interested in politics, and he eventually opposes his father in the public arena.
While Will works for Bob Campbell (Harry Morgan) at his lumberyard, he does so in such an enthusiastic, industrious, and effective way that he attracts the attention of both Col. Warner and T.J. Calloway (John Carter), the local banker. Because of Campbell's increasing problems with alcohol and his decreasing attention to his business, and after Campbell's default on his loan from the bank, Calloway forecloses, takes over the lumberyard, sells it to Will, and finances his purchase. Thus the R. Campbell Lumber Company becomes the W.E. Palmer Lumber Company.
By this time Jim and Carrie already have a son, named Frank "Frankie" (Marcus Chong), and they live peacefully and happily in the black community of Henning.
However, in the atmosphere of the growing anti-black attitudes in the South during the 1890s, racial tension increases in Henning too, as several incidents demonstrate. For example, Tom suddenly becomes turned away when he again applies to register to vote, and he forcefully insists that every time since the Civil War he has voted without interference, in both Alamance County, North Carolina, and in Lauderdale County, Tennessee.
Will and Cinthy rejoice over the birth of their daughter, Bertha George, named in part in honor of Chicken George, one of her great-grandfathers.
Chapter 3 - World War I[edit]
By September 1914, after 17 more years, telephones, electricity, and automobiles have arrived in Henning, both the town and Will Palmer's lumber company have grown, both Tom and Irene Harvey have died, as has Mrs. Warner, and Andrew Warner, the colonel's older son, now serves as a member of the US House of Representatives.
Dr. Frank Warner (Marcus Wyatt), the son of Jim and Carrie Warner, has completed undergraduate college, medical school, an internship, and a residency, and he's about to start his medical practice. Cinthy calls him "the first colored doctor in the county".
Will has prospered well enough that Will and Cynthia send their daughter, Bertha (Irene Cara), to Lane College, a black school in Jackson, Tennessee.
Col. Warner, frail and confused, collapses on a street while Jim, Carrie, and Frank are present nearby. They rush to him, and Frank starts to treat him. However, Earl Crowther (Paul Koslo), the Warner chauffeur, and a gang of rednecks take charge, ignore both Jim and Frank and nudge them aside, and insult Frank, who predicts that the colonel will die before they get him to the white physician. He does indeed die.
At the college Bertha meets and soon falls in love with Simon Alexander Haley (Dorian Harewood), a waiter in the dining room and a son of a sharecropper, who lives and works near Savannah, Hardin County, Tennessee, about 116 miles due east of Memphis. Simon, who greatly admires Booker T. Washington, quotes to Bertha from his writings, including these words: "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges to come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing". Referring to Washington, Simon says, "I have formed my life in his image".
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) resurges in Henning. They burn a cross, hold a parade, and burn down the clothing store of a Jewish merchant, Mr. Goldstein (Jiří Voskovec), who has moved to Henning from Chicago, Illinois, and who returns there.
Simon leaves Lane College, and he has made plans to continue his education at the Agricultural and Technical (A&T) College of North Carolina (which later becomes renamed as the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) State University), in Greensboro, North Carolina. He has applied to enroll in the school and has arranged to work on the campus to pay for his room and board.
His father, Alec Haley (Hal Williams) has promised him $50 to pay for his tuition, but now he tells him that he cannot keep his promise because of the recent poor crops due to floods and boll weevils. To avoid becoming an indebted sharecropper himself, Simon works the summer as a railway porter for the Pullman Company. He works with an older porter, Dad Jones (Ossie Davis), who becomes his fatherly friend and—in one instance with another porter—his protector. During one trip Simon meets and talks with a kindly and wealthy passenger, R.S.M. Boyce (James Daly), an executive of the Curtis Publishing Company, the publisher of The Saturday Evening Post and several other well-known magazines. They discuss Simon's plans and difficulties. When Boyce steps off the train, he hands to Simon a generous tip and one of his business cards, inviting him to inform him of his progress. When Simon leaves his position to return to school, he learns that Dad was fired for discussing unionization of the porters with a labor spy. When Simon arrives at the college, he learns that Boyce has already paid for the coming year in full for his textbooks, tuition, and room and board.
Simon and Bertha continue in keep in touch with each other, and Bertha and her parents, Will and Cynthia, travel to Simon's graduation, where he will receive his bachelor's degree in agriculture. When the family arrives at the campus, Bertha receives a message that Simon and six of his classmates have just left and enlisted in the US Army for service in the World War (the "Great War", later renamed as World War I). The young couple see each other briefly when Simon and his all-black platoon of recruits board a train to go to the next stage in his life.
During May 1918 Simon receives his basic training in an all-black company at Camp Grant, Illinois, near Rockford, about 85 miles west-northwest of Chicago, then he, in an all-black outfit, goes to France and takes part in the fighting against the German Army of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Before Simon goes overseas, Bertha meets Simon in Chicago for a weekend (after Cinthy pleads Bertha's case with Will, who first has vigorously opposed such a trip but eventually allows it).
While Simon is in the Army in France, Cousin Georgia Anderson (Lynn Hamilton), from Kansas City, visits Will and Cinthy, and she reveals that Chicken George fought with the Union Army during the Battle of Fort Pillow, due west of Henning, on the Chickasaw Bluffs, overlooking the Mississippi River. (That point implies that he survived the infamous Massacre of Fort Pillow.)
In July 1918 Simon receives word in France that his father has died in a hospital in Memphis; in due time, after the end of the war, Simon returns to the U.S.
Andy Warner raises his political sights even higher, and he becomes elected to the US Senate.
After the Army discharges Simon, on his way back home to Henning, he and several friends stop at the home of one of them in Knoxville, in East Tennessee. While they are there, the Knoxville Riot of 1919 (a part of the Red Summer of 1919) takes place. Earl Crowther, now an aide to Sen. Andrew Warner, goes to Knoxville to take part in the mischief, and he dies there (at the hands of one of Simon's Army buddies).
Simon arrives in Henning and receives a robust welcome, especially from Bertha, and the young couple move ahead with the plans for their wedding.
Will builds an attractive bungalow for Bertha and Simon, assuming that they will settle in Henning, but without asking about their own plans.
On the first Sunday after the completion of the house, the wedding takes place in their church building, then everyone adjourns to the front lawn of the new home for the reception, and a number of white friends and neighbors join them. Among them are Sen. Andy Warner and his fancy new wife, from Washington, DC, and New York City, who arrive in a Rolls-Royce open touring car with a chauffeur.
Afterward Mr. and Mrs. Simon Haley motor away in a Ford Model T to Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, where Simon will start working on his master's degree in agriculture.
Later Will and Cinthy move into the bungalow. (The house still stands; it's now known as the Alex Haley House and Museum, and, as a state-owned historic site, it's open to the public.)
In November 1921 Simon and Bertha return to Henning to visit Will and Cinthy, and they surprise them with their three-month-old son, Alexander Murray Palmer Haley, whom Will promptly carries outside, lifts up, and ceremonially shows the Moon, in a tradition which was first portrayed in the first Roots series by Omoro Kinte and baby Kunta Kinte in The Gambia in West Africa in 1750 (though, in the first Roots, the tradition was a naming ritual, where the father held the naked child to the stars, gave the child a name, and said, "behold the only thing greater than yourself.").
Chapter 4 - The Great Depression[edit]
Late in the summer of 1932, after 11 more years, during the Great Depression, Simon, Bertha, and their children stay temporarily in the bungalow with Will and Cynthia. At age 10 Alex (Christoff St. John, who later respelled his first name as Kristoff) has two younger brothers, George (Stevan Crutchfield), named for Chicken George, and Julius (Ticker Thompson). While working at Will's lumberyard, Simon unsuccessfully tries to show Will better methods for bookkeeping and inventory control, but Will regards and uses him as a manual laborer.
Shortly, however, Simon receives a special-delivery letter offering him a job as a professor of agriculture at the State Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) Institute for Negroes, in Normal, Alabama. (The school later becomes renamed as the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) University; the campus and the former town of Normal, named for the normal school established there, now lie within the city limits of Huntsville.)
Simon promptly and joyfully accepts his appointment, and he and his family move to Normal in their Chevrolet four-door sedan.
Not only does Prof. Haley teach his students in the classrooms and laboratories, but he also approaches the local farmers and, with little success, tells them about techniques which would enable them to replenish the soil and to produce better crops, using simple techniques, such as crop rotation. He meets Lyle Pettijohn (Robert Culp), the county agricultural agent and a son of a sharecropper in Greene County, Tennessee, so the two of them easily find mutual interests and objectives.
However, both Simon and Pettijohn meet resistance and incite violent reprisals by the white landowners.
Soon afterward Will dies in Henning.
While Bertha is out of town with the two younger sons for the funeral, Simon and Alex spend some special time together, during which Simon says to him, "There's one thing poor people have in common no matter who they are, they have no education. Education is the key; it's the way up, the way out. That's why you must do well in school Alex, not only for yourself but to help others as well".
In May 1933 Bertha starts to show subtle signs of a threatening illness, and those symptoms continue during a summer vacation with the aging Cynthia (Beah Richards) in Henning.
When Simon and his family return to Normal, they find that his antagonists have broken in, damaged their home, and destroyed much of their property.
One afternoon Simon returns to his home and learns that Bertha has experienced a relapse in her illness, and that her condition has become serious. Minutes later, because of internal bleeding due to an undisclosed problem, Bertha dies in Simon's arms while Alex watches.
Soon Simon drives his three sons to Henning, where the boys move into the bungalow with Cynthia and Elizabeth. On the front porch of the bungalow Alex listens to Cynthia, Elizabeth, and sometimes Cousin Georgia, while they retell the stories about Kunta Kinte, Kizzy, Chicken George, Tom, and the others.
Shortly afterward Grandma Cinthy shows Alex a large cross-section disc cut from the trunk of a redwood tree in California, and she explains it to him. Will has marked the annual rings of the trunk in such a way as to indicate the years when various relatives had been born, and when several major world events had occurred.
Chapter 5 - World War II[edit]
On 1 May 1939, seven years later, at age 17 Alex (Damon Evans) arrives in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where Simon now lives with Zeona (Diahann Carroll), his second wife, and where he now teaches agriculture at the Elizabeth City State Teachers College (a black school, later renamed as the Elizabeth City State University). Alex promptly sees that Zeona is pregnant. Although he was bright enough to enter college at age 15, his academic work has become so lackluster and mediocre that he has dropped out of the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) College (another black school, later renamed as the Alcorn State University), near Lorman, Mississippi. Simon strongly encourages Alex to enlist in one of the branches of the armed forces, in the expectation that two or three years of military life will cause and allow him to gain maturity.
In August 1939 Alex enlists in the US Coast Guard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and he reports directly aboard a cutter, USCGC Mendota (WHEC-69), without receiving the benefit of any boot camp or other basic training. However, Percival "Scotty" Scott (John Hancock), a gruff but kindly steward's mate first-class, the leading petty officer in the wardroom area among the mess attendants and steward's mates, takes Alex in tow. Alex begins as a mess attendant, starting on the career path toward his becoming a steward's mate, one of the few ratings available to black enlisted men in either the Navy or the Coast Guard during the era of World War II (WW2). (The real USCGC Mendota (WHEC-69) served 1945-73.)
While attending a church-sponsored dance for servicemen and local ladies, Alex meets Nan Branch (Debbie Allen), a timid, attractive, naïve, single young woman, and they continue to meet at the church dances. On the eighth such meeting Alex proposes marriage to Nan, and she accepts. They soon marry, then they visit Simon, Zeona, and their new baby, in Elizabeth City. Simon expresses disapproval because Alex has departed from his plan for him, and Zeona urges Simon to stop interfering.
Meanwhile on 7 December 1941 the Empire of Japan attacks the USA at Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii, thus drawing the US into the new war. By this time Scotty has advanced to the rate of chief petty officer (chief steward's mate).
By July 1942 Alex and Chief Scott are somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean aboard USS Murzim (AK-95), an ammunition ship, one of several Naval vessels manned by Coast Guard crews during WW2. Scotty asks Alex why he receives so many letters, and he answers, in effect, that, if he wishes to receive letters, then he must write letters – to friends and relatives back home. Then, at Scotty's request, Alex writes a love letter for Scotty to a girlfriend in Auckland, New Zealand, where the ship will make a port visit about two months later. The letter works so well that Scotty sets up Alex to write love letters for other shipmates for one dollar apiece. Thus Alex enters the writing business. (The real USS Murzim (AK-95) served 1943-46.)
While at sea Alex receives the news that Nan has given birth to a girl, and that she has given her mother's name, Lydia, to their baby. Alex expresses his pleasure about his new fatherhood, yet he says that he had wanted to give the girl the name of Cynthia, his maternal grandmother.
World War II ends, and both Simon and Alex start thinking about their respective plans for Alex. Simon makes a train journey to California, where he meets Alex at the Coast Guard Station on Yerba Buena Island, in the San Francisco Bay. Alex has advanced to the rate of petty officer first-class (steward's mate first-class). Simon and Alex articulate a sharp disagreement about the differences between their plans for Alex; Simon wants him to return to academia, but Alex intends to stay in the Coast Guard at least until he decides or discovers what else he should do. (Simon expresses a dream that Alex might become even a president of a university.)
Alex returns to the East Coast and to Nan and Lydia, and Nan again becomes pregnant. Alex requests and gets an assignment in New York City, so that he can live and work closer to the editors there, because of his intense interest in writing and his goal to become a published author.
Chapter 6 - Postwar[edit]
In November 1946 he and his family, in their Ford woodie station wagon, head northward to his next duty station, and they encounter not only racial discrimination but also frustration and disappointment while seeking a room in a motel or "auto court". Alex starts working, writing press releases in the public-relations (PR) office of the Coast Guard in Manhattan. While off duty he starts writing proposed articles and submitting them to magazines, but he receives only rejection slips.
Cdr. Robert Munroe (Andy Griffith), the officer in charge of the PR office, a Southerner with 30 years of experience in journalism, dismisses Alex's early writings as amateur but takes an interest in Alex, his work, and his plans, and he offers him constructive advice and guidance.
Alex continues to work hard on his writing, both on duty and off duty. He spends so much time on his own writing that Nan begins to complain, saying that he neglects her and their two children, Lydia (Kim Fields) and Billy (Joel Herd), by giving them so little time and attention.
While on annual leave from the Coast Guard, Alex and his family visit Cynthia, Elizabeth, and Cousin Georgia in the bungalow in Henning, and, partly with the encouragement of Grandma Cinthy, he starts to feel a need or wish to learn more about the roots of his family. (During that visit Cinthy tells Alex that the old slice from the redwood tree has become hauled away to a dump because insects had begun reducing it to sawdust.)
Alex continues to feel much frustration and disappointment about his lack of success in civilian commercial writing.
Alex seeks and in 1949 receives a change of his rating from steward's mate first-class to journalist first-class, and he remains as a journalist (no longer in the wardroom area). Later he advances to the rate of chief petty officer (chief journalist, the first chief journalist in the Coast Guard), and he continues as a chief journalist for the remainder of his 20-year military career.
On Christmas Eve 1950 Mel Klein (Milt Kogan), an independent writer on an assignment from a magazine editor, consults Alex, to get some statistics to go into a new article about the Coast Guard, and Alex asks Mel for advice. Mel tells him about Coronet, a small-format magazine (somewhat similar to the Reader's Digest), which, according to Mel, can't get enough short (600-word) human-interest stories.
In response to Mel's advice Alex that same night dives into his work after hours in the office and submerges himself in his writing and rewriting – to the extent that he loses sight of his special duties to his family that special night – to take home the gifts and the tree, for which Nan and the kids have prepared a place in their apartment, and which they have awaited and anticipated.
Sometime after sunrise on Christmas Day, Alex finally arrives at their apartment – barely in time to see Nan and their children as they walk out and step into a taxicab – because Nan has decided to leave Alex and to move in with her mother in her home. Nan and Alex later divorce.
Chapter 7 - The 1960s[edit]
In October 1960 Simon, Alex (James Earl Jones), George (Howard Rollins), and others gather in Henning for the funeral and burial of Aunt Lizzie. George is an attorney and a state senator (and the second black graduate of the School of Law at the University of Arkansas), Julius is an architect, and Alex is, as he describes himself, a professional writer with a respectable living. Simon implies that he does not feel as pleased with the accomplishments of Alex as he does with those of his two younger brothers.
In 1960, Alex meets Malcolm X (Al Freeman Jr.), and later he interviews him and a number of other notable people, including George Lincoln Rockwell (Marlon Brando), while writing for Playboy and the Reader's Digest.
Alex, as a co-author, writes also The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and he finishes it several weeks before the assassination of the subject person.
While Alex makes another visit in Henning, Cousin Georgia encourages him and his curiosity about his family heritage, then Alex continues his research – to the National Archives, a private source in North Carolina, a historical society in Annapolis, the headquarters of the United Nations, and eventually to the village of Jufureh in The Gambia in West Africa, where he listens to a native griot (a tribal oral historian), who tells about a young Mandinka man, Kunta Kinte, who went out to fetch wood to make a drum and then became captured, and who was never again seen.
Thus Alex concludes that he has truly discovered his ancestor and his history in Africa.
Epilogue[edit]
As with the original, the new series again concludes with a postscript by Alex himself, who encourages viewers to explore their own genealogy, in part by interviewing their older relatives, consulting written records, and holding family reunions.
For the first part of the story, see Roots
Cast[edit]
Georg Stanford Brown - Tom Harvey
Lynne Moody - Irene Harvey
Debbi Morgan - Elizabeth Harvey
Beah Richards - Cynthia Harvey Palmer (older)
Henry Fonda - Colonel Frederick Warner
Olivia de Havilland - Mrs. Warner
Richard Thomas - Jim Warner
Marc Singer - Andy Warner
Stan Shaw - Will Palmer
Fay Hauser - Carrie Barden
Irene Cara - Bertha Palmer Haley
Avon Long - Chicken George Moore
Roger E. Mosley - Lee Garnet
Paul Koslo - Earl Crowther
Harry Morgan - Bob Campbell
Dorian Harewood - Simon Haley
Ruby Dee - Queen Haley
Hal Williams - Alec Haley
Greg Morris - Beeman Jones
Brian Stokes Mitchell - John Dolan
Ja'net Dubois - Sally Harvey
Slim Gaillard - Sam Wesley
George Voskovec - Mr. Goldstein
Jason Wingreen - Judge Quartermain
Charles Robinson - Luke Bettiger
Ossie Davis - Dad Jones
Kene Holliday - Detroit
Albert Popwell - Fader
John Rubinstein - Lieutenant Hamilton Ten Eyck
Bernie Casey - Bubba Haywood
Pam Grier - Francey
Roosevelt Grier - Big Slew Johnson
James Daly - RSM Boyce
Percy Rodriguez - Boyd Moffatt
Robert Culp - Lyle Pettijohn
Dina Merrill - Mrs. Hickinger
Brock Peters - Ab Decker
Bever-Leigh Banfield - Cynthia Palmer (young adult)
Paul Winfield - Dr. Horace Huguley
Lynn Hamilton - Cousin Georgia
Kristoff St. John - Alex Haley (child)
Logan Ramsey - D.L. Lewis
Dennis Fimple - Sheriff Duffy
Damon Evans - Alex Haley (age 16-28)
Debbie Allen - Nan Branch Haley
Andy Griffith - Commander Robert Munroe
Diahann Carroll - Zeona Haley
Rafer Johnson - Nelson
Carmen McRae - Lily
John Hancock - Scotty
Telma Hopkins - Daisy
Kim Fields - Lydia Haley
Milt Kogan - Mel Klein
James Earl Jones - Alex Haley (age 39-46)
Howard Rollins - George Haley
Marlon Brando - George Lincoln Rockwell
Al Freeman, Jr. - Malcolm X
Barbara Barrie - Dodie Brattle
Linda Hopkins - Singer
Bobby Short - Pianist
Lee Chamberlin - Odile Richards
Norman Fell - Bernie Raymond
James Broderick - Dr. Lewis
Michael Constantine - Dr. Vansina
Johnny Sekka - Ebau Manga
Zakes Mokae - African Minister
Claudia McNeil - Sister Will Ada
Bianca Ferguson - Sophia
Philip Michael Thomas - Eddie Franklin
Production[edit]
Producers Stan Margulies and David L. Wolper were initially reluctant to make a sequel to the 1977 miniseries, but later agreed to do it.[1] Writer Ernest Kinoy then originally wrote an outline for Roots: The Next Generations based on the final seven chapters of Alex Haley's book Roots: The Saga of an American Family and about 1,000 pages worth of family recollections that Alex Haley dictated into a tape recorder.[1]
The producers aimed for casting high quality actors, and basically had no trouble signing the people they wanted because of the success of the first miniseries.[1] While Georg Stanford Brown reprises his role as Tom Harvey, James Earl Jones was selected partially due to his physical resemblance to Haley. Wanting to also participate in the miniseries, Marlon Brando basically just called out of the blue and asked for a small yet memorable role; he was cast as George Lincoln Rockwell[1] and won an Emmy Award for his performance.
Broadcast history[edit]
Episode list[edit]
Roots: The Next Generations originally aired on ABC as 7 two-hour episodes for consecutive nights from February 18 to February 24, 1979.

