Roots

I still remember watching "Roots" as a kid, but never got around to reading the book. So, I did the next best thing when I saw it on the shelves of the Hollywood Library in CD form. I Love listening to books when I drive down the road for my work.

This was the 30th anniversary edition produced by the BBC. It is a novelistic approach by the late great Alex Haley to give the world a perspective, a history, of Black life in America rooted in Africa. From Kunta Kinte (born around 1750) all the way to Alex Haley, Alex traces his family history and recreates the characters of his family through his slave roots to the 1960's and '70's when he produced the book.

Kunta Kinte, the strong willed Mandinka turned into a slave, growing through his manhood years on the Waller plantatiion in Virginia and marrying Bell, his equally strong willed wife. Giving birth to Kizzy who is sold away when she is 16 to Tom Lee, a chicken fighting formerly poor white man. The birth of Chicken George who becomes a prize chicken trainer. His son Tom who becomes a blacksmith (which turns out the Kinte family practiced in Mali prior to moving on into Ghana). It is an amazing story that is told better through reading or listening than me reviewing.

The most amazing parts for me were near the end when Alex was researching the book. He wanted to find the record of the ship that brought his ancestor to America. He searched thorugh over a thosand documented voyages before he found the one he was looking for, 1767 heading to Annapolis, Maryland. Over a thousand ships around the year 1767 carrying slaves...over a thousand... It hit me like a brick when he said it, it hit Alex far harder.

My wife remembers a whole lot of her family history. Far back longer than I remember mine. Shusli's family obviously survived the holocaust beget upon the people of Northern California and Southern Oregon. She has a strong sense of who she is. I don't recall mine all that well, only being able to go back as far as my grandparents, Louis and Violet (Smith) Johnson. But everytime we drive through the Umpqua Valley, I know where I'm from. Everytime we go to the Rogue River, Shusli knows where she is from. We remember where our connection is.

Although many folks are connected here, I can only imagine what it must feel to have your family history stolen through slavery. To have that history connected to another part of the world that has been stolen.

And here we are now, together. Many of us have histories where some part of us has been stolen. Blacks stolen from Africa. Indians stolen then their culture beat out of them and also enslaved as servants to white folks as what happened in the boarding schools.

And here we are together. Here we are, together. Here we are, together. Welcome.

Alex Haley also has Indian ancestry. I believe his great grandmother was half Indian. Her mother had been captured by the Indians and she married one. The whites killed the people of their village and enslaved his great grandmother (who was born with the Indians) and her mother.

And here we are, together...WELCOME!