48 Fun Facts About Roots Miniseries

On which network did Roots first air in January 1977?

ABC had shown its hit miniseries of the year before, Rich Man, Poor Man, in weekly instalments; Roots ran night after night instead.

Over how many consecutive nights was Roots originally broadcast?

Eight nights in a row was a new way to run a miniseries, and its success made the consecutive-night run the model for the blockbusters that followed.

Roughly how many viewers watched the final episode of Roots?

100 million viewers, almost half the country, saw the last night, and the series sent Americans of every background off to trace their own family trees.

What did Alex Haley call Roots' blend of history and invention?

Faction was Haley's word for it: he said he had traced his family back to Kunta Kinte, but admitted that most of the dialogue and incidents in the book were invented.

In which country is Kunta Kinte born at the start of Roots?

The Gambia has drawn a steady stream of African American visitors ever since, many of them looking for something of their own roots in Kunta Kinte's homeland.

What is the name of Kunta Kinte's home village?

Juffureh is a real village, where Haley said an oral historian recited the Kinte clan's past to him; critics have questioned that meeting ever since.

To which ethnic group does Kunta Kinte belong?

Mandinka and Muslim, Kunta holds on to both in Virginia: he refuses to eat pork and will not answer to the name his owner gives him.

What is Kunta doing when he is captured by slave hunters?

Fetching wood for a drum for his younger brother Lamin takes Kunta outside the village. Haley said the detail came down through his own family's stories of an ancestor seized while out chopping wood.

What Christian name does plantation owner John Reynolds force on Kunta?

Toby is the name Kunta refuses to answer to until an overseer has him whipped into saying it.

What do slave catchers do to Kunta Kinte after his final escape attempt in Roots?

Cut off part of his foot: a slave catcher's hatchet takes the front half of his right foot, crippling him so that he can never run again.

In Roots, what does Fiddler tell Kunta after the overseer has him whipped?

"There will be another day" is a friend's promise: Fiddler, the older slave ordered to train Kunta in obedience, has become his protector and mentor instead.

In Roots, what does Kunta say the name Kizzy means in his native language?

Stay put was Kunta's hope for her: a name to keep his daughter from ever being sold away, which is exactly what later happens.

In Roots, who secretly teaches Kizzy to read and write?

Missy Anne and Kizzy grow up as playmates, and the lessons begin as a game of school; they are kept secret because reading was a skill forbidden to slaves.

In Roots, why is Kizzy sold away from the Reynolds plantation?

She forged a pass for a runaway: Noah, the young man she loved, used it to flee north, and when he was caught Dr. Reynolds sold them both, to separate owners.

What does Kizzy do at her father's grave in Roots?

Writes Kunta Kinte over his slave name: years after being sold away, she finds his wooden grave marker and scratches his real name into it with a stone.

In Roots, how does Kizzy's son earn the nickname Chicken George?

Expertise in cockfighting makes George the chief trainer of his owner's fighting birds, and that owner is also his father.

Where is Chicken George sent for years to settle his owner's lost bet?

England keeps George away for years, and while he is gone his bankrupt owner sells off his wife and sons.

Where does Chicken George's family finally settle at the end of Roots?

Henning, Tennessee is where the young Alex Haley heard the grandmother's stories that later sent him looking for Kunta Kinte; he is buried there, in the front yard of his boyhood home.

What do Kunta and Bell do together at their wedding ceremony in Roots?

Jump over a broom: enslaved couples, barred from marrying in law, wed this way, and seeing it in Roots helped revive the custom at African American weddings.

In the opening of Roots, what does Kunta Kinte's father hold his newborn son up towards?

The night sky: "Behold the only thing greater than yourself," the father says as he names the baby, and Kunta later repeats the rite with his own daughter, Kizzy.

Who played the older Kunta Kinte in the 1977 Roots?

John Amos had just been fired from the sitcom Good Times after clashing with its writers; the next year he was Kunta Kinte and an Emmy nominee.

Which poet played Nyo Boto in the 1977 Roots?

Maya Angelou was a performer long before she was a published poet: she had danced and sung calypso in nightclubs and toured Europe in Porgy and Bess.

Who played Chicken George in the 1977 Roots?

Ben Vereen, a Tony winner for Pippin, was reunited with a Roots co-star in 1993, playing the father of LeVar Burton's character on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Who played the adult Kizzy in the 1977 Roots?

Leslie Uggams was a singer with a Tony and her own TV variety show when she took the dramatic role of Kizzy; decades later she found new fans as Blind Al in Deadpool.

Which Bonanza star played plantation owner John Reynolds in Roots?