Episode
Approximate time period
Featured Kinte family member(s)

Chicken George
Tom and Irene Harvey
Elizabeth Harvey
Cynthia Harvey Palmer
Will Palmer
Bertha Palmer Haley
Simon Haley
Alex Haley
Part I 1882 – 1883 Yes Yes Yes Yes    
Part II 1896 – 1897  Yes Yes Yes Yes   
Part III 1914 – 1917   Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 
Part IV 1917 – 1921   Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 
Part V 1932 – 1933   Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Part VI 1939 – 1950   Yes Yes   Yes Yes
Part VII 1960 – 1967       Yes Yes
Ratings and viewers[edit]
The miniseries was watched by an estimated 110 million[2][3][4][5][6] viewers and averaged a 30.1 rating[4] and 45% share[4] of the audience.

Episode
Weekly Ratings
 Ranking[5][a]
Number of
 Households
Number of
 Viewers
Rating
Share
Date
Network

Part I #8 N/A 65 million[7] 27.8%[7] 41%[7] February 18, 1979 ABC
Part II #9 22 million[3] 65 million[8] 29.5%[3] N/A February 19, 1979 ABC
Part III #4 24.4 million[3] 70 million[8] 32.7%[3] 50%[8] February 20, 1979 ABC
Part IV #6 23.7 million[3] N/A 31.8%[3] N/A February 21, 1979 ABC
Part V #7 23.6 million[3] N/A 31.7%[3] N/A February 22, 1979 ABC
Part VI #10 21.5 million[3] N/A 28.9%[3] N/A February 23, 1979 ABC
Part VII #11 N/A N/A 28.6%[3] N/A February 24, 1979 ABC

^[a] Part I aired a week prior to the rest of the series in the ratings.
TV One[edit]
In July and September 2007, the network TV One reran the series hosted by several of the original cast including Lynne Moody, Dorian Harewood, Stan Shaw, Kristoff St. John, and Irene Cara.
DVD release[edit]
The miniseries was released on DVD by Warner Bros. on October 9, 2007
See also[edit]
Alex Haley's Queen
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Rich, Frank (February 18, 1979). "Television: A Super Sequel to Haley's Comet". Time. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
2.Jump up ^ "ABC Soard in Ratings With 'Roots' Sequel". Schenectady Gazette. February 24, 1979. p. 12. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
3.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l "110 million see 'Roots' video special". The Tuscaloosa News. March 1, 1979. p. 8. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
4.^ Jump up to: a b c "'Roots' Ratings Dip". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 28, 1979. p. 29. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
5.^ Jump up to: a b Hanauer, Joan (February 28, 1979). "ABC Takes "Roots" Again". The Bryan Times. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
6.Jump up ^ Museum of Broadcast Communications
7.^ Jump up to: a b c "Sunday's 'Roots II' Tops 2 Movies But 'Mork & Mindy' Leads Nielsens". Toledo Blade. February 20, 1979. p. P-4. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
8.^ Jump up to: a b c Harrison, Bernie (February 24, 1979). "Final 'Roots" Series May Lose Viewers". The Times-News. p. 11. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
External links[edit]
Roots: The Next Generations at the Internet Movie Database
Roots: The Next Generations at AllMovie
Roots: The Next Generations at TV.com


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Categories: 1970s American television series
1979 American television series debuts
1979 American television series endings
African-American genealogy
American Broadcasting Company network shows
American television miniseries
Films based on novels
Films about race and ethnicity
Roots (TV miniseries)
Television sequel films
Television programs based on novels
Television series based on actual events
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries winners
Television series set in the 1880s
Television series set in the 1890s
Television series set in the 1910s
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Television series set in the 1930s
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Television series set in the 1950s
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Television series by The Wolper Organization


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Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family book cover
First edition cover

Author
Alex Haley
Country
United States
Language
English
Genre
novel
Publisher
Doubleday

Publication date
 17 August 1976
Media type
Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages
704 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN
ISBN 0-385-03787-2 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC
2188350

Dewey Decimal
 929/.2/0973
LC Class
E185.97.H24 A33
Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States, and considered one of the most important U.S. works of the twentieth century. The novel spent months on The New York Times Best Seller List, including 22 weeks in that list's top spot. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979). It stimulated interest in genealogy and appreciation for African-American history.
Following the success of the novel and the miniseries, Haley was accused by two authors of plagiarism of their novels. Harold Courlander successfully asserted that Roots was plagiarized from his novel The African, published in 1967. The resulting trial ended with an out-of-court settlement and Haley's admission that some passages within Roots had been copied from Courlander's work; he said it was unintentional.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Characters in Roots
3 Family tree
4 Reception
5 Criticism 5.1 Plagiarism
6 Historical accuracy
7 Related scholarship
8 Television and audio adaptations
9 Publication details
10 Legacy and honors
11 See also
12 References
13 See also

Plot[edit]
Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives—including his Grandmother Cynthia, whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865—Alex Haley claimed to have traced his family history back to "the African," Kunta Kinte, captured by members of a contentious tribe and sold to slave traders in 1767. In the novel, 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. He created a colorful history of his family from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, which led him back to his heartland of Africa.
Characters in Roots[edit]
##Kunta Kinte – original protagonist: a young man of the Mandinka people, grows up in the Gambia in a small village called Juffure; he was raised as a Muslim before being captured and enslaved. Renamed Toby.
##John Waller – planter, who buys Kunta
##Dr. William Waller – doctor of medicine and John's brother: buys Kunta from him
##Bell Waller – cook to the doctor; Kunta marries Bell[clarification needed]
##Kizzy Waller (later Kizzy Lea) – daughter of Kunta and Bell
##Missy Anne – Dr. Waller's niece, who lives off the plantation, but visits Dr Waller regularly. She befriends Kizzy and teaches her reading and writing by playing "school".
##Tom Lea – slave owner in North Carolina to whom Kizzy is sold
##George Lea – son to Kizzy and Tom Lea, he is called "Chicken George"
##Matilda – whom George later marries
##Tom Murray – son of Chicken George and Matilda
##Cynthia – the youngest of Tom and Irene's eight children (granddaughter of Chicken George)
##Bertha – one of Cynthia's children; the 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; allegedly the great-great-great-great grandson (6 generations) of Kunta Kinte.
Family tree[edit]

































