Fifty summers ago, in 1976, journalist and author Alex Haley published his masterwork, Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The timing was exquisite: As the nation celebrated the bicentennial with fireworks and paeans to freedom, Roots countered it with a deeply personal, Black-centered narrative of American history that began in Africa and cast the horror of slavery as foundational, not incidental, to the country’s founding and its character.
Despite its unflinching truths, Roots was an instant success — both the book and the miniseries that aired on network television the following year — a cultural landmark that resonated across color lines and far beyond literary circles. Its most groundbreaking truth is that Black stories not only matter, they are central to America’s identity.
