Roots remake retells America's brutal history of slavery

Nearly 40 years later, the series has been reimagined, and is due to air in Australia as the Black Lives Matter movement picks up new momentum.

'African American history had been studied at the university level, but this brought it into the mainstream of American culture,' says Professor Matthew Delmont of the 1977 series Roots.

Delmont is the author of Making Roots, an exploration of the history of the original television series and the book that inspired it, and how it was first perceived by audiences.

'What was important about it was that it told African American history at a mainstream level in a way that people had just never seen before.'

On the cusp of the remake's release in Australia, the series appears as relevant as it was when the original went to air.

'When we think about the Black Lives Matter movement, it's again a moment in which we're trying to grapple with what it means for African Americans to strive to be first-class citizens and to strive to have equality,' Delmont says. 

'It was no different in 1976 when Roots was initially published and broadcast, and it's still ongoing today, unfortunately.'

Based on the 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning book written by Alex Haley,Roots tells the story of African slavery in America.

The remake has now been produced as a four-part miniseries, and is airing on SBS for Australian audiences.

Two episodes have been directed by Australians—Phillip Noyce and Bruce Beresford.

Beresford directed the final episode of series, which was set during the American Civil War and shot predominantly in Louisiana.

He says the series is particularly timely and even the process of making it took its emotional toll on the largely African American cast.

'Filming some of the scenes in my episode I often found the cast were crying,' Beresford says.

'There were things happening in the drama ... children wrenched and sold off to other plantations, and the actors would all burst into tears.

'The actors knew that it was part of what happened to their forebears and they found it very moving.'

Beresford says the History Network, which developed the remake, was especially focused on displaying the brutality the slaves were subject to, an attitude that Beresford was not totally comfortable with.

'I have a scene in it where they hang one of the black slaves and it seemed very hard to watch. It's very disturbing,' he says.

'But then the network said: "Have him hanging longer." I find all that a little unnerving. It was pretty horrific as it was.'

The impact of Roots

While Alex Haley's original novel was mired in allegations of plagiarism and copyright infringements, they didn't undermine the importance of the story he wanted to tell.

At Haley's funeral in 1992, he was eulogised by civil rights activist Jesse Jackson: 'He lit up the long night of slavery, he gave our grandparents personhood, he gave roots to the rootless.'

Delmont believes the publication helped expose the ugly foundation of American history to the mainstream.

'It didn't shy away from the fact that America was a country that was built through slavery,' he says.

'That African Americans who became citizens of the United States did so by fighting for their freedom, by working to build a country and that's something that has never fully been reckoned with in US history.

And to have it showing up in peoples living rooms was just a unique moment in American cultural history.'

The original Roots also shone a light on genealogy, and the ability for African Americans to trace their ancestry, despite their lineage having been massively disrupted when African Americans were transported from Africa to the 'New World'.

'For African Americans that was an important story to tell because it's a story that's been lost or purposely hidden from them,' Delmont says.

'Alex Haley, through a mixture of fact and fiction, was trying to heal and repair those gaps.'

The decision to remake Roots hasn't been met with universal praise, with rapper Snoop Dogg among the critics.

'I don't understand America,' he said. 'They just want keep showing the abuse that we took hundred and hundreds of years ago. But guess what? We're taking the same abuse, think about that part.'

Delmont says there was a similar response to the original series in 1976, with some African Americans opposed to watching the brutality experienced by their ancestors on screen.

However, as a historian Delmont believes it's difficult to reconcile history without actively acknowledging it.

'I think it's hard for us to deal or reckon with this in any meaningful way if we can't understand that these images, as brutal as they are, are part of our nation's history,' he says.