 Sireng Kinte

 Kairaba Kunta Kinte

 Yaisa Kinte







































































































 Janneh Kinte

 Saloum Kinte

 Omoro Kinte

 Binta Kebba













































































 







































































 Kunta Kinte

 Belle Waller

 Lamin Kinte

 Suwadu Kinte

 Madi Kinte












































































 Tom Lea

 Kizzy Waller












































































 George Lea

 Matilda























































































 
























































































Virgil

 Lily Su

 Ashford

 George

 Tom Murray

 Irene

 James

 Louis

 Kizzy

 Mary



























































































 









































































 Uriah





 Maria

 Ellen

 Wini

 Matilda

 Elizabeth

 Tom

 Will Palmer

 Cynthia













































































 




































 Zeona Hatcher









 Simon Alexander Haley









 Bertha George Palmer







































































































 

































































 Lois Haley

 Alex Haley
 author

 George Haley

 Julius {{{Mya Tramble Johnson Haley}}}

Reception[edit]



 Historical marker in front of Alex Haley's boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee (2007)
Published in October 1976 amid significant advance expectations,[1] Roots was immediately successful, garnering a slew of positive reviews[2][3] and debuting at #5 of The New York Times Best Seller list (with The Times choosing to classify it as non-fiction).[4] By mid-November, it had risen to the #1 spot on the list.[5] The television adaptation of the book aired in January 1977, further fueling book sales. Within seven months of its release, Roots had sold over 1.5 million copies.[6]
In total, Roots spent 22 weeks at the #1 spot on The Times' list, including each of the first 18 weeks of 1977, before falling to #3 on May 8.[7] It did not fall off of the list entirely until August 7.[8] Ultimately, it was on the list for a total 46 weeks.[9] Together, the success of the novel and its 1977 television adaptation, sparked an explosion of interest in the fields of genealogy and researching family histories.[10][11][12]
Haley earned a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1977 for Roots.[13] The television miniseries garnered many awards, including nine Emmys and a Peabody.
Criticism[edit]
Plagiarism[edit]
See also: Harold Courlander: Roots and the issue of plagiarism
In the spring of 1977, Haley was charged with plagiarism in separate lawsuits by Harold Courlander and Margaret Walker Alexander. Courlander, an anthropologist, charged that Roots was copied largely from his novel The African (1967). Walker claimed that Haley had plagiarized from her Civil War-era novel, Jubilee (1966). Legal proceedings in each case were concluded late in 1978. Courlander's suit was settled out of court for $650,000 and an acknowledgment from Haley that certain passages within Roots were copied from The African.[14] Haley claimed that the appropriation of Courlander's passages had been unintentional.[15] Walker's case was dismissed by the court, which, in comparing the content of Roots with that of Jubilee, found that "no actionable similarities exist between the works."[16][17]
Historical accuracy[edit]

Slavery
COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen TMnr 3912-475.jpg

Contemporary[show]













Historical[show]































By country or region[show]









































































Religion[show]







Opposition and resistance[show]





















Related[show]


























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Because Haley discussed his massive research and claimed that the family accounts in Virginia and North Carolina were based on verifiable documented facts, critics were disconcerted when checking revealed that not to be the case. They could have accepted a novel and judged it on its own terms, but Haley claimed it to be "true".[18] Although Haley acknowledged the novel was primarily a work of fiction (he described it as "faction"), he claimed that his ancestor was Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now the Gambia. He said that Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery where he was given the name Toby. While held by John Waller, Kinte had a daughter named Kizzy, who was Haley's great-great-great grandmother. Haley said that he had identified the slave ship that transported Kunta Kinte from Africa to North America in 1767.
Haley also suggested that his portrayal of life and figures among the slaves and masters in Virginia and North Carolina were based on facts which he had confirmed through historical documents. In the concluding chapter of Roots Alex Haley wrote:
“ 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.[19] ”
Haley said that most of the dialogue and necessary incidents were fictional, based on what he knew took place and what the research led him to feel took place.[19]
Historians and genealogists have said that he did not rely on facts as closely as he represented. For example, researchers have cast doubts on whether Haley tracked his ancestry to a specific village and individual, or was being told what he wanted to hear by the people who lived there.[20][21][22][23] Donald R. Wright, an Africanist historian, and Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills, a historian and a genealogist, respectively, who specialize in African-American and southern history, separately revisited parts of Haley's research. They concluded he was unlikely to have been able to make all the stated connections. The Millses found that historical documents strongly contradicted his accounts allegedly based on fact of family history in the colonies.
Professor Wright focused on Haley's identification and portrayal of alleged African ancestors. He noted the unreliability of twentieth-century griots and village elders for historical accounts of the 1700s, and significant inaccuracies in the portrayal of Juffure as a pastoral village.
Several years later, the Millses published an article that focused upon Haley's identification and portrayal of four generations of slave forebears and masters in Virginia and North Carolina. Their reporting concluded: "Those same plantation records, wills, and censuses cited by Mr. Haley not only fail to document his story, but they contradict each and every pre-Civil War statement of Afro-American lineage in 'Roots'." [24][25] They fault Haley for failing to reconcile his family stories by giving precedence to the facts found in documents and other evidence, rather than oral histories, but presenting his work as factually based. Among other differences, they found several records of a slave named Toby being held by the Waller family five years before his arrival by slave ship in Virginia, as told by Haley. They concluded the many contradictions weakened the author's assertion that "By 1967, I felt I had the seven generations of the U.S. side documented."[24]
Haley criticized his detractors' reliance upon written records in their evaluation of his work, contending that such records were "sporadic" and frequently inaccurate with regard to such data as slave births and ownership transactions. Haley asserted that for African-American genealogy, "well-kept oral history is without question the best source."[26]
Concerns were raised about the trustworthiness of Kebba Fofana from the Gambia, whom Haley had cited as a significant source. He said Fofana was a griot in Juffure, who, during Haley's visit, confirmed the tale of the disappearance of Kunta Kinte. The separate investigations by Mark Ottaway of The Sunday Times and Professor Wright found that Fofana was not a genuine griot, and that he was aware of Haley's pending visit. He may have been coached to relate a story matching Haley's chronicle. In subsequent re-tellings, details of Fofana's story failed to match that first account.[20][21][22][23] Haley did not respond directly to the work of either Wright or Ottaway, but said that the latter's article was "unwarranted, unfair and unjust", and added that he had no reason to think Fofana unreliable.[27]
Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was a personal friend of Haley, but years after his death Gates acknowledged doubts about the author's claims. He said,

"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."[28]
Gates later was the host of African American Lives, a TV series that relied on research by historians and genealogists, but also on DNA testing, to reveal to prominent American figures facts of their family histories.
Related scholarship[edit]
##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
##Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "Roots and the New 'Faction': A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?", Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 89 (January 1981): 3-26. PDF at Historic Pathways [4].
##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.
##Wright, Donald R. "Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants," History of Africa 8 (1981): 205-217.
Television and audio adaptations[edit]
Main article: Roots (TV miniseries)
Roots was made into a 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. 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 third 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 Hattie Carraway, and Tim Russ as house slave Marcellus (all four actors later became prominent as leading actors in the Star Trek franchise).
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.[23]
In November 2013, the History channel announced that it was developing an eight-hour Roots miniseries with Mark Wolper, son of the original show's original producer David L. Wolper. This version will combine elements from both Haley's book and its 1977 adaptation.[29]
Publication details[edit]
##1976, USA, Doubleday Books (ISBN 0-385-03787-2), Pub date 12 September 1976, hardback (First edition)
##1977, UK, Hutchinson (ISBN 0-09-129680-3), Pub date ? April 1977, hardback
##1978, UK, Picador (ISBN 0-330-25301-8), Pub date 14 April 1978, paperback
##1980, USA, Bantam Books (ISBN 0-685-01405-3), Pub date ? November 1980, paperback (Teacher's guide)
##1982, UK, GK Hall (ISBN 0-8161-6639-0), Pub date ? December 1982, hardback
##1985, USA, Vintage (ISBN 0-09-952200-4), Pub date ? May 1985, paperback
##1992, USA, Bantam Doubleday Dell (ISBN 0-440-17464-3), Pub date 31 December 1992, paperback
##1994, USA, Vintage (ISBN 0-09-936281-3), Pub date 21 January 1994, paperback
##1999, USA, Rebound by Sagebrush (ISBN 0-8085-1103-3), Pub date ? October 1999, hardback (Library edition)
##2000, USA, Wings (ISBN 0-517-20860-1), Pub date ? September 2000, hardback
##2006, USA, Buccaneer Books (ISBN 1-56849-471-8), Pub date 30 August 2006, hardback
##2007, USA, Vanguard Press (ISBN 1593154496), Pub date 22 May 2007, paperback
Legacy and honors[edit]



Alex Haley's boyhood home and his grave beside the home (2007)##Haley received a Pulitzer Prize for his book, and the TV series won several major awards.
##Including weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, the book is considered a publishing and cultural sensation.
##The state of Tennessee put a historical marker by Haley's childhood home in Henning, noting the influence he had as an author because of Roots.
##He was buried in the front yard of his childhood home, where a memorial marks the gravesite.
See also[edit]
##Queen: The Story of an American Family
##Treatment of slaves in the United States
##Slavery in the United States
References[edit]



 Alex Haley's grave beside his boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee (2007)
1.Jump up ^ (1976, June 13). "Book Ends", The New York Times, p. 222
2.Jump up ^ (1976, December 13). "CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINATES 20 BOOKS BY U.S. AUTHORS", The New York Times, page 32
3.Jump up ^ (1976, December 5)."1976: A Selection of Noteworthy Titles", The New York Times, page 284
4.Jump up ^ (1976, October 22). "Best Seller List", The New York Times, page 254
5.Jump up ^ (1976, November 21). "Best Seller List — November 21, 1976", The New York Times, page 254
6.Jump up ^ McFadden, Robert D. (1977, April 24). "Alex Haley Denies Allegation That Parts of 'Roots' Were Copied From Novel Written by Mississippi Teacher", The New York Times, p. 4
7.Jump up ^ The New York Times Best Seller List — May 8, 1977
8.Jump up ^ The New York Times Best Seller List — August 7, 1977
9.Jump up ^ The New York Times Best Seller List — September 18, 1977
10.Jump up ^ Cattani, Richard J. (1977, March 21). "The boom in ancestor-hunting", Christian Science Monitor
11.Jump up ^ (1977, February 19). "'Roots' Boosts Interest In LDS Genealogy Units", The Deseret News
12.Jump up ^ Michelle Hudson, "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
13.Jump up ^ Carmody, Deidre. (1977, April 19). "Haley Gets Special Pulitzer Prize; Lufkin, Tex., News Takes a Medal", The New York Times, page 69
14.Jump up ^ Fein, Esther B. (March 3, 1993). "Book Notes". The New York Times.
15.Jump up ^ Crowley, Anne S. (October 24, 1985). "Research Help Supplies Backbone for Haley's Book". Chicago Tribune.
16.Jump up ^ (1978, September 21). "Judge Rules "Roots" Original", Associated Press
17.Jump up ^ (1978, September 22). "Suit against Alex Haley is dismissed", United Press International
18.Jump up ^ Nobile, Phillip. "Alex Haley's Hoax," The Village Voice, February 23, 1993
19.^ Jump up to: a b Haley, Alex (2007). Roots: The Saga of an American Family (30, annotated ed.). Vanguard Press. 884–885. ISBN 1-59315-449-6. Retrieved 2010-02-23.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Ottaway, Mark. (1977, April 10). Donald R. Wright, "Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants," History of Africa 8 (1981): 205-217. "Tangled Roots", The Sunday Times
21.^ Jump up to: a b MacDonald, Edgar. "A Twig Atop Running Water -- Griot History," Virginia Genealogical Society Newsletter, July/August, 1991
22.^ Jump up to: a b The Roots of Alex Haley. Documentary. Directed by James Kent. BBC Bookmark, 1996
23.^ Jump up to: a b c Kloer, Phil (May 25, 2007). "30 years later, Haleys re-establish 'Roots'". The News & Observer. Archived from the original on October 15, 2007. Retrieved 2010-02-23.
 Quote: "Historians also have cast a great deal of doubt as to whether Haley truly tracked down his ancestral village or was merely being told what he wanted to hear by the people who lived there."
24.^ Jump up to: a b Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "Roots and the New 'Faction': A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?", Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 89 (January 1981): 3-26 [1].[
25.Jump up ^ Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "The Genealogist's Assessment of Alex Haley's Roots,", National Genealogical Society Quarterly 72 (March 1984): 35-49. [2]
26.Jump up ^ Kaplan, Eliot. (1981, August 2). "Roots: The Saga Continues", Lakeland Ledger
27.Jump up ^ (1977, April 11). "'Roots' author charges story smears book", Associated Press
28.Jump up ^ Beam, Alex. "The Prize Fight Over Alex Haley's Tangled 'Roots'", Boston Globe, October 30, 1998
29.Jump up ^ [3]
See also[edit]

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Categories: 1976 novels
African-American genealogy
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Roots (TV miniseries)
Southern United States in fiction
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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family










Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family book cover
First edition cover

