Alex Haley, following the publication of his 1965 Autobiography of Malcolm X, became a well-recognized racial groundbreaker in the literary world. In 1977, with the TV adaptation of Haley’s 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, his role as a racial pioneer crossed over into the televisual. The miniseries principally focuses on Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton/John Amos), who is kidnapped by black and white men in his native The Gambia, West Africa, and forcibly brought to Colonial America. In addition to scenes portraying Kunta’s cruel Middle Passage journey, across the Atlantic, the series chronicles his harsh subjection to chattel slavery, resistance/attempted escapes, and perhaps most importantly, the active preservation of his Mandinka roots. In the subsequent scenes, Roots centers on the lives of Kunta’s descendants until the end of the American Civil War. 

  No show featured as high an array of present and future black stardom as Roots. Beside the aforementioned Burton and Amos, a wide range of black stars, from writer Maya Angelou, to football star Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson, to Cicely Tyson, to Richard Roundtree, to Leslie Uggams, and many more graced the small screen. In addition, as noted, the source material came from an established legendary African American author in Alex Haley. 

  Despite, this array of recognizable stars, network officials did their best to sanitize Haley’s source material for a white audience. In a strategy to deflect the white gaze from the violence of the story, executives integrated the point of view of white characters. This was the opposite of Haley’s novel, which was primarily through the point of view of black characters. Ed Asner, Chuck Conners, Ralph Waite, and other white recognizable actors were cast in such roles. Fearing financial plunder and rejection from “southern affiliates,” ABC, aired the miniseries on “consecutive nights instead of weekly installments.”  Such creative decisions, illuminates the timeless reach of the specter of the Southern market and the white gaze in the era of the so-called post-Civil Rights era. 

       As the creative decisions highlight, Roots was not without problems. Despite the fact that Kunta Kinte was captured by both black and white slave catchers in The Gambia, Ronald Reagan would go on to say about Roots, “Very frankly, I thought the bias of all the good people being one color and all the bad people being another was rather destructive.”  In addition, throughout the years many have questioned the elements of veracity of Haley’s novel. 

  In subsequent years many have questioned the elements of veracity in Haley’s novel. Roots however influenced a larger shift in the historiographical research and public sentiments on slavery and African heritage. Although the research of scholars as early as Eric Williams and C.L.R. James, and in the 60s and 70s David Brion Davis, James Walvin, and Robert Fogel, challenged the sanitized myths of the sanctity of slavery and the white abolitionist movement, Roots exposed the harshness of slavery to wide audience. The miniseries is estimated to have garnered 130 million viewers.  Not long after Roots, there were a spate of black novelists such as Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, who explored the original sin of slavery in the Americas.Former Assistant Attorney General and Civil Rights activist Roger Wilkins, summed up the importance of Roots as, “the most significant civil rights event since the Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965.”