Lorne Greene, Bonanza's patriarch Ben Cartwright, was among the familiar TV faces cast against type as slave owners, chosen to reassure audiences.

Which TV dad played slave owner Dr. William Reynolds in Roots?

Robert Reed, Mike Brady of The Brady Bunch, earned an Emmy nomination as the doctor who sells Kizzy away from her parents.

Which character was invented for the series to ease white viewers' discomfort?

Ed Asner played Captain Davies, who does not appear in Haley's novel.

Which NFL star, then still playing, appears in the opening episode of Roots as Kadi Touray?

O. J. Simpson took the part while still running for the Buffalo Bills, fitting screen roles such as The Towering Inferno around his NFL seasons.

Which composer scored only the first episode of Roots?

Quincy Jones scored only the opening night in Africa; Gerald Fried wrote the main theme and the rest of the score, and the two shared an Emmy for that first episode.

Why is the network said to have aired all of Roots in a single week?

Executives feared it would flop and wanted it over quickly to cut their losses; instead it drew the biggest audience any entertainment programme had yet had.

Which rapper's 2015 single King Kunta takes its title from the hero of Roots?

Kendrick Lamar took the name for a track on To Pimp a Butterfly because Kunta Kinte stands as the archetype of the slave who rebels.

Which actor won an Emmy for playing Fiddler, Kunta Kinte's mentor, in the original 1977 Roots?

Louis Gossett Jr. felt insulted to be offered Fiddler, seeing an Uncle Tom part, then came to regard the character as a survivor; the role won him the Emmy.

Which war took Alex Haley's father, Simon, to France?

World War I sends Simon Haley to France with the Army in Roots: The Next Generations; he comes home to marry Bertha Palmer, and their first son, born the next year, is Alex.

For which magazine did Alex Haley conduct landmark interviews with Miles Davis and Martin Luther King Jr.?

Playboy's long interview began with Haley's 1962 conversation with Miles Davis, and the feature he started became a fixture of the magazine.

Who played Alex Haley in Roots: The Next Generations?

James Earl Jones plays the writer in the final episode, following his grandmother's stories back to a village in Africa, where a griot tells him of Kunta Kinte.

Which screen legend won an Emmy for playing American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell in the Roots sequel?

Marlon Brando's scene recreates a real interview: Rockwell agreed to meet Haley only after being assured that the writer was not Jewish, and was not told beforehand that he was Black.

Which channel commissioned the 2016 remake of Roots?

History aired its four-night remake in 2016 with LeVar Burton, the original Kunta Kinte, back as one of the producers.

Who played Fiddler in the 2016 remake of Roots?

Forest Whitaker's Fiddler reveals that his real name is Henry, and that a song Kunta sings is one he once heard from his own grandmother.

Who played Binta, Kunta Kinte's mother, in the opening episode of the 1977 Roots?

Cicely Tyson took only parts that showed Black women with dignity, a rule that cost her steady work for years; Binta followed Sounder and her Emmy-winning Miss Jane Pittman.

Who played the title role in Alex Haley's Queen, the 1993 miniseries about his paternal grandmother?

Halle Berry played Queen, the daughter of an enslaved woman and her white owner; Haley died before finishing the book, so another writer completed it for him.

What honour did Alex Haley receive for Roots in 1977?

A Pulitzer Prize special award capped a year in which the book and the series reached so many people that hundreds of colleges built courses around Roots.

Which novel did Harold Courlander accuse Alex Haley of copying in Roots?

The African was Courlander's own 1967 novel; Haley settled the suit for $650,000 and conceded that passages from it had found their way into Roots.

What was Alex Haley's first book, published in 1965?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X grew out of long interviews Haley recorded with him; its subject was assassinated months before the book came out.

In which service did Alex Haley spend a 20-year career?

US Coast Guard voyages made him a writer: he began writing to fight boredom at sea, and shipmates paid him to compose their love letters.

In which New York college town was Alex Haley born?

Ithaca was only a first stop: within months the baby was taken south to his grandparents' home, where he spent his early years.

In which port is Kunta Kinte sold at auction in Roots?

Annapolis is where Haley's research put his ancestor's arrival: he traced a slave ship that docked there in 1767, and a memorial at City Dock now marks the spot.

What trade does Chicken George's son Tom practise in Roots?

Blacksmith Tom emerges as the family's leader after the Civil War, and the sequel finds him a pillar of the Black community in their new home.

Which PBS series did LeVar Burton host for 23 years after Roots?

Reading Rainbow ended in 2006, but when Burton launched a Kickstarter to revive it in 2014, fans met its $1 million goal within a day and gave over $5 million in all.