How Roots’ cries from the past are echoed in America’s present

In Jan­u­ary 1977, a his­toric TV event cap­ti­vat­ed 85 per cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion: the ABC-TV’s mini-series Roots. Based on Alex Haley’s nov­el ​‘Roots: The Saga of an Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly’, the series starred LeVar Bur­ton in the role of the leg­endary Kun­ta Kinte and, for the first time, the sto­ry of African-Amer­i­can slav­ery was told not from the per­spec­tive of the colonis­er, but through the eyes of the vic­tims of one of the dark­est peri­ods in human history.

Though the social cli­mate in the US was slow­ly shift­ing at the time, TV net­works were still reluc­tant to air movies and series star­ring black actors, insist­ing that white audi­ences would not tune in. Roots inspired a change in these anti­quat­ed atti­tudes and, most impor­tant­ly, sparked a glob­al con­ver­sa­tion about the his­to­ry of slav­ery and its result­ing innate racism. Now, 40 years after the release of the orig­i­nal Roots, Kun­ta Kinte’s sto­ry has been remade to appeal to a new gen­er­a­tion and, depress­ing­ly, its sto­ry feels just as urgent now as it did then.

Though the remake fol­lows the same struc­ture as the orig­i­nal series, cer­tain dis­crep­an­cies in the nar­ra­tive arc have now been cor­rect­ed. For exam­ple, Kunta’s place of birth, Jufureh, was por­trayed as a remote vil­lage in the orig­i­nal series when, in actu­al fact, it was a com­mer­cial hub of Gam­bia, where the inhab­i­tants were prin­ci­pal­ly of Mus­lim faith.

This is anoth­er impor­tant aspect of his­to­ry that has been high­light­ed in the remake, see­ing as many a view­er may not have been aware of how far Islam in Africa actu­al­ly dates back. A deep­er under­stand­ing of the Mandin­ka cul­ture allows the Roots remake to reach a lev­el of accu­ra­cy its pre­de­ces­sor nev­er did, not only due to, per­haps, more inves­ti­ga­to­ry resources, but an unedit­ed depic­tion of white suprema­cy TV net­works wouldn’t risk at the time.

Kunta’s (Malachi Kir­by) sto­ry begins in Jufureh cir­ca the 1770s, where he is train­ing to become a horse war­rior, much like the rest of his fam­i­ly. The ini­ti­a­tion Kun­ta must under­go is phys­i­cal as much as it is spir­i­tu­al and, in a sense, it is this spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to his ances­try, this unbreak­able pow­er of the mind and soul, that gives him the strength to sur­vive his bleak future.

This is one of the few glimpses we get into Kunta’s world pri­or to it chang­ing for­ev­er and, even then, the lurk­ing dan­ger of cap­tiv­i­ty can be sensed through­out, though the antic­i­pat­ed anx­i­ety is some­what damp­ened by the roy­al blue colours of the Mandin­ka tribe and the warm, African land­scape. Kun­ta and his fel­low war­riors-in-train­ing are ready to fight the wrongs that have tak­en over their vil­lage and recog­nise the impor­tance in their men­tor Silla’s (Derek Luke) state­ment: ​“There is a word for a Mandin­ka not pre­pared for bat­tle; it is slave.”

The mor­bid verac­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion doesn’t become entire­ly real to Kun­ta until he comes face to face with a dead slave float­ing along the riv­er in an aban­doned canoe. Shocked, he hard­ly has the time to process what he’s seen before a canoe full of slave traders comes into view, forc­ing him to go under water and hold his breath until they have passed. Short­ly fol­low­ing his ini­ti­a­tion into adult­hood Kun­ta tries to con­vince his par­ents to let him study in Tim­buk­tu, but his father Omoro (Babs Olu­san­mokun) insists he stay and hon­our his respon­si­bil­i­ty to his fam­i­ly. Angered, Kun­ta takes off on his horse. This was to become his last day as a free man.

