Instead it became a worldwide phenomenon, winner of nine Emmy Awards, and its final episode remains the third-highest rated show of all time. After screening the series, network executives were fearful that this horrifying reality would scare away audiences, so they decided to "dump" it over consecutive nights, just get it over with. On January 23, 1977,the first in an eight episode TV adaptation premiered on ABC, simply called Roots, and it did not shy away from depicting the raw brutality and absolute inhumanity of the slave experience. Starting with an ancestor named Kunta Kinte of the Mandinka people in Gambia who was enslaved and brought to America in the late 1700s, it traced his family line through his descendants as they suffered the horrors of slavery, abuse, imprisonment, rape, and murder for more than half a century, until the end of the Civil War. In 1976, Alex Haley published the book Roots:The Saga of an American Family, telling the story of what he believed to be his family's history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |