Roots Miniseries Trivia
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48 free Roots Miniseries trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
ABC was so nervous about Roots that it burned off all eight episodes on consecutive nights to get it over with, and 100 million people watched the finale. This Roots trivia covers Alex Haley's novel, the 1977 cast from LeVar Burton to Ben Vereen, the production decisions, the awards, the sequels Roots: The Next Generations and Roots: The Gift, and the 2016 remake. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which network did Roots first air in January 1977?
ABC
ABC had shown its hit miniseries of the year before, Rich Man, Poor Man, in weekly instalments; Roots ran night after night instead.
Q 02Over how many consecutive nights was Roots originally broadcast?
Eight
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.
Q 03Roughly how many viewers watched the final episode of Roots?
100 million
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.
Q 04What did Alex Haley call Roots' blend of history and invention?
Faction
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.
Q 05In which country is Kunta Kinte born at the start of Roots?
The Gambia
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.
Q 06What is the name of Kunta Kinte's home village?
Juffureh
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.
Q 07To which ethnic group does Kunta Kinte belong?
Mandinka
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.
Q 08What is Kunta doing when he is captured by slave hunters?
Fetching wood for a drum
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.
Q 09What Christian name does plantation owner John Reynolds force on Kunta?
Toby
Toby is the name Kunta refuses to answer to until an overseer has him whipped into saying it.
Q 10What do slave catchers do to Kunta Kinte after his final escape attempt in Roots?
Cut off part of his foot
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.
Q 11In Roots, what does Fiddler tell Kunta after the overseer has him whipped?
"There will be another day"
"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.
Q 12In Roots, what does Kunta say the name Kizzy means in his native language?
Stay put
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.
Q 13In Roots, who secretly teaches Kizzy to read and write?
Missy Anne
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.
Q 21Who played the older Kunta Kinte in the 1977 Roots?
John Amos
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.
Q 22Which poet played Nyo Boto in the 1977 Roots?
Maya Angelou
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.
Q 23Who played Chicken George in the 1977 Roots?
Ben Vereen
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.
Q 14In Roots, why is Kizzy sold away from the Reynolds plantation?
She forged a pass for a runaway
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.
Q 15What does Kizzy do at her father's grave in Roots?
Writes Kunta Kinte over his slave name
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.
Q 16In Roots, how does Kizzy's son earn the nickname Chicken George?
Expertise in cockfighting
Expertise in cockfighting makes George the chief trainer of his owner's fighting birds, and that owner is also his father.
Q 17Where is Chicken George sent for years to settle his owner's lost bet?
England
England keeps George away for years, and while he is gone his bankrupt owner sells off his wife and sons.
Q 18Where does Chicken George's family finally settle at the end of Roots?
Henning, Tennessee
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.
Q 19What do Kunta and Bell do together at their wedding ceremony in Roots?
Jump over a broom
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.
Q 20In the opening of Roots, what does Kunta Kinte's father hold his newborn son up towards?
The night sky
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.
Q 24Who played the adult Kizzy in the 1977 Roots?
Leslie Uggams
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.
Q 25Which Bonanza star played plantation owner John Reynolds in Roots?
Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene, Bonanza's patriarch Ben Cartwright, was among the familiar TV faces cast against type as slave owners, chosen to reassure audiences.
Q 26Which TV dad played slave owner Dr. William Reynolds in Roots?
Robert Reed
Robert Reed, Mike Brady of The Brady Bunch, earned an Emmy nomination as the doctor who sells Kizzy away from her parents.
Q 27Which character was invented for the series to ease white viewers' discomfort?
A conscience-stricken slave ship captain
Ed Asner played Captain Davies, who does not appear in Haley's novel.
Q 28Which NFL star, then still playing, appears in the opening episode of Roots as Kadi Touray?
O. J. Simpson
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.
Q 29Which composer scored only the first episode of Roots?
Quincy Jones
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.
Q 30Why is the network said to have aired all of Roots in a single week?
Executives feared it would flop
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.