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Roots: The Next Generations

1979

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EP1 Part 1 Feb 18, 1979

It has now been 12 years since Chicken George and his family left their plantation in Virginia and arrived in Henning, Tennessee. The year is 1882 and the era of Reconstruction of the south and substantial progress for the newly-freed slaves, is coming to an end with the implementation of Jim Crow laws throughout the state. George's son Tom Harvey has been asked to travel to Memphis to meet with members of the Colored Republican Party Club, a group of local black politicians who are trying to come up with a new election strategy in light of the changing times. Meanwhile Tom's oldest daughter takes a liking for and wants to marry a young mulatto man, much to Tom's disapproval. The white son of a local attorney and adviser to the railroad eschews his father's profession in favor of poetry and falls in love with a local college-educated black school teacher brought to the town by Tom to open a colored school. However when they marry, he is expelled from his family and their presence in town raises the ire of the townspeople.

EP2 Part 2 Feb 19, 1979

Thirteen years have passed in the town of Henning, Tennessee and now in 1896, the town has taken advantage of a burgeoning new industrial age thanks to the expansion of the railroad. Returning home from Kansas City after a decade away teaching, Elizabeth Harvey reunites with her younger sister Cynthia, now grown up, and reconciles with her father. Cynthia has taken an interest in a local railroad gang worker named Will Palmer who returns her affections. But in order to court her properly and gain the approval of her father Tom, Will leaves the railroad and finds a better job at a lumber mill, eventually taking Cynthia to be his wife. His hard work, dedication, loyalty, and financial acumen leads to his surprise promotion to owner and operator of the mill, although it is now saddled with debt. Despite this, he and Cynthia give Tom and Irene their first grandchild. Meanwhile Colonel Warner's son Andy decides to get involved in politics by running against his father to institute a new Democratic Party that plans to disenfranchise blacks of the vote and ensure victory against the Republicans. And now thanks to new restrictive voting laws in the state of Tennessee, Tom is denied the opportunity to vote for the first time since the end of the Civil War.

EP3 Part 3 Feb 20, 1979

The year is 1914 and Will and Cynthia Palmer's daughter Bertha heads off to college, eventually meeting and falling in love with a poor but hard-working fellow student named Simon Haley. Meanwhile Jim and Carrie Warner's son has become a doctor but because he is black, he is prevented from treating his own dying white grandfather, Colonel Warner. Bertha returns home from college for break to find the Ku Klux Klan has come to town and Simon returns to his home in Georgia to learn that his share-cropping family can't afford his tuition anymore and his father is ready to put him back to work in the fields. Simon manages to find work as a Pullman porter on the railroads to earn money during the summer, but also attracts a benefactor - a kind journalist who he served on a train route. In 1918, rather than attend graduation, Simon enlists in the army and heads off for war, heeding the words of Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, but leaving behind a stunned and grief-stricken Bertha.

EP4 Part 4 Feb 21, 1979

In a flashback of a military gallows in 1917 Texas, a group of black soldiers from the 24th Infantry, convicted for various crimes including mutiny, are hung. Fast forward to 1918 and the local church in Henning, Tennessee hears about the military's atrocities in a sermon, which frightens Bertha into imagining the same may happen to Simon. Meanwhile, Simon's 92nd Infantry are going through basic training but face many injustices at the hands of the locals in the Illinois town where their camp is located. Simon and his all-black company finally head overseas and fight valiantly in France under the command of a white Lieutenant. After a gas attack, the unit is taken to a hospital and then sent home after a brief period of R&R in France. However the now battle-hardened men face an escalation of racism, harassment, and violence, while the Spanish Flu rages throughout the country. Despite this, Simon and Bertha have a happy reunion and eventually marry, with intentions to move to Ithaca, New York so Simon can get his Masters at Cornell. They eventually return home from New York with a baby who they name Alex.

EP5 Part 5 Feb 22, 1979

Eleven years after the Haley's return home with baby Alex, the story opens in 1932 in Henning, Tennessee during the Great Depression, with Simon still unable to find a job as a professor. In the interim, the family continues to live with Bertha's parents and Simon works for his father-in-law hauling lumber. Simon finally receives and accepts a job offer as Director of Agriculture at A&M Institute in Normal, Alabama, and moves his family there. He meets and eventually works with a white Federal County Extension agent while visiting black farmers in the area. Simon shadows the agent, offering growing advice in an attempt to alter the old destructive farming practices, and notifying the farmers of new farm subsidies recently set up by President Roosevelt. However both men face resistance from the county's largest landowner, who not only refuses the advice, but wants to keep the subsidies for himself. When both men push too far, Simon's house is trashed and the agent is assaulted as a warning. Meanwhile, Bertha slowly takes ill, trying to hide it, but eventually succumbing.

