Roots Grows Into a Winner

A California restaurant owner complained of a 40% drop in business. At a Harlem tavern in New York City, patrons insisted that the jukebox be turned off while they discussed the TV program they had just watched; in Los Angeles, the owner of one discotheque closed down operations altogether. The reason: last week's twelve-hour dramatization of Alex Haley's book Roots.

Aired over eight consecutive nights, Roots came up roses for ABC. Haley's story, recounting his ancestors' brutal passage from life in Africa through slavery in America, attracted nearly 80 million viewers on its third night, making that episode the third most popular TV presentation in history. With almost seven out of every ten sets in use tuned to the drama, the only shows that have had a bigger audience were NBC's screenings of Gone With the Wind.

Rivals Humbled. ABC, which had risked $6 million on the production starring LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte, Lou Gossett as his slave tutor, and a clutch of familiar TV veterans, humbled its network rivals in a week-long domination of the Nielsen ratings. Had ABC gambled even more by delaying the show until the start of the so-called sweep week on Jan. 31, the triumph would have been even sweeter. During those periods, ratings services measure the audiences of local stations, and the networks often air their strongest shows then to boost affiliate ad rates.

To many critics, Roots was an Uncle Tom's Cabin for television. The short series included a number of unusually graphic scenes: the tribal rite of circumcision, the torturous voyage from Africa aboard a slaver, whippings, rapes and even the hatcheting of Kunta Kinte's foot. For many black viewers, Roots succeeded in putting flesh on the bones of their Afro-American heritage. "We all knew what slavery was, by hearsay and by family tradition," noted Boston Journalist Robert Jordan. "But this put all those feelings in living color where you've got to believe them." Said Little Rock Teacher Charles Pruitt: "The black kids resent what has happened and say, 'They couldn't do it to me like that,' but the white kids say, 'But look, I'm not like that now.' "

Roots profoundly disturbed white viewers as well. Said Karen Bernard, 26, an unemployed Brooklyn teacher, "I cried all the way through one show. I have a child, and the fact that black women lived in fear of losing their children was devastating." Added Beverly Stallworth of Manchester, N.H.: "I feel some shame that I never cared enough to learn what it was like."

Though few could argue with Roots' impact, some scholars did find fault with its accuracy. "The manhood rite of the Mandinkan tribe took three or four years, not a couple of days," noted Dr. Andrew Billingsley, president of Morgan State University. "The series overdoes the black participation in the slave business, while it ignores the main slave traders--Europeans who came into African communities and rounded up people at gunpoint. The passage took longer, with 'seasoning' camps at the beginning, usually on an island off the African coast, and breeding camps at the end."

None of these complaints seemed to bother Author Haley last week, however. "You cannot tell 200 years in twelve hours; of course it had to be compressed," he said. Viewer reaction was more to the point, insisted Haley, whose mail has been arriving at his Los Angeles home in large canvas bags. "Black people are writing to say, 'Thank you for giving us our history.' White people are saying, 'I didn't know; I never knew.' "

Monkey Guilt. Not all of last week's viewers were so moved. The show, grumbled one Boston black, "is just them honkies trying to wash off their guilt. It ain't gonna impress me." Judge A. Nelson Waller, 73, who still lives on a Virginia plantation once toiled by Kunta Kinte, offered a different complaint. Insisted Waller: "There was no beating or carrying on in this county, nothing like they show on that gorgeous TV show."

After twelve years of toil in his own genealogical field, Haley is not about to stop with Roots. With 1 million copies of the book now in print, he has already begun work on his next project, a volume titled Search, which will describe the painstaking hunt for his African ancestry. It will be suitable for television, says the author, who confesses that he gave up TV watching years ago because it interfered with his work. "I've just rented a set," he discloses. "I guess I'm going to buy one soon."

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