30 Years Since Alex Haley’s Roots
Published 31 May 2007, 9:40 am -
2 Comments -
Filed under Feature Stories
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GUEST: Bill Haley, Alex Haley’s son
Thirty years ago this year, the mini series based on Alex Haley’s ground breaking book, “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” aired on television in the US, casting a spell across the country. Alex Haley traced his ancestry back to a proud African tribesman named Kunta Kinte who was forced into slavery. His novel won a Pulitzer prize and the National Book Critics Award. The miniseries, which won more than 30 Emmys, attracted over 80 million viewers per episode, with more than a 100 million viewing the finale. Despite these successes, the book had a troubled history. Even though Haley described the book as a blend of fact and fiction, critics questioned the extent of its factual basis. Additionally a copyright infringement lawsuit was settled with Harold Courtlander, who claimed that a passage was lifted from a novel he wrote. The book has been republished this year by Vanguard who say that “none of the controversy affects the basic issues. Roots fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past but the then present day 1970s and how America had fared since the days portrayed in Roots.” Michael Eric Dyson writes in the introduction, “Long before demands for history from the bottom up became a rallying cry of progressive historians, Haley’s book practiced what it preached.”
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RP on 1 Jun 2007 at 7:52 pm: 1
Thank you for doing this show. I saw Roots’ first broadcast 30 years ago at the age of nine. It made a strong impression on me, and I remember my k-3 class discussing it.
It was decades later that I learned how much more horrible the slave trade was (via KPFK). Nevertheless, Roots made a strong and lasting impression on me.
Roots is a rare example of TV realizing its potential for good.
Bri on 8 Feb 2010 at 6:57 pm: 2
African Americans deserve a better history than Roots as it does not properly detail how Muslims enslaved 99% of salves that came to the Western Hemisphere. Whites were not even allowed on the Continent, they stayed on islands. The death rate when held by Muslims was over 2x higher than during the sailing trip. Haley knew better but apparently wanted to change history to make whites worse when to this day, slaves are held in Africa as well as in Asian countries.
If the first half hour is so inaccurate, how much more inaccurate can the balance of the book and series be?
Again, African Americans really do deserve an unbiased view of what occured. We all do.