Author
Alex Haley
Country
United States
Language
English
Genre
novel
Publisher
Doubleday

Publication date
 17 August 1976
Media type
Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages
704 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN
ISBN 0-385-03787-2 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC
2188350

Dewey Decimal
 929/.2/0973
LC Class
E185.97.H24 A33
Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States, and considered one of the most important U.S. works of the twentieth century. The novel spent months on The New York Times Best Seller List, including 22 weeks in that list's top spot. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979). It stimulated interest in genealogy and appreciation for African-American history.
Following the success of the novel and the miniseries, Haley was accused by two authors of plagiarism of their novels. Harold Courlander successfully asserted that Roots was plagiarized from his novel The African, published in 1967. The resulting trial ended with an out-of-court settlement and Haley's admission that some passages within Roots had been copied from Courlander's work; he said it was unintentional.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Characters in Roots
3 Family tree
4 Reception
5 Criticism 5.1 Plagiarism
6 Historical accuracy
7 Related scholarship
8 Television and audio adaptations
9 Publication details
10 Legacy and honors
11 See also
12 References
13 See also

Plot[edit]
Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives—including his Grandmother Cynthia, whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865—Alex Haley claimed to have traced his family history back to "the African," Kunta Kinte, captured by members of a contentious tribe and sold to slave traders in 1767. In the novel, 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. He created a colorful history of his family from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, which led him back to his heartland of Africa.
Characters in Roots[edit]
##Kunta Kinte – original protagonist: a young man of the Mandinka people, grows up in the Gambia in a small village called Juffure; he was raised as a Muslim before being captured and enslaved. Renamed Toby.
##John Waller – planter, who buys Kunta
##Dr. William Waller – doctor of medicine and John's brother: buys Kunta from him
##Bell Waller – cook to the doctor; Kunta marries Bell[clarification needed]
##Kizzy Waller (later Kizzy Lea) – daughter of Kunta and Bell
##Missy Anne – Dr. Waller's niece, who lives off the plantation, but visits Dr Waller regularly. She befriends Kizzy and teaches her reading and writing by playing "school".
##Tom Lea – slave owner in North Carolina to whom Kizzy is sold
##George Lea – son to Kizzy and Tom Lea, he is called "Chicken George"
##Matilda – whom George later marries
##Tom Murray – son of Chicken George and Matilda
##Cynthia – the youngest of Tom and Irene's eight children (granddaughter of Chicken George)
##Bertha – one of Cynthia's children; the 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; allegedly the great-great-great-great grandson (6 generations) of Kunta Kinte.
Family tree[edit]

































 Sireng Kinte

 Kairaba Kunta Kinte

 Yaisa Kinte







































































































 Janneh Kinte

 Saloum Kinte

 Omoro Kinte

 Binta Kebba













































































 







































































 Kunta Kinte

 Belle Waller

 Lamin Kinte

 Suwadu Kinte

 Madi Kinte












































































 Tom Lea

 Kizzy Waller












































































 George Lea

 Matilda























































































 
























































































Virgil

 Lily Su

 Ashford

 George

 Tom Murray

 Irene

 James

 Louis

 Kizzy

 Mary



























































































 









































































 Uriah





 Maria

 Ellen

 Wini

 Matilda

 Elizabeth

 Tom

 Will Palmer

 Cynthia













































































 




































 Zeona Hatcher









 Simon Alexander Haley









 Bertha George Palmer







































































































 

































































 Lois Haley

 Alex Haley
 author

 George Haley

 Julius {{{Mya Tramble Johnson Haley}}}

Reception[edit]



 Historical marker in front of Alex Haley's boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee (2007)
Published in October 1976 amid significant advance expectations,[1] Roots was immediately successful, garnering a slew of positive reviews[2][3] and debuting at #5 of The New York Times Best Seller list (with The Times choosing to classify it as non-fiction).[4] By mid-November, it had risen to the #1 spot on the list.[5] The television adaptation of the book aired in January 1977, further fueling book sales. Within seven months of its release, Roots had sold over 1.5 million copies.[6]
In total, Roots spent 22 weeks at the #1 spot on The Times' list, including each of the first 18 weeks of 1977, before falling to #3 on May 8.[7] It did not fall off of the list entirely until August 7.[8] Ultimately, it was on the list for a total 46 weeks.[9] Together, the success of the novel and its 1977 television adaptation, sparked an explosion of interest in the fields of genealogy and researching family histories.[10][11][12]
Haley earned a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1977 for Roots.[13] The television miniseries garnered many awards, including nine Emmys and a Peabody.
Criticism[edit]
Plagiarism[edit]
See also: Harold Courlander: Roots and the issue of plagiarism
In the spring of 1977, Haley was charged with plagiarism in separate lawsuits by Harold Courlander and Margaret Walker Alexander. Courlander, an anthropologist, charged that Roots was copied largely from his novel The African (1967). Walker claimed that Haley had plagiarized from her Civil War-era novel, Jubilee (1966). Legal proceedings in each case were concluded late in 1978. Courlander's suit was settled out of court for $650,000 and an acknowledgment from Haley that certain passages within Roots were copied from The African.[14] Haley claimed that the appropriation of Courlander's passages had been unintentional.[15] Walker's case was dismissed by the court, which, in comparing the content of Roots with that of Jubilee, found that "no actionable similarities exist between the works."[16][17]
Historical accuracy[edit]

Slavery
COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen TMnr 3912-475.jpg

Contemporary[show]













Historical[show]































By country or region[show]









































































Religion[show]







Opposition and resistance[show]





















Related[show]


























v ·
 t ·
 e
   
Because Haley discussed his massive research and claimed that the family accounts in Virginia and North Carolina were based on verifiable documented facts, critics were disconcerted when checking revealed that not to be the case. They could have accepted a novel and judged it on its own terms, but Haley claimed it to be "true".[18] Although Haley acknowledged the novel was primarily a work of fiction (he described it as "faction"), he claimed that his ancestor was Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now the Gambia. He said that Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery where he was given the name Toby. While held by John Waller, Kinte had a daughter named Kizzy, who was Haley's great-great-great grandmother. Haley said that he had identified the slave ship that transported Kunta Kinte from Africa to North America in 1767.
Haley also suggested that his portrayal of life and figures among the slaves and masters in Virginia and North Carolina were based on facts which he had confirmed through historical documents. In the concluding chapter of Roots Alex Haley wrote:
“ 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.[19] ”
Haley said that most of the dialogue and necessary incidents were fictional, based on what he knew took place and what the research led him to feel took place.[19]
Historians and genealogists have said that he did not rely on facts as closely as he represented. For example, researchers have cast doubts on whether Haley tracked his ancestry to a specific village and individual, or was being told what he wanted to hear by the people who lived there.[20][21][22][23] Donald R. Wright, an Africanist historian, and Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills, a historian and a genealogist, respectively, who specialize in African-American and southern history, separately revisited parts of Haley's research. They concluded he was unlikely to have been able to make all the stated connections. The Millses found that historical documents strongly contradicted his accounts allegedly based on fact of family history in the colonies.
Professor Wright focused on Haley's identification and portrayal of alleged African ancestors. He noted the unreliability of twentieth-century griots and village elders for historical accounts of the 1700s, and significant inaccuracies in the portrayal of Juffure as a pastoral village.
Several years later, the Millses published an article that focused upon Haley's identification and portrayal of four generations of slave forebears and masters in Virginia and North Carolina. Their reporting concluded: "Those same plantation records, wills, and censuses cited by Mr. Haley not only fail to document his story, but they contradict each and every pre-Civil War statement of Afro-American lineage in 'Roots'." [24][25] They fault Haley for failing to reconcile his family stories by giving precedence to the facts found in documents and other evidence, rather than oral histories, but presenting his work as factually based. Among other differences, they found several records of a slave named Toby being held by the Waller family five years before his arrival by slave ship in Virginia, as told by Haley. They concluded the many contradictions weakened the author's assertion that "By 1967, I felt I had the seven generations of the U.S. side documented."[24]
Haley criticized his detractors' reliance upon written records in their evaluation of his work, contending that such records were "sporadic" and frequently inaccurate with regard to such data as slave births and ownership transactions. Haley asserted that for African-American genealogy, "well-kept oral history is without question the best source."[26]
Concerns were raised about the trustworthiness of Kebba Fofana from the Gambia, whom Haley had cited as a significant source. He said Fofana was a griot in Juffure, who, during Haley's visit, confirmed the tale of the disappearance of Kunta Kinte. The separate investigations by Mark Ottaway of The Sunday Times and Professor Wright found that Fofana was not a genuine griot, and that he was aware of Haley's pending visit. He may have been coached to relate a story matching Haley's chronicle. In subsequent re-tellings, details of Fofana's story failed to match that first account.[20][21][22][23] Haley did not respond directly to the work of either Wright or Ottaway, but said that the latter's article was "unwarranted, unfair and unjust", and added that he had no reason to think Fofana unreliable.[27]
Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was a personal friend of Haley, but years after his death Gates acknowledged doubts about the author's claims. He said,

"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."[28]
Gates later was the host of African American Lives, a TV series that relied on research by historians and genealogists, but also on DNA testing, to reveal to prominent American figures facts of their family histories.
Related scholarship[edit]
##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
##Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "Roots and the New 'Faction': A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?", Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 89 (January 1981): 3-26. PDF at Historic Pathways [4].
##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.
##Wright, Donald R. "Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants," History of Africa 8 (1981): 205-217.
Television and audio adaptations[edit]
Main article: Roots (TV miniseries)
Roots was made into a 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. 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 third 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 Hattie Carraway, and Tim Russ as house slave Marcellus (all four actors later became prominent as leading actors in the Star Trek franchise).
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.[23]
In November 2013, the History channel announced that it was developing an eight-hour Roots miniseries with Mark Wolper, son of the original show's original producer David L. Wolper. This version will combine elements from both Haley's book and its 1977 adaptation.[29]
Publication details[edit]
##1976, USA, Doubleday Books (ISBN 0-385-03787-2), Pub date 12 September 1976, hardback (First edition)
##1977, UK, Hutchinson (ISBN 0-09-129680-3), Pub date ? April 1977, hardback
##1978, UK, Picador (ISBN 0-330-25301-8), Pub date 14 April 1978, paperback
##1980, USA, Bantam Books (ISBN 0-685-01405-3), Pub date ? November 1980, paperback (Teacher's guide)
##1982, UK, GK Hall (ISBN 0-8161-6639-0), Pub date ? December 1982, hardback
##1985, USA, Vintage (ISBN 0-09-952200-4), Pub date ? May 1985, paperback
##1992, USA, Bantam Doubleday Dell (ISBN 0-440-17464-3), Pub date 31 December 1992, paperback
##1994, USA, Vintage (ISBN 0-09-936281-3), Pub date 21 January 1994, paperback
##1999, USA, Rebound by Sagebrush (ISBN 0-8085-1103-3), Pub date ? October 1999, hardback (Library edition)
##2000, USA, Wings (ISBN 0-517-20860-1), Pub date ? September 2000, hardback
##2006, USA, Buccaneer Books (ISBN 1-56849-471-8), Pub date 30 August 2006, hardback
##2007, USA, Vanguard Press (ISBN 1593154496), Pub date 22 May 2007, paperback
Legacy and honors[edit]



Alex Haley's boyhood home and his grave beside the home (2007)##Haley received a Pulitzer Prize for his book, and the TV series won several major awards.
##Including weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, the book is considered a publishing and cultural sensation.
##The state of Tennessee put a historical marker by Haley's childhood home in Henning, noting the influence he had as an author because of Roots.
##He was buried in the front yard of his childhood home, where a memorial marks the gravesite.
See also[edit]
##Queen: The Story of an American Family
##Treatment of slaves in the United States
##Slavery in the United States
References[edit]