Kun­ta is cap­tured and finds him­self chained in the dark hold of a boat en route to Amer­i­ca, where he is to begin his new life as a slave on a tobac­co plan­ta­tion in Vir­ginia. The entire scene is beyond gru­elling – it is one that can be felt to your very core and allows many aspects of this sor­row­ful envi­ron­ment to seep through the screen and into your very liv­ing room. It’s claus­tro­pho­bic to the point in which the view­er can imag­ine him­self to smell the pun­gent scent of vom­it, fae­ces and sweat, feel the hell­ish sense of pan­ic, loss and incom­pa­ra­ble fear run­ning through the bod­ies of hun­dreds of chained men.

Speak­ing to LWLies, Malachi Kir­by describes the expe­ri­ence: ​“The only time we were on a set, was for the boat scene. It was an actu­al boat you could have tak­en out to sea, and they built it to the dimen­sions that it would have been at the time. They put 150 to 200 African peo­ple into this hold and we spent all day in there. I was wear­ing real chains. The smell you men­tioned? That smell was there. It was hor­ri­ble. There isn’t a lot of oxy­gen in there because there are so many bod­ies and there aren’t real­ly win­dows. You know, a lot of peo­ple said they had no idea. They had heard of that form of slav­ery but they just didn’t know the intri­ca­cies of it. And I don’t think that [the new] Roots even shows the depths of it – I don’t know if it’s pos­si­ble to real­ly depict the depth of that in film gen­uine­ly, you know? But I hope that we at least made a good attempt at try­ing to show a slice of it.”

Episode one of the four-part series focus­es entire­ly on Kunta’s sto­ry and his fight to hon­our his own iden­ti­ty, even as the plantation’s over­seer Con­nel­ly (Tony Cur­ran) tries to flog it out of him. Though Kun­ta ver­bal­ly sur­ren­ders to his new giv­en name, Toby, his soul for­ev­er hon­ours his birth-name. With the sup­port of the plantation’s fid­dler Hen­ry (beau­ti­ful­ly por­trayed by For­est Whitak­er) and Belle (Emay­atzy Corineal­di), who would even­tu­al­ly become his wife, Kun­ta suc­cumbs to but nev­er ful­ly accepts his fate. Kun­ta pass­es this incred­i­ble willpow­er and ances­tral pride onto his daugh­ter Kizzy (Ani­ka Noni Rose) by teach­ing her the way of the Mandinkas and it is this wis­dom and strength of spir­it that gets her through life, even after she is sold to anoth­er farm in North Carolina.

Fol­low­ing Kinte’s sto­ry all the way up to 1864, Roots intro­duces a host of char­ac­ters por­trayed by some of the finest young actors work­ing today. Next to Kirby’s emo­tion­al­ly charged and strik­ing cen­tral per­for­mance as Kun­ta, Regé-Jean Page’s Chick­en George is an absolute delight, offer­ing moments of light-heart­ed­ness (cock-fight­ing aside) amid an oth­er­wise hos­tile environment.

But what tru­ly sets the Roots remake apart from its ​’70s coun­ter­part is the fact that it nev­er shies away from the every­day atroc­i­ties African-Amer­i­can peo­ple were forced to endure – the bare flesh clear­ly vis­i­ble beneath the blood­ied lash­es in the first episode’s whip­ping scene being a per­fect exam­ple. Nor does it aim to soft­en white guilt by pre­sent­ing ​“com­pas­sion­ate” slave mas­ters á la the original’s Cap­tain Davis (Ed Asner). Indeed, it stays true to the his­tor­i­cal facts and men­tal­i­ties in a man­ner that was deemed too risky in late ​’70s America.

The Roots update holds a mir­ror up to the Unit­ed States of White Amer­i­ca and reflects the past in its present – the world may have changed but the fight is far from over. Kun­ta and Kizzy are here to serve as a reminder for a new gen­er­a­tion to hon­our iden­ti­ty and the spir­it of sol­i­dar­i­ty amidst a nation still echo­ing the cries of the past.