Roots

…storm when, as a 1977 television miniseries, it attracted the largest audience yet for a feature film about Black Americans. Subsequent novels returned to the slavery era to retrieve lost or suppressed heroes and heroines, as in Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986), or to effect healing and self-awareness in…

…years, notably the blockbuster miniseries Roots (1977). ABC also earned praise as the first network to hire a woman (Barbara Walters) to anchor its nightly newscast, although its news division did not fully blossom until the advent of the current-events series 20/20 (1978– ) and Nightline (1980– ).

…wrote for the television miniseries Roots (1977). He received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1995, a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001, and the National Medal of Arts in 2010. In 2013 Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall…

…television’s most-watched dramatic telecasts was Roots, an eight-part miniseries first shown in 1977. A sequel, the seven-part Roots: The Next Generations, appeared in 1979. Based on author Alex Haley’s real-life quest to trace his African ancestry, the shows made other African Americans more aware of their rich cultural heritage.

…work, most notably the miniseries Roots (1977).

Roots, an ambitious 12-hour adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel, aired on 8 consecutive nights in January 1977. It was based on Haley’s reconstructed family history from the capture of his ancestors in West Africa in the 18th century through slavery and emancipation in the United…