Issue Date: July 8, 2007
"Roots:" 30th anniversary edition
A leading genetics researcher specializing in African ancestry discusses the groundbreaking miniseries.
The Show
The epic 1977 telefilm based on Alex Haley's best seller traced back the author's family more than 200 years to African youth Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) and successive generations of American slaves. Aside from breaking Nielsen records and winning nine Emmys, the miniseries inspired millions of African-Americans -- and others -- to learn more about their own backgrounds.
Our Insider
Rick Kittles is a geneticist descended from enslaved Africans. In 2003, he co-founded African Ancestry Inc., helping hundreds of black Americans trace their family histories through DNA and other scientific markers. He recently helped Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. guide Oprah Winfrey toward her genetic heritage among the Kpelle people in Liberia.
OVERVIEW "The miniseries has held up exceptionally well; everything from the screenwriting to the acting is still very impressive and could be shown to audiences across many generations for some time to come. But that '70s hair on the actors really stood out. If the series were made today, I'm sure some of their hairstyles would be quite different."
WHAT IT ALL MEANS "When Kizzy (Leslie Uggams) decides not to marry the plantation driver, Sam (Richard Roundtree), her son asks why. Kizzy answers, Sam was not like us; nobody ever told him where he came from, so he did not have a dream of where he ought to be going. It emphasized how this is a story about a people who lost an amazing amount of information about themselves."
"ROOTS" RELEVANCE "As far as I am concerned, 'Roots' is the root of our interest in genealogy. And genetic genealogy is "Roots" revisited. For whites, it's a hobby, but for blacks, it's more of a psychological, political, social and cultural connection. When the miniseries came out, it created so much interest about our ancestry. Haley told a story that every single African-American wanted to know, and he had the answers, too."
QUESTIONING ACCURACY "There may have been some fiction in Haley's work. [Some historians found parts of Kinte's story suspect; the author, who settled a plagiarism suit out of court, acknowledged that he unintentionally lifted a few paragraphs from another book.] You have to understand he was giving us what had previously been oral histories passed from generation to generation. Of course, there were embellishments here and there. Today, we'd likely use additional sources to verify things, but he did a great job during that time frame."
BONUS, NOT FOR ME "The audio commentaries were interesting. But there is a bonus documentary called "Roots: One Year Later" showing the impact of the miniseries a year after it had aired. I wasn't crazy about it, to be frank, because it did not have the same flavor as the series itself. It almost seemed to me as if it were apologizing for making any viewers uncomfortable. And it didn't give any answers; it just seemed to say that we should all hold hands and go to church together. I wanted more."
-- Jeffrey Ressner
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