EP6 Part 6 Feb 23, 1979

Seven years have passed since Alex's mother's death and the Haley family has moved to Elizabeth City, North Carolina where Simon is teaching agriculture at the local state teacher's college after remarrying. Alex has decided to drop out of college and return home, immediately finding a job with the WPA for $1 a day. Simon, realizing that Alex was apparently too young when he was sent off to college, recommends that Alex enlist in the military. Alex decides to join the Coast Guard in Norfolk, Virginia, but sadly discovers that his only opportunity there is working in the ship's galley. Alex eventually meets a young lady at a weekly church social and after war is declared, marries her before he is sent off to the south pacific. While at sea, he learns that he is the father of a baby girl and otherwise finds popularity and solace when writing. When the war is over, he returns home and re-enlists despite his father's disapproval, taking an assignment at a Coast Guard station in New York City. However he finds that racism is alive and well in his day to day life and his struggle to become a professional writer eventually alienates his wife.

EP7 Part 7 Feb 25, 1979

In the exciting conclusion, it is now 1960 in Henning, Tennessee, 10 years after Alex's wife Nan left him, and Alex attends the funeral for his great Aunt Elizabeth. He has finally succeeded in a writing career by publishing free-lance articles including interviews with Minister Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party. Alex lands a contract to ghost-write the autobiography of Malcolm X, although Malcolm is assassinated before the book is published. Alex then realizes that he should write a book about his own family and he obsessively researches his origins, alienating his new girlfriend in the process. After identifying the language of the words passed down to him, he manages to get an advance that will allow him to travel to Gambia, West Africa. Once there, he is taken by boat to the Griot for the Kinte clan. After the Griot retells centuries of history, Alex finally hears the name of Kunta Kinte and the story of the drum that lead to his capture into slavery, marking the end of his search for his family's roots.
7.8| 0h30m| en
Synopsis

Roots: The Next Generations is a television miniseries, introduced in 1979, continuing, from 1882 to the 1960s, the fictionalized story of the family of Alex Haley and their life in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, USA. This sequel to the 1977 miniseries is based on the last seven chapters of Haley's novel entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family plus additional material by Haley. Roots: The Next Generations was produced with a budget of $16.6 million, nearly three times as large as that of the original.

