The Return of Roots

You may have missed the Roots mini-series on ABC in 1976, Roots: The Next Generations in 1979, and maybe even Roots: The Gift in 1988, yet 40 years later it has been polished off again and is back for a four-night run on the History Channel. The original Roots ran over eight nights in January 1976, but this time it starts on Memorial Day Weekend (Monday night).  We tend to see this weekend as a time to remember struggles with other nations, yet slavery was all about a simmering civil war that went on for centuries only to be partly settled by a real Civil War and legislation 100 years later. 

If you are not familiar with the story, here is a trailer and what you can expect in the first episode, 

In 1750 in the river region of The Gambia in West Africa, Omoro Kinte and his wife, Binta, have their first child, a son named Kunta. Kunta is trained in Mandinka customs and is a dedicated student who dreams of traveling to the university. After being kidnapped and captured by the Koros, Kunta is sold to British slave traders in 1767 and is shipped to America. In Annapolis, Maryland, he is sold to a Virginia planter named John Waller and is given the slave name Toby. Kunta strongly resists his new name and enslavement. He relies on the wise counsel of Fiddler, an assimilated slave and sophisticated musician who has been assigned to train him. Malachi Kirby, and Forest Whitaker star.

London's paper The Guardian notes that in a time of films such as Djang Unchained, it may be harder to tell a dark story with little in the way of happy endings, but notes:

Roots hasn’t endured because of high-concept action, wish fulfillment or fancy prosthetics. In fact, it has survived in the cultural consciousness in spite of the limitations inherent in the medium of television. It’s also survived the failings of its author.  Alex Haley was sued and later admitted to plagiarizing an earlier work, plus the mislabeling of his work as more fact than fiction. Roots doesn’t have to be a true story to be powerful. It’s a fable – one with an origin in reality, but a fable nonetheless. It can stand for the millions of other stories just like it – stories of men and women in bondage, yearning to be unchained.

At a time when America seems to be falling for politicians who want to whitewash the past and make false promises about the future, maybe we need a fable that shows us the struggles it took to bring us to this point in time and the importance of learning from history before it is too late.