Re-Discovering Roots

I finally got around to reading Alex Haley’s Roots, and I wonder why it took me 44 years. I was aware of it when it was published and intended to read it. But then the mini-series came out, and it was such an event and was so hyped that I moved the book from my “Read Soon” list to my “One of these Days” list.

A really stupid reaction, that was. It would have done me a world of good to read it at the time. That was so long ago that I can acknowledge that I was afflicted with a kind of arrogance. Roots was hailed for reawakening America to the reality of slavery. But I thought myself already well aware and well-informed on the subject (I wasn’t, really). So I didn’t want to lump myself in with late-comers to the reality. I was doubly arrogant in that I moved away from anything in direct proportion to how popular it was, something I probably still suffer from, though hopefully to a lesser degree.

But anyway, I was tremendously moved by the book. Even granting all the criticism that has come over the decades about faulty scholarship, plagiarism and false representations, the book remains a powerful testament to the corrupt foundations of American society and the poisonous legacy that continues to this day. But it is also a testament to the enlightened, progressive and ever-hopeful America that also endures.

One of the most painful aspects of the story that Haley tells is the abject powerlessness that slaves must have felt, when any assertion of right or dignity or anger could be met not only by personal debasement, torture and/or death, but also with that same treatment extended to family and fellow-sufferers. Haley recounts the terror campaigns that followed the revolts of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. This ever present “backlash” is with us still and has become an entrenched part of American society and politics, as elaborated in this powerful piece by Lawrence Glickman from a recent issue of The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/white-backlash-nothing-new/611914/?fbclid=IwAR26Q-e_Bv6f2Y9wmRK-LvkTaa4F2SFz1cUGYLkzqmk49PvAd2Z8bA3q_Sw)

But what moved me most in reading Roots was the last few chapters, with Haley’s account of hearing the story of the ancestral “African” who called himself “Kin-tay”. This, when he was a child, crawling amongst his grandmother and her sisters as they sat on the front porch, sharing the bits of his language and personal story that they retained. And then, writing of the long, arduous search he undertook decades later, to trace these bits of information backward, all the way to the 1750’s, to Juffure, a village in The Gambia.

The beauty and the blessing of that moved me to tears. And they reminded me of my own family’s tidbits of personal history. In 1974, when I’d just turned twenty, I sat with my Great-Aunt Audrey in Detroit, my hometown, and she told me that one of my ancestors was said to have been brought into slavery from Madagascar. I’d never heard that before. And I’d never heard of slavery in relation to that huge Indian Ocean island. Aunt Audrey also told me that one of our ancestors was a Native American, but she couldn’t remember to what nation he belonged. I wasn’t forward thinking enough to make notes of our conversation, and it turned out to be my last visit with Aunt Audrey. She passed away a year of two later. During my next visits to Detroit, I asked other aunts and uncles and cousins about these ancestors, but was shocked to learn that none of them remembered ever having heard what I’d heard.

I’ve never made the effort that Haley did, to mine those few details for treasure. Reading Roots certainly nudges me to do so. Or maybe I can interest one of my nieces or nephews in doing so. Wouldn’t that be something!

Another thought is that – however moving and impressive his feat – even Haley didn’t truly capture his ancestry. Because he counted himself the eighth generation from Kunta Kinte, who was therefore only one of one-hundred-twenty-eight direct ancestors of his. Kunta’s wife, Belle, was another. But what of the other one-hundred-twenty-six? Haley tells of a white slave-owner and of a half Native American in his own genetic mix. What other myriad, genetic strands contributed to his lineage. And who are the 128 forebears of mine that walked the earth approximately two hundred and fifty years ago? I can’t name a single one!

How about you?