Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service with me Ashley Byrne.

Today we're taking you back to January 1977 and one of the most influential American TV

miniseries of all time. I've been speaking to actor and singer Leslie Uggms

about the making of roots, the epic drama about the treatment of African Americans in the

18th and 19th centuries. It was January the 23rd, 1977 and the American ABC Network had just started broadcasting routes, a story shown over eight consecutive

nights about an African family sold into slavery in America.

The most really moving document to me was the diary of Anne Frank. And so I said I'm going to try to pivot this book around one person, like all of us a vulnerable human being and that was Kunta

based on writer Alex Haley's best-selling novel roots told the story of a young man

kidnapped from his home in the Gambia and forced to live a life of servitude in the American South. 29 million households across the United States tuned in for the first episode and as

the audience grew over following days it was clear that Roots was no ordinary television series.

There was a feeling on that set that there was something very special being made.

I mean from not only the actors, but crew everybody they loved this story they was so

committed to to this story but we had no idea that it was going to be the phenomenon that it

turned out to be.

Actor and singer Leslie Uggms came across roots by chance after hearing writer Alex Haley

talking about his story on a chat show.

I was fascinated by the whole story of it and then he said that ABC was going to be making

it into a television event and I thought wow I'd sure like to be a part of that.

And Leslie says that when she read the part there was only one role for her,

that of Kunta Kinti's daughter Kizzy.

It was kind of strange audition because they gave me three different

roles for me to choose from and the last thing I read was the Kizzy role and soon as

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