Jim Beckerman|Staff Writer@jimbeckerman1
Show Caption
America's biggest Bicentennial firecracker actually exploded three weeksafter1976.
"Roots," which began its momentous eight-night run on ABC-TV on Jan. 23, 1977 – 40 years ago this month – was in some ways the real, and surprising,climax of our big Yankee Doodle year.
"It made us more sensitive to our own history," says Englewood's Arnold E. Brown, ahistorian of Bergen County'sAfrican-American history."It opened the eyes of young people who saw it for the first time."
"The triumph of an American family!" trumpeted an ad in TV Guide. " 'Roots' is the true story of the men and women who built America."
What thead didn't say –notoutright –was that this was the saga of an African-American family.
It was hardly a secret, by then,that "Roots" was the story of Kunta Kinte(LeVar Burton, then John Amos), the 18th-century African ancestor whose progeny Alex Haley traced in his bestsellinghistory, "Roots." The book had become a publishing sensation in 1976, spending 22 weeks at the top of The New York Times bestseller list, ultimately winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Still, ABC was hedging its bets. Adsfor the show, in the mainstream media, emphasized Lorne Greene, "Bonanza's" beloved Ben Cartwright, whose picture dominates a stylizedfamily tree (Jet magazine, using a similar cover image, put LeVar Burtonat the center). Itwas as a generationalepic–lessas asaga of slavery –that "Roots" was pitched for general consumption. That week's TV Guide featured a cover story, not about racial injustice, but about Alex Haley's adventures in genealogy: "'Roots': the Story Behind the Search, by Alex Haley."
The marketing was noaccident, saysRon Simon, curatorof television andradio at New York'sPaley Center for Media.
"They understood that if people were goingto see this, it was not becausethey wanted to be enlightened about slavery," Simonsays. "Haley and others used [genealogy] to get people into it, and maybe experience the larger narrative. It was a way to engage people."
"Roots" was, among many other things, a triumph of shrewdpromotion. If ithad been sold as a drama of race relations,it might not have scored with many beyond acoreblack —and liberal white —viewership. But coming at the end of a history-saturated year, "Roots" became a family saga that resonated with people of all backgrounds who had started to think about their own roots.
"It was almost like an extension of the Bicentennial," Simon says. "They were hitting the triumph of the family, genealogy, that we all come from overseas. That's what got people to sample the show."
What they got when they sampled it, of course, was something else.
"I have vivid memories of how groundbreaking it was," says Walter Fields, past political director ofthe N.A.A.C.P. for New Jersey. In January 1977, he was a 17-year-old junior at Hackensack High School. "Roots," that week, was all anybody talked about. "It was at the top of discussion in high school every day," he says.
The epic miniseries (itself a fairly new concept) became the third-most-watched TV event in history to that time –the No. 1and No. 2 slots, ironically, held by atwo-night broadcastof "Gone With the Wind" in 1976.Over eight nights,130 million viewersate up "Roots,"followingavidly the fate of Kunta Kinte and other memorable characters like the jaunty Chicken George (Ben Vereen), the dour musicianFiddler (Louis Gossett Jr.), who wearsaway his life playing his master's tune,and Kizzy (Leslie Uggams), whose betrayal by her erstwhile friend Missy Anne (Sandy Duncan) and screamingseparation from her family is one of TV'smost harrowing moments.
"It humanized slavery," Fields says. "There really is no such thing as a slave. You are enslaved. Slaves are not natural. Inour nation'shistory we had alwaystreated slaves as objects, non-humans.Things that were owned. 'Roots' put a human face on slavery."
Viewersdiscussedthe episodes in classrooms and living rooms; they began to talk about theirown ancestors. Overnight, genealogy became a national craze that cut across racial and social lines.Praise –and ratings –for "Roots"wentthrough the roof.
"Roots" is so mainstream now (in 2016, a remake was aired by The History Channel) that it's hard to remember how revolutionaryit wasin its day.