Director

Producted By

Warner Bros. Television

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Reviews

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.
Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
nuoipter termer Roots: The Next Generations is a continuation of Roots following the lives of ancestors of Alex Haley and going to Alex Haley and showing him take an interest in the story of Kunta Kinte from stories his grandmother told him. It ends in the 1960s with him finding where Kunte Kinte had come from in Africa. This is a wonderful moving program. It's very interesting seeing the evolution of society as the episodes progress. This is the second best television program after Roots. That ending is amazingly moving. Roots and Roots: The Next Generations are a result of very intelligent people taking very important topics that they care very much about and creating something that is amazingly powerful.
bkoganbing Although Roots is about slavery it is also about family and legacy and as such has a universal message. The superb quality of the first mini- series is carried on in Roots: The Next Generation. The first series left off at the Reconstruction Era where hopes of legal, economic, and social equality are dashed, most especially during the Populist era of the 1890s. That was when a lot of demagogic politicians especially those in the South linked racism to economic advancement for poor whites. A legacy the South still has to deal with today.Great Grandson Tom Harvey of Kunte Kinte from Africa and his wife Irene played by Georg Stanford Brown and Lynne Moody carrying on from the first series. Legends of Kunte Kinte renamed Toby here are handed down to the family as he's referred to as 'the old African'. The issues in their different forms are being addressed down to the present generation as author Alex Haley played by James Earl Jones rediscovers and documents the family's African roots. Marlon Brando won an Emmy and is unforgettable as George Lincoln Rockwell head of the American Nazi Party. You will not forget his performance as the personification of hate and James Earl Jones's extreme uncomfortableness doing an interview. By contrast Jones develops a rough rapport with Malcolm X played by Al Freeman and gets his first acclaim as a writer doing Malcolm's autobiography.One role I particularly liked was that of John Hancock who is the CPO of the steward's mess in The Coast Guard and mentor to young Alex Haley played by Damon Evans. It's a similar to the non-commissioned officer that Hancock played in A Soldier's Story.Also in a mentoring role of sorts is Ossie Davis who mentors Alex Haley's father Simon Haley played by Dorian Harewood in the ways of being a Pullman Porter. The issues involving that job and the organization by A. Phillip Randolph of The Brotherhood Of Sleeping Car Porters ares touched on here, but dealt with fully in 10,000 Black Men Named George.Roots: The Next Generation continues an excellent tradition and will be seen by more generations than the old African Kunte Kinte could have imagined.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This TV mini-series has become a classic in some twenty or thirty years and it deserves to be, both in its first part and in its second part. Yet the quality of the filming and editing has aged and the film is not served by the fact it was done for television that tends to show too many close-ups and to avoid vast rapid movements and wide landscapes. But it has become a classic by the theme it deals with. The second part takes us to the 1960s and is telling the history of the USA after the Civil War as much at least as the history of this family. So we see the reconstruction period, and then the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, the imposition of segregation, the First World War, the New Deal and the Second World War, and then the post war period. In this second series that ends with the real author as the main character, Haley himself, I am amazed by the fact that it is more contemplative of the injustice coming up than really fighting against it. The only positive point is education. But if there is some kind of resistance it is always that of one person and not of the community. If in the 1930s, the subsidies voted by Congress to small farmers to help them survive the crisis and get even, blacks included, are systematically, for the blacks at least, hijacked by the land-owners to their own profit and if one black farmer manages to get his check it is the result of the private initiative of one man and the black farmer ends up in prison, wounded and under a prosecution that will keep him in prison for a while and his mules have been repossessed by the landowner and the little farmer has been totally pauperized and expelled from the county if not the state. If after the war there is some improvement the discourse is concentrating on the personal efforts of Alex Haley, his own personal way to some kind of wealth and grace. The closest we get to the struggle of the black community for the end of discrimination and more justice is a couple of scenes with Malcolm X and his assassination. But where is Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and the collective massive fights and battles waged by the blacks, including against the Vietnam War. Even Kennedy is evoked as some kind of epiphenomenon that does not count for much, and his assassination is not even evoked. That has to lead to a real ego trip at the end and Alex Haley going back to Gambia and meeting with the griot of the village of his ancestors and hearing from his mouth the story that had been told from generation to generation in his family and meeting one last descendant who still has the name Kinte like the ancient ancestor Kunta Kinte. And Alex Haley himself adds a verbose conclusion about the importance of knowing one's ancestors. What a pride am I supposed to get from the fact that my ancestors were the serfs of a small nobleman who ended up in the French Academy under King Louis XV and whose name they all took during the revolution? That kind of nostalgia may make us unable to embrace the future today.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
rcj5365 ROOTS:THE NEXT GENERATIONS-Produced by Wolper Productions for the ABC Television Network. Producer:Stan Margulies. Based on the novel "Roots" written by Alex Haley. Executive Producer: David L. Wolper,and adapted for television by William Blinn. Shown as a mini-series for ABC-TV that ran from 1979-1981.First Telecast of the Mini-Series: February 18,1979 Last Telecast of the Mini-Series: July 12,1981 NOTE: During the February 1979 broadcast,it ran each night for seven days,and was repeated as a weekly series from May of 1981 to July,1981.Two years after Alex Haley's "Roots" made television history,this sequel to one of the most highly watched programs of all time continued the saga,again attracting large audiences in which no one,not even ABC was expecting such a brilliant success. And again it was the talk of the town during the night of the Emmy Awards,winning more Emmys than any other show imaginable in the history of television. The story picks up where the first one left off,where it resumed from last time. The story begins in 1882,by which time Tom Harvey,the great-grandson of Kunta Kinte had established a marginal existence as a blacksmith in Henning,Tennessee. Relations between the races were strained,but the old prejudices and racial hatred of the past survived. Tom Harvey(George Stanford-Brown)forbade his daughter's marriage to a light-skinned negro because he is "too white";and town patriarch Colonel Warner(Henry Fonda)disowned his own son Jim(Richard Thomas)when he dared to marry a black schoolteacher. Before long "literacy tests" were being used to deny blacks their recently won the right to vote,and lynch law had reappeared. This was during the reconstruction period,and this was years after the Civil War and the story continues onward towards the beginning of the 20th Century.Tom's younger daughter,Cynthia(Bever-Leigh Banfield),married a hard working young man named Will Palmer(Stan Shaw),who,despite the oppression,had risen ownership of the local lumberyard. In time Will would succeed Tom as the leader of the black community,as the terror and violence of the Ku Klux Klan swept the South. Will and Cynthia's daughter,Bertha(Irene Cara),became the first descendant of Kunta Kinte to enter college. There,in 1912,she met an ambitious young Simon Haley (Dorian Harewood),son of a sharecropper,whose education was being sponsored by a philanthropic white man. After serving in a segregated combat unit during World War I,Simon returned to marry Bertha and began teaching agriculture at a black college in Tuskegee,Alabama. This was otherwise known as Tuskegee Institute also known as Tuskegee University. It was from there that the foundations of family lore were discoved by Simon's son Alex(played by Kristoff St. John as a child; Damon Evans as a young man,and James Earl Jones as a adult)who soaked up the family legacy that was told to him from the older generation about the stories and family history about the ancestors of Kunta Kinte.As the beginning of World War II approached,Alex enlisted in the Coast Guard,where he spent the next 20 years. When he retired in 1960 he turned to writing,interviewing such national figures as Malcolm X,whose autobiography he helped write. Haley also had candid interviews with American Nazi Leader George Lincoln Rockwell,and also was good friends with Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. But it was a visit to his boyhood home in Henning,Tennesee that reignited his interest in his family's past,all the way back to the "Old African" Kunta Kinte,and started him on a journey to Africa where the origins of his ancestors came from and from there begin his most greatest work of all time."Roots:The Next Generation",just like the first one,had a lot of brilliant talents which featured a superb who's who of African-American actors of their day,along with Hollywood heavyweights like Henry Fonda,Olivia DeHavilland,Harry Morgan and Marlon Brando is unusual role as a Aryan Leader of a Nazi Organization,whom Haley interviews. The "Roots" sagas are usually shown during Black History Month,but it is a must to see this special in all its glory to one of the most highly acclaimed specials of all time.