 Alex Haley's grave beside his boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee (2007)
1.Jump up ^ (1976, June 13). "Book Ends", The New York Times, p. 222
2.Jump up ^ (1976, December 13). "CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINATES 20 BOOKS BY U.S. AUTHORS", The New York Times, page 32
3.Jump up ^ (1976, December 5)."1976: A Selection of Noteworthy Titles", The New York Times, page 284
4.Jump up ^ (1976, October 22). "Best Seller List", The New York Times, page 254
5.Jump up ^ (1976, November 21). "Best Seller List — November 21, 1976", The New York Times, page 254
6.Jump up ^ McFadden, Robert D. (1977, April 24). "Alex Haley Denies Allegation That Parts of 'Roots' Were Copied From Novel Written by Mississippi Teacher", The New York Times, p. 4
7.Jump up ^ The New York Times Best Seller List — May 8, 1977
8.Jump up ^ The New York Times Best Seller List — August 7, 1977
9.Jump up ^ The New York Times Best Seller List — September 18, 1977
10.Jump up ^ Cattani, Richard J. (1977, March 21). "The boom in ancestor-hunting", Christian Science Monitor
11.Jump up ^ (1977, February 19). "'Roots' Boosts Interest In LDS Genealogy Units", The Deseret News
12.Jump up ^ Michelle Hudson, "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
13.Jump up ^ Carmody, Deidre. (1977, April 19). "Haley Gets Special Pulitzer Prize; Lufkin, Tex., News Takes a Medal", The New York Times, page 69
14.Jump up ^ Fein, Esther B. (March 3, 1993). "Book Notes". The New York Times.
15.Jump up ^ Crowley, Anne S. (October 24, 1985). "Research Help Supplies Backbone for Haley's Book". Chicago Tribune.
16.Jump up ^ (1978, September 21). "Judge Rules "Roots" Original", Associated Press
17.Jump up ^ (1978, September 22). "Suit against Alex Haley is dismissed", United Press International
18.Jump up ^ Nobile, Phillip. "Alex Haley's Hoax," The Village Voice, February 23, 1993
19.^ Jump up to: a b Haley, Alex (2007). Roots: The Saga of an American Family (30, annotated ed.). Vanguard Press. 884–885. ISBN 1-59315-449-6. Retrieved 2010-02-23.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Ottaway, Mark. (1977, April 10). Donald R. Wright, "Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants," History of Africa 8 (1981): 205-217. "Tangled Roots", The Sunday Times
21.^ Jump up to: a b MacDonald, Edgar. "A Twig Atop Running Water -- Griot History," Virginia Genealogical Society Newsletter, July/August, 1991
22.^ Jump up to: a b The Roots of Alex Haley. Documentary. Directed by James Kent. BBC Bookmark, 1996
23.^ Jump up to: a b c Kloer, Phil (May 25, 2007). "30 years later, Haleys re-establish 'Roots'". The News & Observer. Archived from the original on October 15, 2007. Retrieved 2010-02-23.
 Quote: "Historians also have cast a great deal of doubt as to whether Haley truly tracked down his ancestral village or was merely being told what he wanted to hear by the people who lived there."
24.^ Jump up to: a b Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "Roots and the New 'Faction': A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?", Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 89 (January 1981): 3-26 [1].[
25.Jump up ^ Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "The Genealogist's Assessment of Alex Haley's Roots,", National Genealogical Society Quarterly 72 (March 1984): 35-49. [2]
26.Jump up ^ Kaplan, Eliot. (1981, August 2). "Roots: The Saga Continues", Lakeland Ledger
27.Jump up ^ (1977, April 11). "'Roots' author charges story smears book", Associated Press
28.Jump up ^ Beam, Alex. "The Prize Fight Over Alex Haley's Tangled 'Roots'", Boston Globe, October 30, 1998
29.Jump up ^ [3]
See also[edit]

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Categories: 1976 novels
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Roots (miniseries)
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Roots
Roots 25th Anniversary Edition.jpg
25th Anniversary DVD cover, 2001

Genre
Historical novel-based
Drama
Directed by
Marvin J. Chomsky
John Erman
David Greene
Gilbert Moses
Produced by
Stan Margulies
Written by
Alex Haley
Screenplay by
Alex Haley
 James Lee
Starring
John Amos
Ben Vereen
LeVar Burton
Louis Gossett, Jr.
Leslie Uggams
Vic Morrow
Music by
Gerald Fried
Quincy Jones (episode 1)
Cinematography
Stevan Larner, ASC
Budget
US $6.6 million
Country
United States
Language
English
Original channel
ABC
Original run
January 23, 1977  – January 30, 1977
Running time
570 minutes
No. of episodes
8 (re-edited to 6 for video)
Followed by
Roots: The Next Generations
Roots is a television miniseries in the USA based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family; the series first aired, on ABC-TV, in 1977. Roots received 37 Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It won also a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award.[1] It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which still holds a record as the third highest rated episode for any type of television series, and the second most watched overall series finale in U.S. television history.[2][3] It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million.[4][5] The series introduced LeVar Burton in the role of Kunta Kinte. A sequel, Roots: The Next Generations, first aired in 1979, and a second sequel, Roots: The Gift, a Christmas TV movie, starring Burton and Louis Gossett Jr. first aired in 1988. A related film, Alex Haley's Queen, is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, who was Alex Haley's paternal grandmother.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot 1.1 Colonial times
1.2 Late 18th century
1.3 Turn of the 19th century
1.4 Early 19th century
1.5 Mid-19th century
1.6 The Civil War
1.7 Postwar
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Legal issues
5 Broadcast history 5.1 Episode list
5.2 U.S. Television ratings
6 DVD release
7 Awards and nominations
8 Historical accuracy
9 Remake
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

Plot[edit]
Colonial times[edit]
In The Gambia, West Africa, in 1750 Kunta Kinte is born to Omoro Kinte (Thalmus Rasulala), a Mandinka warrior, and his wife, Binta (Cicely Tyson). When Kunta (LeVar Burton) reaches the age of 15, he and a group of other adolescent boys take part in tribal manhood training, ending with a ceremony, after which they become recognized as men and Mandinka warriors. While trying to carry out a task to catch a bird and take it home unharmed, Kunta sees white men carrying firearms, along with their black collaborators. Later, while fetching wood outside his village to make a drum for his younger brother, Kunta is captured by black collaborators under the direction of white men. He is then sold to a slave trader and placed aboard a ship under the command of Capt. Thomas Davies (Edward Asner) for a three-month journey to Colonial America. During the voyage a group of rebels among the human cargo try but fail to stage a mutiny and to take over the ship.
The ship eventually arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, where the captured Africans are sold at auction as slaves. John Reynolds (Lorne Greene), a plantation owner from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg, buys Kunta and gives him the name Toby. Reynolds assigns an older slave, Fiddler (Louis Gossett Jr.), to teach Kunta to speak English and to train him in the ways of living and working as a chattel slave. Kunta, in a persistent struggle to become free again, makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape. Additionally, to preserve his Mandinka heritage and maintain his Mandinka roots, he does not want to change his name. An overseer, Ames (Vic Morrow) gathers the slaves and directs one of them to whip Kunta after his latest attempt to escape and to continue whipping him until he finally acknowledges his new name. For events that occur in 1775, between the above period and the post-Revolutionary War, where the next section begins, see Roots: The Gift
Late 18th century[edit]

Slavery
COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen TMnr 3912-475.jpg

Contemporary[show]













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Religion[show]







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The adult Kunta Kinte (John Amos) experiences serving as a chattel slave and feels haunted by his Mandinka roots and his memories of freedom at home in Africa. John Reynolds, his owner, does not receive as much cash as he has expected from the sale of his crop of tobacco, so, to settle a debt to his brother, Dr. William Reynolds (Robert Reed), the local physician, transfers several of his slaves, including Toby and Fiddler, to William. Kunta tries again to escape, but a pair of slave-catchers seize him, bind him, and chop off about half his right foot (to limit his ability to run away again). Kunta meets Belle (Madge Sinclair), the cook for William's family. Belle successfully treats both Kunta's mangled foot and his wounded spirit. He eventually submits to the harsh life, and he marries Belle in a ceremony, which includes jumping across a broom. Belle bears a daughter, to whom Kunta gives the name Kizzy, which means "stay put" in the Mandinka language. Fiddler continues to mentor and befriend Kunta, and Fiddler eventually dies at an old age.
Turn of the 19th century[edit]
An adulterous relationship between Dr. William Reynolds and John Reynolds's wife (Lynda Day George) produces a daughter, Anne, whom John apparently believes to be his own offspring. Missy Anne (Sandy Duncan) and Kizzy (Leslie Uggams), about two years younger than Anne, become playmates and best friends within the social limits of the plantation culture. Anne secretly teaches Kizzy to read and write, and both Anne and Belle, Kizzy's mother, strictly and severely caution Kizzy to avoid allowing anyone else to learn about her clandestine and forbidden education. Kizzy, in her teen years, falls in love with Noah (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), another slave at William's plantation, but Noah runs away and is caught and returned. During a beating Noah reveals that Kizzy has forged for him a traveling pass by copying a similar pass which Anne has given to Kizzy. William has previously assured his slaves that he would keep them all together at his plantation, not selling away any of them against their will as long as they "follow the rules". However, William regards the pass and the escape to be such serious breaches of trust that he separately sells both Noah and Kizzy. Much weeping and wailing attend the departure of Kizzy. William sells Kizzy to Tom Moore (Chuck Connors), a planter in Caswell County, North Carolina, who promptly rapes her, impregnating her with a son, to whom Kizzy gives the name George.
Early 19th century[edit]
Some years later Sam Bennett (Richard Roundtree), a fancy carriage driver and a suitor who seeks to impress, takes Kizzy for a short visit to the plantation of Dr. William Reynolds, in the hope that she can see her parents. Kizzy learns that Belle has been sold away, and that Toby has died. Kizzy sees her father's grave and his wooden marker; using a small stone, she scratches over the name Toby and writes below it "Kunta Kinte". George (Ben Vereen), under the tutelage of Mingo (Scatman Crothers), an older slave, learns much about cockfighting, and, by direction of Tom Moore, their master, George takes over as the chief trainer, the "cock of the walk". George befriends another slave and fellow cock fighter, who informs him about the possibility of buying his own freedom. While George believes Moore to be his friend, he realizes his master's true feeling when he and his family are threatened at gun point by Moore and his wife, as a result of the Nat Turner rebellion. Although none of Moore's slaves are personally involved in the rebellion, they become victim of the paranoid suspicions of their master and start planning to buy their freedom. In an emotional scene Kizzy reveals to George the identity of his father. The adult George becomes an expert in cockfighting, thus earning for himself the moniker "Chicken George". Squire James (Macdonald Carey), Moore's main adversary in the pit, arranges for a British owner, Sir Eric Russell (Ian McShane), and 20 of his cocks to visit and to participate in the local fights. Moore eventually bets a huge sum on his best bird, which George has trained, but he loses, and he cannot pay.
Mid-19th century[edit]
In 1847, under the terms of a settlement between Moore and Russell, George goes to England to train cocks for Russell and to train more trainers and is forced to leave behind Kizzy (his mother), Tildy (Mathilda, his wife) (Olivia Cole), and Tom and Lewis (his sons) (Georg Stanford Brown and Hilly Hicks). Moore promises to set George free after George returns. In one brief scene Kizzy and Anne Reynolds, both elderly, face each other one last time, and Missy Anne denies that she "recollects" a "darkie by the name of Kizzy". Kizzy then spits into Anne's cup of water without Anne's realizing.
The Civil War[edit]
George returns 14 years later, in 1861, shortly before the start of the Civil War. He proudly announces that Moore, after some reluctance on Moore's part and some persuasion on George's part, has kept his word by granting George his freedom. He learns that Kizzy has died two months previously, that Tom and Lewis now belong to Sam Harvey (Richard McKenzie), that Tom (Georg Stanford Brown) has become a blacksmith on the Harvey plantation, and that Tom has a wife, Irene (Lynne Moody), and two sons. He learns also that his relatives have spoken well of him during his absence. He learns further that, according to a law in North Carolina, if he stays 60 days in that state as a freed slave, he will lose his freedom, so he heads northward, seeking the next stage in his career as a cockfighter and awaiting the end of the war, the emancipation of the slaves, and another reunion of his family.
While the war continues to its inevitable end, a hungry and destitute young white couple from South Carolina, George and Martha Johnson (Brad Davis and Lane Binkley), arrive and ask for help, and the slave family take them in. Martha soon gives birth, but the child is stillborn. The white couple stays on with Tom and his wife, and becomes a part of their community. Tom Harvey meets harassment at the hands of two brothers, Evan and Jemmy Brent (Lloyd Bridges and Doug McClure). Eventually, a month before the surrender by the South, Jemmy deserts the Confederate Army during the final desperate days of the war, and he shows up at Tom's blacksmith shop. Tom reluctantly runs an errand for Jemmy. When he returns, he arrives while Jemmy tries to overpower Irene so that he can rape her. During the resulting fight, Tom drowns Jemmy in the quenching tub. Later Evan, then an officer in the Confederate cavalry, arrives at the shop, demands to know about Jemmy, gets no answer, and angrily tells Tom that he has not yet finished with him.
After the war, several local white men, led by Evan Brent and wearing white hoods (made from fabric sacks from Evan's store) begin to harass and terrorize Tom, his family, and other members of his community. Tom emerges as the leader among his group. As the local blacksmith, Tom devises a horseshoeing method to identify the horses involved in the raids by the hooded men. But when Tom reports his suspicions and his evidence to the sheriff, in sympathy with Evan and knowing every member of the white mob, tips off Evan. Evan's mob leads another raid against Tom, during which Tom is whipped savagely. George Johnson, in his quality of overseer of the plantation, intervenes and is forced to whip Tom once, to his own horror and disgust, in order to save his friend's life.
Meanwhile, the former owner of the farm, Sam Harvey, is forced to surrender all of his property to Senator Arthur Justin (Burl Ives), a local politician intent on acquiring as much land as possible. Under the terms of the surrender, his former slaves are allowed to stay on as sharecroppers, with eventual rights to own a part of the land. However, because no written deed has been filed, the senator deems the agreement void and imposes heavy debts on the black farmers.
Postwar[edit]
Several years later, Chicken George unexpectedly returns, raises the spirits of his relatives and friends, and begins to plot their next step. He reports that he has bought some land in Tennessee. Using some cunning and deception of their own, the group makes preparations for their move away. After one final confrontation with Evan and his gang, George and his company start their trek from North Carolina to Tennessee. In the last scene George and his group arrive on his land in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, to start their new life. George retells part of the story from Kunta Kinte in Africa to himself in Tennessee. Then Alex Haley briefly narrates a montage of photographs of family members connecting Tom's daughter, Cynthia, a great-great-granddaughter of Kunta Kinte, to Haley himself. For the conclusion of the story from the late 19th Century on into the 20th Century, see Roots: The Next Generations
Cast[edit]
Number in parentheses indicates how many episodes in which the actor/character appears.
LeVar Burton – young Kunta Kinte (2)
Olivia Cole – Mathilda (3)
Louis Gossett, Jr. – Fiddler (2)
Ben Vereen – Chicken George Moore (3)
Vic Morrow – Ames (2)
John Amos – older Kunta Kinte/"Toby" (2)
Ji-Tu Cumbuka – Wrestler (2)
Edward Asner – Capt. Davies (2)
Lynda Day George – Mrs. Reynolds (2)
Robert Reed – Dr. William Reynolds (3)
Madge Sinclair – Bell Reynolds (3)
Chuck Connors – Tom Moore (3)
Sandy Duncan – Missy Anne Reynolds (3)
Leslie Uggams – Kizzy Reynolds (2)
Carolyn Jones – Mrs. Moore (3)
Lloyd Bridges – Evan Brent (2)
Georg Stanford Brown – Tom Harvey (2)
Brad Davis – Ol' George Johnson (2)
Lane Binkley – Martha Johnson (2)
Tracey Gold – Young Missy Reynolds (1)
Hilly Hicks – Lewis (2)
Lynne Moody – Irene Harvey (2)
Austin Stoker – Virgil (2)
Ralph Waite – Third mate Slater (2)
Cicely Tyson – Binta (1)
Thalmus Rasulala – Omoro (1)
Moses Gunn – Kintango (1)
Hari Rhodes – Brima Cesay (1)
Ren Woods – Fanta (2)
Ernest Lee Thomas – Kailuba (1)
Lorne Greene – John Reynolds (2)
Scatman Crothers – Mingo (1)
George Hamilton – Stephen Bennett (1)
Lillian Randolph – Sister Sara (2)
Roxie Roker – Malizy (1)
Richard Roundtree – Sam Bennett (1)
Thayer David – Harlan (2)
John Quade – Sheriff Biggs (2)
Maya Angelou – Nyo Boto (1)
O. J. Simpson – Kadi Touray (1)
Beverly Todd – Fanta as an adult (1)
Paul Shenar – John Carrington (1)
Gary Collins – Grill (1)
Raymond St. Jacques – The drummer (1)
Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs – Noah (1)
John Schuck – Ordell (1)
Macdonald Carey – Squire James (1)
Ian McShane – Sir Eric Russell (1)
Doug McClure – Jemmy Brent (1)
Burl Ives – Sen. Arthur Justin (1)
Charles Cyphers – Drake (1)
Brion James - Slaver (1)
Todd Bridges – Bud (1)
Ross Chapman – Sergeant Williams (1)
Grand L. Bush – Captured runaway slave (1)
Yvonne De Carlo – Slave owner's wife (1)
Boris Johnson - Lewis Bell
Production[edit]
The miniseries was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, John Erman, David Greene, and Gilbert Moses. It was produced by Stan Margulies. David L. Wolper was executive producer. The score was composed by Gerald Fried, and Quincy Jones for only the first episode. The Museum of Broadcast Communications recounts the apprehensions that Roots would flop, and how this made ABC prepare the format:
“ Familiar television actors like American [sic] actor Lorne Greene were chosen for the white, secondary roles, to reassure audiences. The white actors were featured disproportionately in network previews. For the first episode, the writers created a conscience-stricken slave captain (Edward Asner), a figure who did not appear in Haley's novel but was intended to make white audiences feel better about their historical role in the slave trade. Even the show's consecutive-night format allegedly resulted from network apprehensions. ABC programming chief Fred Silverman hoped that the unusual schedule would cut his network's imminent losses—and get Roots off the air before sweeps week.[6] ”
Many of these familiar white television actors like Chuck Connors (from The Rifleman), Lorne Greene (Bonanza and later Battlestar Galactica), Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch), and Ralph Waite (The Waltons) were cast against type as slave holders and traders.
Legal issues[edit]
Following the success of the original novel and the miniseries, Haley was sued by author Harold Courlander, who asserted that Roots was plagiarized from his own novel The African, published nine years prior to Roots in 1967. The resulting trial ended with an out-of-court settlement and an admission from Haley that certain passages within Roots had been copied from Courlander's work.[7] Separately, researchers refuted Haley's claims that, as the basis for Roots, Haley had traced his own ancestry back through slavery to a very specific individual and village in Africa.[8][9] After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, Roots."[10] During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period."[11] In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward stated, "Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public."[12] During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, a minority studies teacher at Skidmore College, Joseph Bruchac, came forward and swore in an affidavit that he had discussed The African with Haley in 1970 or 1971 and had given his own personal copy of The African to Haley, events that took place well before publication of Roots.[13]
Broadcast history[edit]
Episode list[edit]
Roots originally aired on ABC for eight consecutive nights from January 23 to January 30, 1977. In the United Kingdom, the BBC screened the miniseries from April 8 to April 20, 1977.

