Remembering 'Roots'

In 1977, "Roots" became one of the most-watched television events in American history, transforming the way many Americans thought about family history, slavery and the nation’s past.

The phenomenon began with the publication of Alex Haley’s groundbreaking novel— Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Released in the fall of 1976—during America’s Bicentennial—it was an overnight commercial and critical success. The book spent more than four months on The New York Times bestseller list, sold more than 6 million copies, was translated into more than 35 languages and earned Haley both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Born in 1921 and raised in Ithaca, New York, and Henning, Tennessee, Haley was the son of a homemaker and an academic. His father taught at universities throughout the South. He spent the summers of his youth by the side of his grandmother, Cynthia Palmer, absorbing stories of his maternal ancestry, including snippets of a presumed-lost African language that had been passed down through the generations. Palmer traced her ancestors to the mid-18th-century arrival of the “furthest-back” person in America, an African called “Toby” by his enslavers.

A talented, though indifferent, student, 18-year-old Haley bypassed college and, on the eve of World War II, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he would serve for the next 20 years. He turned to writing, eventually rising to become the Coast Guard’s chief journalist. After leaving the service, Haley began a successful freelance career, contributing articles to Reader’s Digest and Time while interviewing musician Miles Davis for the first issue of Playboy. An interview with Malcolm X led to an offer to ghostwrite the controversial civil rights leader’s memoir, which Haley finished just weeks before Malcolm X’s assassination. Published in 1965, The Autobiography of Malcolm X put Haley on the map, eventually selling more than 6 million copies.

The inspiration for “Roots” came to Haley in an unlikely place. While visiting London’s British Museum in 1964, he was struck by the story of the Rosetta Stone, the multilingual slab that helped researchers crack the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, opening a new window into a “lost” world. Curious whether the African phrases passed down by his family could be used similarly to unlock his own family history, Haley embarked on a decade-long journey across America and Europe, visiting nearly 50 libraries and archives.

In an era when most African Americans assumed it was impossible to track down proof of their ancestors’ origins, which had been swept away by more than a century of slavery and racial persecution, Haley’s doggedness led to remarkable results. Working with a linguist helped identify the family language as Mandinka, spoken by the West African Mandinka people in The Gambia. Slave ship records documented the 1767 arrival in Annapolis, Maryland, of a ship called the Lord Ligonier.

Haley pieced together historical records to connect his lineage to a man enslaved and called Toby, who Haley believed was the ancestor who had arrived on that ship. A visit to the Gambian town of Juffure also led to a meeting with the local “griot,” a traditional storyteller responsible for preserving the history of local families—a role not unlike that played by Haley’s grandmother, Cynthia. According to Haley, his research indicated that he was the great-great-great-great-grandson of Kunta Kinte, whom he speculated was given the name Toby after his arrival in Maryland, one of nearly 1.5 million Africans from the Senegambian region who had been swept up in the transatlantic slave trade.

The resulting novel followed Kinte’s capture, his horrific journey to America on the Middle Passage, his refusal to accept his enslavement, his daughter Kizzy’s brutal separation from her family, his grandson Chicken George’s attempts to buy his family’s freedom and the post-emancipation hostilities that led Haley’s great-grandfather to settle in Henning, Tennessee.

In the years following its release, Haley faced criticism from journalists and historians who questioned his historical methodology, particularly his depiction of Juffure, which was not the bucolic village portrayed in the book but rather a vibrant port and bustling hub within the slave trade where competing African groups captured and sold men, women and children into bondage. Bristling at the challenges to his work, which also included charges of plagiarism, Haley defended “Roots,” which had been marketed as a historically accurate novel but that he later began referring to as “faction.”

The controversy did little to damage book sales and plans were already underway for a television adaptation. Network executives, however, proved to be more than a little skittish. Concerned that a predominantly white television audience would turn away from the violent depiction of slavery in Haley’s book, they cast high-profile white actors in expanded versions of characters in the novel, which had been told solely from the point of view of Black people. Bucking convention, the network also scheduled the miniseries to air on consecutive nights instead of in weekly installments, hoping to minimize its financial risk in case audiences simply tuned out or Southern affiliates refused to air the show at all.

Their fears proved to be utterly unfounded. When the series premiered on Sunday, January 23, 1977, more than 28 million viewers watched the first episode. Word of mouth, positive reviews and a massive winter storm along the East Coast led to steadily increasing viewership as the saga unfolded. The January 30 finale captivated more than 100 million Americans—more than half the country and nearly 85 percent of all television households—breaking all previous ratings records. It remains the third-most-watched single episode of all time, trailing only the final episode of “M*A*S*H” and the iconic “Who Shot J.R.?” episode of “Dallas.”

For the first time, the story of Black Americans—and the remarkable talent of Black actors—was prominently featured on network television. The show featured a vast array of African American talent, from newcomer LeVar Burton, still a teenager when he was cast as young Kunta Kinte, to O.J. Simpson and Maya Angelou in small roles. When “Roots” was rebroadcast the following year, it again captured viewers’ attention, as did a 1979 sequel that followed Haley’s descendants into the 20th century.

The cultural impact of “Roots” was immediate. Critics and journalists lauded the series’ frank depiction of slavery and the resulting, albeit difficult, conversations between Black and white Americans about a previously taboo subject. Civil rights leader and historian Roger Wilkins wrote in The New York Times that the program’s importance was comparable to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Selma-to-Montgomery March of 1965, crediting the show with upending centuries of racial stereotypes.

The mere word “roots,” previously associated with plant life, took on a new meaning as millions of Americans were inspired to search for their own ancestors. Today’s multibillion-dollar genealogy industry, which runs the gamut from TV shows to websites and companies offering DNA-based genetic “maps,” may not have existed without “Roots.” Almost overnight, the tracing of family histories, once seen as the privilege of the rich, was suddenly in vogue. Americans took advantage of many of the tools Haley had used. Libraries across the country noted a significant uptick in visitors from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, and inquiries about genealogical records at the National Archives increased by a staggering 300 percent.

America’s educational system saw an immediate impact as well. The nation’s first collegiate African American studies program had been created at San Francisco State University just a decade earlier, in 1968, and it had been less than a year since locally observed Black History Week had expanded into today’s Black History Month. In the aftermath of the television broadcast, more than 250 colleges and universities began offering courses on “Roots” and the history of slavery. Like so many cultural events today, “Roots” inspired a baby-naming boom, with more newborns receiving African-inspired and ethnically distinctive names.

Today, nearly 50 years after “Roots” swept the nation, its impact is still keenly felt. Its legacy encompasses everything from an annual festival in Annapolis, Maryland, honoring the memory of Kunta Kinte to references in hit rap songs and the opening scene of the Broadway musical “The Lion King.” In the aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s and in the shadow of the Civil Rights Movement, it changed the way many Americans looked at themselves—and each other—forever. It started a conversation that, in these still-fractious times, may be as necessary as ever.