The Roots of "Roots" (1976)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s August 18th. This day in 1976, Alex Haley’s sprawling epic Roots hits the bookshelves. It quickly caused a sensation — and controversy.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how Haley’s work came together, the enormous impact it had, and the mix of fact and fiction that somewhat clouded the work.

Check out Reconsidering Roots, the book Kellie edited about Haley and the Roots television miniseries.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:09.0	This day, August 18th, 1976, a new book hits the bookshelves. The book was Roots.
0:17.5	Alex Haley's sprawling epic tracing his family back to a person by the name of Kunta Kinte and in many ways tracing the
0:25.2	history of slavery and the African-American experience in this country.
0:29.3	Roots was a sensation, a massive bestseller of a book,
0:33.5	and as you likely know, an epic television mini series not long after.
0:38.4	But today we'll talk mostly about the book,
0:41.0	and I guess the Roots of Roots roots and here to discuss that are as always
0:45.2	Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.
0:49.7	Hello Jody.
0:51.1	Hey there. And we should of course say, Kelly, you edited a book called Rec Considering Roots,
0:56.8	Race, Politics and Memory.
0:58.6	So this is very much in your wheelhouse.
1:01.4	Oh yes.
1:02.4	I'm excited to dive in. your in your wheelhouse. Oh yes.
1:03.0	I'm excited to dive in.
1:05.0	Yeah, for sure.
1:06.0	We've been doing a lot of my favorites lately.
1:08.0	Oh yeah.
1:10.0	I got to say, you know, I want to hear all about the book and so forth but you know one thing that just caught my I
1:16.2	1976
	...

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