Original run #
Re-edited version #
Approximate time period
Featured Kinte descendant(s)

Kunta Kinte
Kizzy
Chicken George
Tom Harvey
Part I (90m) 1750–1767 Yes   
Part II (90m) 1767–1768 Yes   
Part III (45m) Part III (90m) 1776 Yes   
Part IV (45m) 1780–1790 Yes Yes  
Part V (45m) Part IV (90m) 1806 Yes Yes  
Part VI (90m) 1824  Yes Yes 
Part V (90m) 1841–1847  Yes Yes Yes
Part VII (45m) 1861–1865   Yes Yes
Part VIII (90m) Part VI (90m) 1865–1870   Yes Yes
U.S. Television ratings[edit]
The miniseries was watched by an estimated 130 million [14][15][16] and 140[17][18] million viewers total (more than half of the U.S. 1977 population of 221 milion - the largest viewership ever attracted by any type of television series in U.S. history as tallied by Nielsen Media Research) and averaged a 44.9 rating[17] and 66% to 80% viewer share[17] of the audience. The final episode was watched by 100 million viewers and an average of 80 million viewers watched each of the last seven episodes.[6] Eighty-five percent of all television homes saw all or part of the mini-series.[6] All episodes rank within the top 100 rated TV shows of all time.[19]

Episode
All-time Ratings
 Ranking
Number of
 Households
Rating
Share
Date
Network

Roots Part I #82 28.84 million 40.5% 61% January 23, 1977 ABC
Roots Part II #32 31.40 million 44.1% 62% January 24, 1977 ABC
Roots Part III #27 31.90 million 44.8% 68% January 25, 1977 ABC
Roots Part IV #35 31.19 million 43.8% 66% January 26, 1977 ABC
Roots Part V #21 32.54 million 45.7% 71% January 27, 1977 ABC
Roots Part VI #18 32.68 million 45.9% 66% January 28, 1977 ABC
Roots Part VII #50 30.12 million 42.3% 65% January 29, 1977 ABC
Roots Part VIII #3 36.38 million 51.1% 71% January 30, 1977 ABC

On February 16, 17, and 18, 2013, in honor of Black History Month and the 36th anniversary of Roots, cable network BET aired both Roots and its sequel miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations. Celebrating the 35th anniversary of Roots, BET premiered the miniseries on a 3-day weekend showing in December 2012, which resulted in being seen by a total of 10.8 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings, and also became the #1 Roots telecast in cable television history. As for the BET network, its 35th anniversary airing of Roots became its best 'non-tentpole' weekend in the network's history.
DVD release[edit]
Warner Home Video, which released a 25th-anniversary 3-disc DVD edition of the series in 2002, released a four-disc (three double-sided, one single-sided) 30th-anniversary set on May 22, 2007. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by LeVar Burton, Cicely Tyson and Ed Asner among other key cast members, "Remembering Roots" behind-the-scenes documentary, "Crossing Over: How Roots Captivated an Entire Nation" featurette, new interviews with key cast members and the DVD-ROM "Roots Family Tree" feature.[20]
Awards and nominations[edit]
Won
Emmy Awards:
Best Director in a Drama Series – David Greene for "Part I"
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Louis Gossett, Jr.
Best Editing in a Drama Series – Neil Travis for "Part I"
Best Limited Series
Best Music Composition for a Series – Dramatic Underscore – Gerald Fried and Quincy Jones for "Part I"
Best Sound Editing in a Series
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Series, Single Appearance – Edward Asner for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy or Drama Series, Single Appearance – Olivia Cole for "Part VIII"
Best Writing in a Drama Series – Ernest Kinoy and William Blinn for "Part II"
Golden Globe Award:
Best TV Series – Drama
Nominations
Emmy Awards:
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – LeVar Burton for "Part I"
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – John Amos for "Part V"
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Ben Vereen for "Part VI"
Best Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Madge Sinclair for "Part IV"
Best Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Leslie Uggams for "Part VI"
Best Art Direction or Scenic Design in a Drama Series ("Part II")
Best Art Direction or Scenic Design in a Drama Series ("Part VI")
Best Costume Design in a Drama or Comedy Series – Jack Martell for "Part I"
Best Cinematography in Entertainment Programming in a Series – Stevan Larner for "Part II"
Best Cinematography in Entertainment Programming in a Series – Joseph M. Wilcots for "Part VII"
Best Director in a Drama Series – John Erman for "Part II"
Best Director in a Drama Series – Marvin J. Chomsky for "Part III"
Best Director in a Drama Series – Gilbert Moses for "Part VI"
Best Editing in a Drama Series – James T. Heckert and Neil Travis for "Part II"
Best Editing in a Drama Series – (Peter Kirby for "Part III"
Best Editing in a Drama Series – James T. Heckert for "Part VIII"
Best Music Composition for a Series in a Dramatic Underscore – Gerald Fried for "Part VIII"
Best Sound Mixing ("Part I")
Best Sound Mixing ("Part IV")
Best Sound Mixing ("Part VII")
Best Sound Mixing ("Part VIII")
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Performance – Moses Gunn for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series – Ralph Waite for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series – Robert Reed for "Part V"
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series – Cicely Tyson for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series – Sandy Duncan for "Part V"
Best Writing in a Drama Series – M. Charles Cohen for "Part VIII"
Best Writing in a Drama Series – James Lee for "Part V"
Golden Globe Award:
Best TV Actress in a Drama – Leslie Uggams
Historical accuracy[edit]
Author and historian Steven Mintz wrote: "Many Americans, influenced by images in the 1977 television mini-series Roots, mistakenly believe that most slaves were captured by Europeans who landed on the African coast and captured or ambushed people." According to Mintz most people, who were free before the enslavement, however were enslaved through wars and raids in Africa. While European slave merchants staged raids on villages, most of the slave merchants did set up trade bases in West Africa. The majority of people who were transported to the Americas were enslaved by other Africans and bought in exchange for firearms and other goods by the slave merchants. Mintz emphasises that while slavery existed already before, the massive slave demand of the merchants however drastically enhanced slavery and wars for slaves in Africa.[21] Through a series of conflicts, primarily with the Fulani jihad states, as many as a third of the Senegambian Mandinka were sold into slavery to the Americas through capture in conflict.[22]
Remake[edit]
The History channel is planning a remake of the miniseries after acquiring rights from David L. Wolper's son, Mark Wolper, and Alex Haley's estate. The planned new eight hour miniseries, with Mark Wolper as executive producer, will draw on Haley's novel and the original miniseries albeit from a contemporary perspective.[23]
See also[edit]
Atlantic slave trade
Middle Passage
Triangular slave trade
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Awards for "Roots"
2.Jump up ^ "Top 100 Rated TV Shows Of All Time, TV By the Numbers". Tvbythenumbers.com. Retrieved 2012-11-17.
3.Jump up ^ Hyatt, Wesley (2012). Television's Top 100. US: McFarland. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-7864-4891-3.
4.Jump up ^ "New Roots series expected to yield big bucks for ABC". Ottawa Citizen. February 20, 1979. p. 54. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
5.Jump up ^ Courtis, Brian (February 19, 1979). "Roots...Second Time Around". The Age. p. 2. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
6.^ Jump up to: a b c "Museum of Broadcast Communications". Museum.tv. Retrieved 2012-11-17.
7.Jump up ^ kaplan, Robert; Buckman, Harry; Kilsheimer, Richard (October 17, 1978). "Plaintiffs’ Pre-Trial Memorandum and Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law". United States District Court, Southern District of New York; Harold Courlander, et ano., v. Alex Haley, et al: p. 1, Vol. I.".
8.Jump up ^ Stanford, Phil (April 8, 1979). "Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story". The Washington Star. pp. F.1.
9.Jump up ^ Kaplan, Robert; Buckman, Harry; Kilsheimer, Richard (October 17, 1978). "Plaintiffs’ Pre-Trial Memorandum and Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law". United States District Court, Southern District of New York; Harold Courlander, et ano., v. Alex Haley, et al: p. Woods 13, Vol. III.".
10.Jump up ^ Stanford, Phil (April 8, 1979). "Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story". The Washington Star p.F.1.
11.Jump up ^ "Trial Transcript, United States District Court, Southern District of New York; Harold Courlander, et ano., v. Alex Haley, et al". 1978. p.1327".
12.Jump up ^ "The Roots of Alex Haley". BBC Television Documentary. 1997.".
13.Jump up ^ Stanford, Phil. ""Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story".". The Washington Star: p. F.4.
14.Jump up ^ Rich, Frank (February 18, 1979). "Television: A Super Sequel to Haley's Comet". Time. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
15.Jump up ^ "ABC Soard in Ratings With 'Roots' Sequel". Schenectady Gazette. February 24, 1979. p. 12. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
16.Jump up ^ "110 million see 'Roots' video special". The Tuscaloosa News. March 1, 1979. p. 8. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
17.^ Jump up to: a b c "'Roots' Ratings Dip". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 28, 1979. p. 29. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
18.Jump up ^ Hanauer, Joan (February 28, 1979). "ABC Takes "Roots" Again". The Bryan Times. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
19.Jump up ^ Gorman, Bill (May 21, 2009). "Top 100 Rated TV Shows Of All Time". Retrieved 2010-02-17.
20.Jump up ^ "Roots" DVD details
21.Jump up ^ Steven Mintz (2009). "African American Voices: A Documentary Reader, 1619-1877". John Wiley & Sons. p.8-9. ISBN 1444310771
22.Jump up ^ "Bound To Africa — The Mandinka Legacy In The New World" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-17.
23.Jump up ^ Andreeva, Nellie (November 5, 2013). "History To Remake Iconic ‘Roots’ Miniseries". Deadline. PMC. Retrieved November 6, 2013.
External links[edit]
Roots at the Internet Movie Database
Roots at AllMovie
Roots at TV.com
Encyclopedia of Television
Roots-related interview videos at the Archive of American Television


