SHOOK WORLD IS BACK 40 YEARS ON
worked out the phonetic Kin-tay was spelled Kinte, a clan that originated in Old Mali and moved to Gambia.
Haley said: “The Kinte men traditionally were blacksmiths and the women were potters and weavers.” The writer, who died in 1992, traced these slaves from Gambia to the US.
Viewers were hooked not only with Kinte but also other characters including Fiddler and Chicken George, and Kizzy, whose separation from her family became one of TV’s most disturbing moments. “It humanised slavery,” said Walter Fields, past political director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. “There really is no such thing as a slave. You are enslaved. Slaves are not natural.
“In our nation’s history we’d always treated slaves as objects, non-humans. Things that were owned. Roots put a human face on slavery. Most of us had really learned about it in churches. 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
You could hide school textbooks but couldn’t run away from Roots
WALTER FIELDS EX-NAACP POLITICAL DIRECTOR the narrative of a speech. But you couldn’t run away from Roots.”
The show led to discussions in schools and homes, sparking an interest in genealogy among African-Americans keen to find out about their own past.
Roots was shown in more than 50 countries between 1977 to 1980 after it received 37 Emmy nominations and won nine, along with a Golden Globe.
In Nigeria, the show fuelled government demands for reparations. In West Germany, it provoked some of the first discussions about the Holocaust in German broadcasting. South Africa and Brazil refused to import the series, billed by Warner Brothers as “the world’s most-watched television drama”. The show was not without controversy. Although featuring one of the largest and most esteemed casts of black actors ever assembled, it emerged Asner earned nearly as much as all of them combined. Producer David Wolper said having white “television names” was the only way to ensure it would not be pigeon-holed as a black show. “If people perceive Roots to be a black history show, nobody is going to watch it,” he said. “Remember the television audience is only 10% black and 90% white. So if we do the show for blacks and every black in America watches, it is a disaster.”
One viewer, author Harold Courlander, believed what he saw was similar to his 1967 novel The African. He filed a plagiarism lawsuit in 1978 and while the judge was preparing his ruling, Haley’s team settled for £521,000.
Not everyone is happy with the remake, starring Brit Malachi Kirby. Some African-Americans have been left angered by the dramatisation produced by Wolper’s son Mark.
Rapper Snoop Dogg has called on fans to boycott the four-part series.
He said in a video posted on Instagram: “Let’s create our own s*** based on today… F*** that old s***.”