To many Americans in 1977, the show's grim picture of slaverywas new and disturbing –though it would have been familiar to their great-great grandparents.The 19th century readers of "The Narrativeof the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845), "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1851) and "12 Years a Slave" (1853) had no illusions about whatslavery was. But between that time and the 1970s, an effort –part sentimental, part systematic –had been underway by some Southern apologists to re-frame the story.
Thomas Dixon, the arch-racist whose novels "The Clansman" and "The Leopard's Spots" were the basis for the notorious 1915 film classic"The Birth of a Nation," said frankly that his purpose"was to revolutionize Northern audiences [and] transform every man into a Southern partisan for life."
Twenty-five years later, "Gone With the Wind" (author Margaret Mitchell was a big Dixon fan) rhapsodized about "a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South."
Tunes like "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," "Swanee" and "Alabamy Bound" created a semi-fictional Dixiein which contented slaves strummed banjos 'neath magnolia trees in the moonlight.If "Roots" was propaganda –asin some sense, arguably, it was–it was propaganda to counter propaganda.
"African-Americans had always understood the period of slavery in America, but most of us had really learned about it, not in public schools, but in churches," Fields says. "Because in public schools it wasn't really being taught. It was a pretty radical idea to do a television series that was focused on slavery. It made Americans confront an ugly period in our past. You could hide a textbook. You could change the narrative of a speech. But you couldn't run away from 'Roots.' "
The show was also sneakily subversive in its casting. To haveactors likeGreene, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show's" Ed Asnerand "The Brady Bunch's" Robert Reed –TV's favorite avuncularfigures –as the slave captains and slaveholders was a daring move. It's one thing to talk about the "paternalism" of slavery. It's another to see Mr. Brady ordering a dozen lashes. "I think it was a much more brilliant piece than people gave it credit for," Simon says.
Amid the hosannas for "Roots," there was some grumbling."A whips, shackles and lust view of slavery," carpedone criticin 1977 –as ifthere could be a caviar and truffles view.Some complained –not without reason –about inaccuracies and stretches in Haley's narrative (there was alsoa plagiarism case, settled out of court, for $650,000).
And of course, many white viewersdidn't like to see themselves cast as the bad guys. "Veryfrankly,Ithought the bias of all the good people being one color and all the bad people being another was rather destructive," said future presidentRonald Reagan.
"Roots" did make someeffort to be "balanced" (Asner's conscience-stricken slave ship captain, for example,was notin the book). Nevertheless,ABC chief Fred Silvermanwas so convinced the show would flop with mainstream audiences that he tried to cram it allon the air in one week in January so it would be gone before the February sweeps.
This"consecutive-night"format was so successful thatit was picked upfor the many other multi-generational sagas that "Roots" inspired in the 1970s and '80s, among them "Holocaust" (1978), "The Thorn Birds" (1983) and, not least, in 1979,"Roots: The Next Generations."
"That's something you can't do today –get the entire country involved in a program," Simon says.
How did "Roots" change television –and America?
Here's one gauge: When the "Roots" remake appeared in May 2016 ( it was produced by Mark Wolper, son of David L. Wolper, who produced the 1977 version), people complained for the opposite reasons. The monstrouspicture of slavery, so new and exotic that it made many Americans in 1977uncomfortable, was now so familiar that some viewers –and not just whiteviewers – were sick of it.
"They going to just to keep beating that [expletive]into our heads about how they did us, huh?" groused Snoop Dogg, who also called for black viewers to boycott the new "Roots." "When you all going to make a [expletive]series about the success that black folks is having?"
"I think that's very shortsighted," Fields says (for the record, he liked the 2016 remake).
"'Roots' is only one of a millionstories about Americanslavery," Fields says. "We haven't even begun to tell the story. When you ask most schoolchildren today, they're clueless about slavery. We haven't even begun to talk about it in its entirety."