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Roots (miniseries)
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Roots
Roots 25th Anniversary Edition.jpg
25th Anniversary DVD cover, 2001

Genre
Historical novel-based
Drama
Directed by
Marvin J. Chomsky
John Erman
David Greene
Gilbert Moses
Produced by
Stan Margulies
Written by
Alex Haley
Screenplay by
Alex Haley
 James Lee
Starring
John Amos
Ben Vereen
LeVar Burton
Louis Gossett, Jr.
Leslie Uggams
Vic Morrow
Music by
Gerald Fried
Quincy Jones (episode 1)
Cinematography
Stevan Larner, ASC
Budget
US $6.6 million
Country
United States
Language
English
Original channel
ABC
Original run
January 23, 1977  – January 30, 1977
Running time
570 minutes
No. of episodes
8 (re-edited to 6 for video)
Followed by
Roots: The Next Generations
Roots is a television miniseries in the USA based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family; the series first aired, on ABC-TV, in 1977. Roots received 37 Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It won also a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award.[1] It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which still holds a record as the third highest rated episode for any type of television series, and the second most watched overall series finale in U.S. television history.[2][3] It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million.[4][5] The series introduced LeVar Burton in the role of Kunta Kinte. A sequel, Roots: The Next Generations, first aired in 1979, and a second sequel, Roots: The Gift, a Christmas TV movie, starring Burton and Louis Gossett Jr. first aired in 1988. A related film, Alex Haley's Queen, is based on the life of Queen Jackson Haley, who was Alex Haley's paternal grandmother.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot 1.1 Colonial times
1.2 Late 18th century
1.3 Turn of the 19th century
1.4 Early 19th century
1.5 Mid-19th century
1.6 The Civil War
1.7 Postwar
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Legal issues
5 Broadcast history 5.1 Episode list
5.2 U.S. Television ratings
6 DVD release
7 Awards and nominations
8 Historical accuracy
9 Remake
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

Plot[edit]
Colonial times[edit]
In The Gambia, West Africa, in 1750 Kunta Kinte is born to Omoro Kinte (Thalmus Rasulala), a Mandinka warrior, and his wife, Binta (Cicely Tyson). When Kunta (LeVar Burton) reaches the age of 15, he and a group of other adolescent boys take part in tribal manhood training, ending with a ceremony, after which they become recognized as men and Mandinka warriors. While trying to carry out a task to catch a bird and take it home unharmed, Kunta sees white men carrying firearms, along with their black collaborators. Later, while fetching wood outside his village to make a drum for his younger brother, Kunta is captured by black collaborators under the direction of white men. He is then sold to a slave trader and placed aboard a ship under the command of Capt. Thomas Davies (Edward Asner) for a three-month journey to Colonial America. During the voyage a group of rebels among the human cargo try but fail to stage a mutiny and to take over the ship.
The ship eventually arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, where the captured Africans are sold at auction as slaves. John Reynolds (Lorne Greene), a plantation owner from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg, buys Kunta and gives him the name Toby. Reynolds assigns an older slave, Fiddler (Louis Gossett Jr.), to teach Kunta to speak English and to train him in the ways of living and working as a chattel slave. Kunta, in a persistent struggle to become free again, makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape. Additionally, to preserve his Mandinka heritage and maintain his Mandinka roots, he does not want to change his name. An overseer, Ames (Vic Morrow) gathers the slaves and directs one of them to whip Kunta after his latest attempt to escape and to continue whipping him until he finally acknowledges his new name. For events that occur in 1775, between the above period and the post-Revolutionary War, where the next section begins, see Roots: The Gift
Late 18th century[edit]

Slavery
COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM IJzeren voetring voor gevangenen TMnr 3912-475.jpg

Contemporary[show]













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The adult Kunta Kinte (John Amos) experiences serving as a chattel slave and feels haunted by his Mandinka roots and his memories of freedom at home in Africa. John Reynolds, his owner, does not receive as much cash as he has expected from the sale of his crop of tobacco, so, to settle a debt to his brother, Dr. William Reynolds (Robert Reed), the local physician, transfers several of his slaves, including Toby and Fiddler, to William. Kunta tries again to escape, but a pair of slave-catchers seize him, bind him, and chop off about half his right foot (to limit his ability to run away again). Kunta meets Belle (Madge Sinclair), the cook for William's family. Belle successfully treats both Kunta's mangled foot and his wounded spirit. He eventually submits to the harsh life, and he marries Belle in a ceremony, which includes jumping across a broom. Belle bears a daughter, to whom Kunta gives the name Kizzy, which means "stay put" in the Mandinka language. Fiddler continues to mentor and befriend Kunta, and Fiddler eventually dies at an old age.
Turn of the 19th century[edit]
An adulterous relationship between Dr. William Reynolds and John Reynolds's wife (Lynda Day George) produces a daughter, Anne, whom John apparently believes to be his own offspring. Missy Anne (Sandy Duncan) and Kizzy (Leslie Uggams), about two years younger than Anne, become playmates and best friends within the social limits of the plantation culture. Anne secretly teaches Kizzy to read and write, and both Anne and Belle, Kizzy's mother, strictly and severely caution Kizzy to avoid allowing anyone else to learn about her clandestine and forbidden education. Kizzy, in her teen years, falls in love with Noah (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), another slave at William's plantation, but Noah runs away and is caught and returned. During a beating Noah reveals that Kizzy has forged for him a traveling pass by copying a similar pass which Anne has given to Kizzy. William has previously assured his slaves that he would keep them all together at his plantation, not selling away any of them against their will as long as they "follow the rules". However, William regards the pass and the escape to be such serious breaches of trust that he separately sells both Noah and Kizzy. Much weeping and wailing attend the departure of Kizzy. William sells Kizzy to Tom Moore (Chuck Connors), a planter in Caswell County, North Carolina, who promptly rapes her, impregnating her with a son, to whom Kizzy gives the name George.
Early 19th century[edit]
Some years later Sam Bennett (Richard Roundtree), a fancy carriage driver and a suitor who seeks to impress, takes Kizzy for a short visit to the plantation of Dr. William Reynolds, in the hope that she can see her parents. Kizzy learns that Belle has been sold away, and that Toby has died. Kizzy sees her father's grave and his wooden marker; using a small stone, she scratches over the name Toby and writes below it "Kunta Kinte". George (Ben Vereen), under the tutelage of Mingo (Scatman Crothers), an older slave, learns much about cockfighting, and, by direction of Tom Moore, their master, George takes over as the chief trainer, the "cock of the walk". George befriends another slave and fellow cock fighter, who informs him about the possibility of buying his own freedom. While George believes Moore to be his friend, he realizes his master's true feeling when he and his family are threatened at gun point by Moore and his wife, as a result of the Nat Turner rebellion. Although none of Moore's slaves are personally involved in the rebellion, they become victim of the paranoid suspicions of their master and start planning to buy their freedom. In an emotional scene Kizzy reveals to George the identity of his father. The adult George becomes an expert in cockfighting, thus earning for himself the moniker "Chicken George". Squire James (Macdonald Carey), Moore's main adversary in the pit, arranges for a British owner, Sir Eric Russell (Ian McShane), and 20 of his cocks to visit and to participate in the local fights. Moore eventually bets a huge sum on his best bird, which George has trained, but he loses, and he cannot pay.
Mid-19th century[edit]
In 1847, under the terms of a settlement between Moore and Russell, George goes to England to train cocks for Russell and to train more trainers and is forced to leave behind Kizzy (his mother), Tildy (Mathilda, his wife) (Olivia Cole), and Tom and Lewis (his sons) (Georg Stanford Brown and Hilly Hicks). Moore promises to set George free after George returns. In one brief scene Kizzy and Anne Reynolds, both elderly, face each other one last time, and Missy Anne denies that she "recollects" a "darkie by the name of Kizzy". Kizzy then spits into Anne's cup of water without Anne's realizing.
The Civil War[edit]
George returns 14 years later, in 1861, shortly before the start of the Civil War. He proudly announces that Moore, after some reluctance on Moore's part and some persuasion on George's part, has kept his word by granting George his freedom. He learns that Kizzy has died two months previously, that Tom and Lewis now belong to Sam Harvey (Richard McKenzie), that Tom (Georg Stanford Brown) has become a blacksmith on the Harvey plantation, and that Tom has a wife, Irene (Lynne Moody), and two sons. He learns also that his relatives have spoken well of him during his absence. He learns further that, according to a law in North Carolina, if he stays 60 days in that state as a freed slave, he will lose his freedom, so he heads northward, seeking the next stage in his career as a cockfighter and awaiting the end of the war, the emancipation of the slaves, and another reunion of his family.
While the war continues to its inevitable end, a hungry and destitute young white couple from South Carolina, George and Martha Johnson (Brad Davis and Lane Binkley), arrive and ask for help, and the slave family take them in. Martha soon gives birth, but the child is stillborn. The white couple stays on with Tom and his wife, and becomes a part of their community. Tom Harvey meets harassment at the hands of two brothers, Evan and Jemmy Brent (Lloyd Bridges and Doug McClure). Eventually, a month before the surrender by the South, Jemmy deserts the Confederate Army during the final desperate days of the war, and he shows up at Tom's blacksmith shop. Tom reluctantly runs an errand for Jemmy. When he returns, he arrives while Jemmy tries to overpower Irene so that he can rape her. During the resulting fight, Tom drowns Jemmy in the quenching tub. Later Evan, then an officer in the Confederate cavalry, arrives at the shop, demands to know about Jemmy, gets no answer, and angrily tells Tom that he has not yet finished with him.
After the war, several local white men, led by Evan Brent and wearing white hoods (made from fabric sacks from Evan's store) begin to harass and terrorize Tom, his family, and other members of his community. Tom emerges as the leader among his group. As the local blacksmith, Tom devises a horseshoeing method to identify the horses involved in the raids by the hooded men. But when Tom reports his suspicions and his evidence to the sheriff, in sympathy with Evan and knowing every member of the white mob, tips off Evan. Evan's mob leads another raid against Tom, during which Tom is whipped savagely. George Johnson, in his quality of overseer of the plantation, intervenes and is forced to whip Tom once, to his own horror and disgust, in order to save his friend's life.
Meanwhile, the former owner of the farm, Sam Harvey, is forced to surrender all of his property to Senator Arthur Justin (Burl Ives), a local politician intent on acquiring as much land as possible. Under the terms of the surrender, his former slaves are allowed to stay on as sharecroppers, with eventual rights to own a part of the land. However, because no written deed has been filed, the senator deems the agreement void and imposes heavy debts on the black farmers.
Postwar[edit]
Several years later, Chicken George unexpectedly returns, raises the spirits of his relatives and friends, and begins to plot their next step. He reports that he has bought some land in Tennessee. Using some cunning and deception of their own, the group makes preparations for their move away. After one final confrontation with Evan and his gang, George and his company start their trek from North Carolina to Tennessee. In the last scene George and his group arrive on his land in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, to start their new life. George retells part of the story from Kunta Kinte in Africa to himself in Tennessee. Then Alex Haley briefly narrates a montage of photographs of family members connecting Tom's daughter, Cynthia, a great-great-granddaughter of Kunta Kinte, to Haley himself. For the conclusion of the story from the late 19th Century on into the 20th Century, see Roots: The Next Generations
Cast[edit]
Number in parentheses indicates how many episodes in which the actor/character appears.
LeVar Burton – young Kunta Kinte (2)
Olivia Cole – Mathilda (3)
Louis Gossett, Jr. – Fiddler (2)
Ben Vereen – Chicken George Moore (3)
Vic Morrow – Ames (2)
John Amos – older Kunta Kinte/"Toby" (2)
Ji-Tu Cumbuka – Wrestler (2)
Edward Asner – Capt. Davies (2)
Lynda Day George – Mrs. Reynolds (2)
Robert Reed – Dr. William Reynolds (3)
Madge Sinclair – Bell Reynolds (3)
Chuck Connors – Tom Moore (3)
Sandy Duncan – Missy Anne Reynolds (3)
Leslie Uggams – Kizzy Reynolds (2)
Carolyn Jones – Mrs. Moore (3)
Lloyd Bridges – Evan Brent (2)
Georg Stanford Brown – Tom Harvey (2)
Brad Davis – Ol' George Johnson (2)
Lane Binkley – Martha Johnson (2)
Tracey Gold – Young Missy Reynolds (1)
Hilly Hicks – Lewis (2)
Lynne Moody – Irene Harvey (2)
Austin Stoker – Virgil (2)
Ralph Waite – Third mate Slater (2)
Cicely Tyson – Binta (1)
Thalmus Rasulala – Omoro (1)
Moses Gunn – Kintango (1)
Hari Rhodes – Brima Cesay (1)
Ren Woods – Fanta (2)
Ernest Lee Thomas – Kailuba (1)
Lorne Greene – John Reynolds (2)
Scatman Crothers – Mingo (1)
George Hamilton – Stephen Bennett (1)
Lillian Randolph – Sister Sara (2)
Roxie Roker – Malizy (1)
Richard Roundtree – Sam Bennett (1)
Thayer David – Harlan (2)
John Quade – Sheriff Biggs (2)
Maya Angelou – Nyo Boto (1)
O. J. Simpson – Kadi Touray (1)
Beverly Todd – Fanta as an adult (1)
Paul Shenar – John Carrington (1)
Gary Collins – Grill (1)
Raymond St. Jacques – The drummer (1)
Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs – Noah (1)
John Schuck – Ordell (1)
Macdonald Carey – Squire James (1)
Ian McShane – Sir Eric Russell (1)
Doug McClure – Jemmy Brent (1)
Burl Ives – Sen. Arthur Justin (1)
Charles Cyphers – Drake (1)
Brion James - Slaver (1)
Todd Bridges – Bud (1)
Ross Chapman – Sergeant Williams (1)
Grand L. Bush – Captured runaway slave (1)
Yvonne De Carlo – Slave owner's wife (1)
Boris Johnson - Lewis Bell
Production[edit]
The miniseries was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, John Erman, David Greene, and Gilbert Moses. It was produced by Stan Margulies. David L. Wolper was executive producer. The score was composed by Gerald Fried, and Quincy Jones for only the first episode. The Museum of Broadcast Communications recounts the apprehensions that Roots would flop, and how this made ABC prepare the format:
“ Familiar television actors like American [sic] actor Lorne Greene were chosen for the white, secondary roles, to reassure audiences. The white actors were featured disproportionately in network previews. For the first episode, the writers created a conscience-stricken slave captain (Edward Asner), a figure who did not appear in Haley's novel but was intended to make white audiences feel better about their historical role in the slave trade. Even the show's consecutive-night format allegedly resulted from network apprehensions. ABC programming chief Fred Silverman hoped that the unusual schedule would cut his network's imminent losses—and get Roots off the air before sweeps week.[6] ”
Many of these familiar white television actors like Chuck Connors (from The Rifleman), Lorne Greene (Bonanza and later Battlestar Galactica), Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch), and Ralph Waite (The Waltons) were cast against type as slave holders and traders.
Legal issues[edit]
Following the success of the original novel and the miniseries, Haley was sued by author Harold Courlander, who asserted that Roots was plagiarized from his own novel The African, published nine years prior to Roots in 1967. The resulting trial ended with an out-of-court settlement and an admission from Haley that certain passages within Roots had been copied from Courlander's work.[7] Separately, researchers refuted Haley's claims that, as the basis for Roots, Haley had traced his own ancestry back through slavery to a very specific individual and village in Africa.[8][9] After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, Roots."[10] During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period."[11] In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward stated, "Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public."[12] During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, a minority studies teacher at Skidmore College, Joseph Bruchac, came forward and swore in an affidavit that he had discussed The African with Haley in 1970 or 1971 and had given his own personal copy of The African to Haley, events that took place well before publication of Roots.[13]
Broadcast history[edit]
Episode list[edit]
Roots originally aired on ABC for eight consecutive nights from January 23 to January 30, 1977. In the United Kingdom, the BBC screened the miniseries from April 8 to April 20, 1977.

