Starting with “Roots”

One American problem that continued into the late 1970s was the lack of opportunities for white people to even imagine what Black history was like. Blacks were gradually being taken up in school textbooks, but only as bit players with no real attention paid to their experiences and their feelings. An astonishing cultural phenomenon in 1976-1977 showed how cruelly they had been treated and how far they might go if given half a chance.

It started with the publication of a book titled Roots by the Black writer Alex Haley, who had co-authored the best-selling Autobiography of Malcolm X several years earlier. Roots depicted the enslavement of a young African who was shipped to America in the 1700s. It traced his descendants over seven generations with vivid characterizations, awakening readers to how Black people were mistreated over almost three centuries.

The book was turned into a seven-part, twelve-hour TV miniseries that drew an enormous audience. More than half of America’s population watched at least part of the series and roughly 45 percent of all Americans watched the final episode. For the vast majority of white Americans, it was the first time they had given much thought to Black history and gained even a general idea of what Black lives had been like through American history.

The book and the TV series were only a first step. It would take until the 1990s for textbooks to include minority figures such as Sacajawea, Cesar Chavez, Frederick Douglass, and Malcolm X in textbooks. There is still a lot that needs to be done.

(260 words)