4 BLACK INK Febnmry 22, 1977
Le Var Burton as young Kunta Kinte
by Bob Brubeck
DTH Staff Writer
“Let us make a name.”—Genesis 2:4
A little more than 35 years ago, my great grandfather wrote these
words as he began to trace my own family roots. He said that there were
no flashing, daring heroes in the family, but they were heroes all the
same because they endured. They were farmers turning the soil in
northern Indiana and had a story as did millions of others in America.
My ancestors could look back and be proud to be freeborn independent
farmers. What about the Blacks who were farmers, but not free? Alex
Haley brought his relatives and many other Blacks their family heritage
when he wrote" Roots.” Yes, Blacks too have a proud heritage to look
back on and to use as a springboard to the future.
The impact of “Roots” brought me great joy and great sorrow. My
sorrow was caused by seeing the inhumanity practiced by my own race
upon Blacks. I could easily say my ancestors never held slaves and
absolve myself of the blame of the inhumanity, the pain and suffering
which slavery brought to Black people.
It cannot be done. The act of slavery was more than a southern
tradition. It was national in nature; and more than a tradition, it was a
way of life that the nation would not give up. Just as Rhodesia and South
Africa depend upon the principles of white supremacy, so did the United
States until very recently. Kunta Kinte found there was really no place to
run. The unwritten law chained ^nd shackled him to his state of slavery.
Slavery was a national crime in which all whites shared. Freedom was
a house with a sign over the door, which read “Whites Only.”
Yet, freedom lived in the heart of Kunta Kinte. His endurance brought
mv joy. The indomitable will to be free endured from Kinte down to
writer Alex Haley. Beneath the aspect of the slave, lived a free man who
could be seen with every move, every glance. The desire to return to a
position of being a man, nothing more, nothing less, persisted in the soul
of Kunta Kinte and his descendants.
Kinte wanted to cross the “great river” to be a free man again and
stand with only the sky greater than himself. His wish burned on in a
dream he passed on to his children and to their children.
Servitude nor shackles could kill the dream as it lived on generation
after generation. It was carried from the shipyards of Annapolis; through
the fields of Virginia, clanking ih shackles, through the late 19th century
with second class citizenship, lynching, burnings, on xnd on into the 1960s.
It lived!
Alex Haley found his roots in a free man. He and countless other Blacks
were not born to be slaves. Yet, their past is clouded with the suffering of
their servitude. I saw that Blacks were bom to be men, not slaves.
"Roots” showed me what the white man’s burden really was: the guilt
of attempting to make a man anything less than a man, and forcing him
to act as if he were anything less. That is the burden. The burden has been
exposed.
Yet “Roots” is not over. The program is off the air, reviews clog every
publication in the nation, but the spirit it created goes on.
We, Black and white, must decide whether the dream continues to be
reality or whether we let it slip back into suppression obscenity.
We are the vehicle of history. What we do in our generation is as
important as what Kinte and my white ancestors did in theirs. As James
Baldwin wrote in a recent review of the book “Roots”: “We can perish in
this vehicle, children, or we can move on up this road.”
‘ALL GOD’S CHIL
Editor’s Note: When the ABC television
network aired a TV version of Alex Haley’s
“Roots”, America watched and was
changed. The most-viewed TV series In
history affected the attitudes of Black and
white people across the country. Some
were shocked, others simply happy to see
the truth exposed. Here we present
opinions of Black and White students who
were affected by the series.
by Robin Neamo
Staff Writer
After the final lines had been
said and the cast had been
presented, “Roots” concluded its
eighth and final night of
consecutive broadcasting. The
production was over, but
reactions to and the effects of it
were far from finished.
“Roots” had provoked a wide
span of emotion in me and my
friends. We had felt pride in
seeing our African heritage
depicted in a positive manner for
once, rather than the common
notion of cannibalism. We had felt
hatred and anger for the white
slave catchers and all whites in
general.
This anger transcended the
boundaries of television and found
its place in our feelings for whites
of today. After seeing many of the
things which I had read of before,
I often could not force myself to
return to my room and my white
room mate. While we are friends
and get along fine together, she
was still white and stood for all
the demeaning things her race
had done to mine.
As the show unfolded, a sense of
loss and sadness found its place
with us. We were able to see how
the white man’s system of slavery
had stripped us of our African
culture. We became neither
African nor American. We were a
lost people. But even these
negative feehngs all added to the
sensation of “Roots.” For it was
the fact that it could and did evoke
such emotions which made it
great. And although it did not
show all the horrors and realities
of slavery, it is the closest thing
we have.
After the final episode had
concluded a group of us who had
viewed the production together
celebrated the fact that we do
have roots by singing “We’ve got
roots, You’ve got roots, all Black
people got roots” to the beat of the
old Negro spiritual “All God’s
Children got shoes.”
Because it was not enough to
carry our message only within
our suite, we carried it out to the
balcony of 6th floor James. More
importantly, after the anger,
hatred, dancing and singing were
over, Alex Haley’s “Roots” had
created in us the desire to go out
in search of our own roots.
Edward Asner as an American slave trader