Original run #
Re-edited version #
Approximate time period
Featured Kinte descendant(s)

Kunta Kinte
Kizzy
Chicken George
Tom Harvey
Part I (90m) 1750–1767 Yes   
Part II (90m) 1767–1768 Yes   
Part III (45m) Part III (90m) 1776 Yes   
Part IV (45m) 1780–1790 Yes Yes  
Part V (45m) Part IV (90m) 1806 Yes Yes  
Part VI (90m) 1824  Yes Yes 
Part V (90m) 1841–1847  Yes Yes Yes
Part VII (45m) 1861–1865   Yes Yes
Part VIII (90m) Part VI (90m) 1865–1870   Yes Yes
U.S. Television ratings[edit]
The miniseries was watched by an estimated 130 million [14][15][16] and 140[17][18] million viewers total (more than half of the U.S. 1977 population of 221 milion - the largest viewership ever attracted by any type of television series in U.S. history as tallied by Nielsen Media Research) and averaged a 44.9 rating[17] and 66% to 80% viewer share[17] of the audience. The final episode was watched by 100 million viewers and an average of 80 million viewers watched each of the last seven episodes.[6] Eighty-five percent of all television homes saw all or part of the mini-series.[6] All episodes rank within the top 100 rated TV shows of all time.[19]

Episode
All-time Ratings
 Ranking
Number of
 Households
Rating
Share
Date
Network

Roots Part I #82 28.84 million 40.5% 61% January 23, 1977 ABC
Roots Part II #32 31.40 million 44.1% 62% January 24, 1977 ABC
Roots Part III #27 31.90 million 44.8% 68% January 25, 1977 ABC
Roots Part IV #35 31.19 million 43.8% 66% January 26, 1977 ABC
Roots Part V #21 32.54 million 45.7% 71% January 27, 1977 ABC
Roots Part VI #18 32.68 million 45.9% 66% January 28, 1977 ABC
Roots Part VII #50 30.12 million 42.3% 65% January 29, 1977 ABC
Roots Part VIII #3 36.38 million 51.1% 71% January 30, 1977 ABC

On February 16, 17, and 18, 2013, in honor of Black History Month and the 36th anniversary of Roots, cable network BET aired both Roots and its sequel miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations. Celebrating the 35th anniversary of Roots, BET premiered the miniseries on a 3-day weekend showing in December 2012, which resulted in being seen by a total of 10.8 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings, and also became the #1 Roots telecast in cable television history. As for the BET network, its 35th anniversary airing of Roots became its best 'non-tentpole' weekend in the network's history.
DVD release[edit]
Warner Home Video, which released a 25th-anniversary 3-disc DVD edition of the series in 2002, released a four-disc (three double-sided, one single-sided) 30th-anniversary set on May 22, 2007. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by LeVar Burton, Cicely Tyson and Ed Asner among other key cast members, "Remembering Roots" behind-the-scenes documentary, "Crossing Over: How Roots Captivated an Entire Nation" featurette, new interviews with key cast members and the DVD-ROM "Roots Family Tree" feature.[20]
Awards and nominations[edit]
Won
Emmy Awards:
Best Director in a Drama Series – David Greene for "Part I"
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Louis Gossett, Jr.
Best Editing in a Drama Series – Neil Travis for "Part I"
Best Limited Series
Best Music Composition for a Series – Dramatic Underscore – Gerald Fried and Quincy Jones for "Part I"
Best Sound Editing in a Series
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Series, Single Appearance – Edward Asner for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy or Drama Series, Single Appearance – Olivia Cole for "Part VIII"
Best Writing in a Drama Series – Ernest Kinoy and William Blinn for "Part II"
Golden Globe Award:
Best TV Series – Drama
Nominations
Emmy Awards:
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – LeVar Burton for "Part I"
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – John Amos for "Part V"
Best Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Ben Vereen for "Part VI"
Best Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Madge Sinclair for "Part IV"
Best Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Appearance – Leslie Uggams for "Part VI"
Best Art Direction or Scenic Design in a Drama Series ("Part II")
Best Art Direction or Scenic Design in a Drama Series ("Part VI")
Best Costume Design in a Drama or Comedy Series – Jack Martell for "Part I"
Best Cinematography in Entertainment Programming in a Series – Stevan Larner for "Part II"
Best Cinematography in Entertainment Programming in a Series – Joseph M. Wilcots for "Part VII"
Best Director in a Drama Series – John Erman for "Part II"
Best Director in a Drama Series – Marvin J. Chomsky for "Part III"
Best Director in a Drama Series – Gilbert Moses for "Part VI"
Best Editing in a Drama Series – James T. Heckert and Neil Travis for "Part II"
Best Editing in a Drama Series – (Peter Kirby for "Part III"
Best Editing in a Drama Series – James T. Heckert for "Part VIII"
Best Music Composition for a Series in a Dramatic Underscore – Gerald Fried for "Part VIII"
Best Sound Mixing ("Part I")
Best Sound Mixing ("Part IV")
Best Sound Mixing ("Part VII")
Best Sound Mixing ("Part VIII")
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series, Single Performance – Moses Gunn for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series – Ralph Waite for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama or Comedy Series – Robert Reed for "Part V"
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series – Cicely Tyson for "Part I"
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama or Comedy Series – Sandy Duncan for "Part V"
Best Writing in a Drama Series – M. Charles Cohen for "Part VIII"
Best Writing in a Drama Series – James Lee for "Part V"
Golden Globe Award:
Best TV Actress in a Drama – Leslie Uggams
Historical accuracy[edit]
Author and historian Steven Mintz wrote: "Many Americans, influenced by images in the 1977 television mini-series Roots, mistakenly believe that most slaves were captured by Europeans who landed on the African coast and captured or ambushed people." According to Mintz most people, who were free before the enslavement, however were enslaved through wars and raids in Africa. While European slave merchants staged raids on villages, most of the slave merchants did set up trade bases in West Africa. The majority of people who were transported to the Americas were enslaved by other Africans and bought in exchange for firearms and other goods by the slave merchants. Mintz emphasises that while slavery existed already before, the massive slave demand of the merchants however drastically enhanced slavery and wars for slaves in Africa.[21] Through a series of conflicts, primarily with the Fulani jihad states, as many as a third of the Senegambian Mandinka were sold into slavery to the Americas through capture in conflict.[22]
Remake[edit]
The History channel is planning a remake of the miniseries after acquiring rights from David L. Wolper's son, Mark Wolper, and Alex Haley's estate. The planned new eight hour miniseries, with Mark Wolper as executive producer, will draw on Haley's novel and the original miniseries albeit from a contemporary perspective.[23]
See also[edit]
Atlantic slave trade
Middle Passage
Triangular slave trade
List of films featuring slavery
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Awards for "Roots"
2.Jump up ^ "Top 100 Rated TV Shows Of All Time, TV By the Numbers". Tvbythenumbers.com. Retrieved 2012-11-17.
3.Jump up ^ Hyatt, Wesley (2012). Television's Top 100. US: McFarland. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-7864-4891-3.
4.Jump up ^ "New Roots series expected to yield big bucks for ABC". Ottawa Citizen. February 20, 1979. p. 54. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
5.Jump up ^ Courtis, Brian (February 19, 1979). "Roots...Second Time Around". The Age. p. 2. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
6.^ Jump up to: a b c "Museum of Broadcast Communications". Museum.tv. Retrieved 2012-11-17.
7.Jump up ^ kaplan, Robert; Buckman, Harry; Kilsheimer, Richard (October 17, 1978). "Plaintiffs’ Pre-Trial Memorandum and Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law". United States District Court, Southern District of New York; Harold Courlander, et ano., v. Alex Haley, et al: p. 1, Vol. I.".
8.Jump up ^ Stanford, Phil (April 8, 1979). "Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story". The Washington Star. pp. F.1.
9.Jump up ^ Kaplan, Robert; Buckman, Harry; Kilsheimer, Richard (October 17, 1978). "Plaintiffs’ Pre-Trial Memorandum and Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law". United States District Court, Southern District of New York; Harold Courlander, et ano., v. Alex Haley, et al: p. Woods 13, Vol. III.".
10.Jump up ^ Stanford, Phil (April 8, 1979). "Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story". The Washington Star p.F.1.
11.Jump up ^ "Trial Transcript, United States District Court, Southern District of New York; Harold Courlander, et ano., v. Alex Haley, et al". 1978. p.1327".
12.Jump up ^ "The Roots of Alex Haley". BBC Television Documentary. 1997.".
13.Jump up ^ Stanford, Phil. ""Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story".". The Washington Star: p. F.4.
14.Jump up ^ Rich, Frank (February 18, 1979). "Television: A Super Sequel to Haley's Comet". Time. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
15.Jump up ^ "ABC Soard in Ratings With 'Roots' Sequel". Schenectady Gazette. February 24, 1979. p. 12. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
16.Jump up ^ "110 million see 'Roots' video special". The Tuscaloosa News. March 1, 1979. p. 8. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
17.^ Jump up to: a b c "'Roots' Ratings Dip". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 28, 1979. p. 29. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
18.Jump up ^ Hanauer, Joan (February 28, 1979). "ABC Takes "Roots" Again". The Bryan Times. Retrieved 2010-02-26.
19.Jump up ^ Gorman, Bill (May 21, 2009). "Top 100 Rated TV Shows Of All Time". Retrieved 2010-02-17.
20.Jump up ^ "Roots" DVD details
21.Jump up ^ Steven Mintz (2009). "African American Voices: A Documentary Reader, 1619-1877". John Wiley & Sons. p.8-9. ISBN 1444310771
22.Jump up ^ "Bound To Africa — The Mandinka Legacy In The New World" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-17.
23.Jump up ^ Andreeva, Nellie (November 5, 2013). "History To Remake Iconic ‘Roots’ Miniseries". Deadline. PMC. Retrieved November 6, 2013.
External links[edit]
Roots at the Internet Movie Database
Roots at AllMovie
Roots at TV.com
Encyclopedia of Television
Roots-related interview videos at the Archive of American Television


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Alex Haley's Roots


Books
Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) ·
 Queen: The Story of an American Family (1993)
 

Television
Roots (1977) ·
 Roots: The Next Generations (1979) ·
 Roots: The Gift (1988) ·
 Alex Haley's Queen (1993)
 



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Categories: English-language films
Roots (TV miniseries)
1970s American television series
1977 American television series debuts
1977 American television series endings
American television miniseries
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Films set in the Gambia
Best Drama Series Golden Globe winners
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Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries winners
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