(00:00:00) You know now that all this has happened to me one among the really pleasurable things privately for me is when I get a chance as does happen every now and then to go somewhere where I meet people who I knew well a long time before all this happened and that certainly is the case with here at Macalester with World press and the way I came here. I remember very well it started at a party. That Harry was giving somewhere in New York and he mentioned this group at the time. I was writing a good deal of pedometer for the Reader's Digest and he mentioned this group of journalists from other countries who were coming annually to this country and asked if I would speak with them and I at that time had not spoken with much of anybody that I didn't have to and it was really kind of thrilling to me. They actually have somebody paid my fare to go somewhere and talk to somebody and go back and so that was the first trip here to st. Paul and in subsequent years across subsequent years. It really truly did become a has become something like a beacon for me and a if you will a part of my own roots in terms of logistics and I always am very glad to come. I guess it kind of tickles me the people who make out my schedules now and it seems unbelievable someday is one somebody who does nothing but keep up with my schedule. Now that seems hard to believe too me too in the interim to give you just some sort of glanced about what it's like now. I am here today and tonight at another gathering here and then tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock speak at the state department in Washington, then tomorrow night at the University of Pennsylvania Saturday in Bermuda and since Sunday back to Los Angeles and work on go back to work on a new television series. I'm into now and briefly what that is about. It's not about Roots somehow a lot of people seem to feel it that this has got to be a Roots three, but there is not going to be one we would need at least another Century to base it on and you can't do that very quickly. And so what happened was that after Roots it was I had become rather fascinated with television as a medium books are great and I love them very very much and I will of course continue to write books about something but I really got fascinated with the idea that there was this medium where in one single night. We reached 80 million people in this country. That was the last night of roots one and it now is the biggest audience in the history of television. And so it says that the potential is out there that you can deal with all that many millions of people and maybe do some good if possible and I met at a party Norman Lear very famous Sky everybody knows for his situation comedies and we had never met each other before I wanted a nice things that's happened a lot of beautiful things that happened and some not so beautiful things that happen about getting so well known. All of a sudden is as has happened with me. One of the things that that kind of amuses me is that it's almost as if a word goes out silently though and doors open that you couldn't have gotten in to save your life six months before it seems that all the other people who are well known no matter what they do, but particularly in the world of entertainment and literature and related kinds of things. It's as though you have been a family of them has said, okay, come on in. I know for instance say if you go now if I go say it to Las Vegas with sometimes I do always on business of course, and it really is as a convention I speak to a lot and I had one too. I'm jumping around. I always do I talk off the top of my head. I had you know, I had one the greatest. It was here recently in Las Vegas to speak to a television Convention of television station owners and word. It was in the paper that I was there to speak to them and then word came to me that a guy had read that I was in town and he wanted to know if I could find time to come and see him and what I heard who this guy was let me tell you I just about wept and I was over there quick as I could get it, you know, it was Joe Louis and it was Joe Louis the great great Immortal Brown bomber who lives in a nice home there in Las Vegas who used to work at Caesar's Palace as a greeter who has had a heart attack and a stroke he now is he married I was married to is married to a very lovely lady lawyer named. Mrs. Martha Lewis who takes care of him as if he were a baby he still (00:05:38) You could look at him and you know (00:05:39) what an instant that's Jus. He is whatever medically happened. He spends most of his time when awake in a wheelchair. His mind is very sharp. If you talk to him, he understands everything you say and he immediately responds to you. But whatever has happened. You can't understand what he says. It's sort of slurred very very badly and I felt as if I was meeting one of my gods because there was a time when Joe Louis was the biggest thing that was in the world in which I lived and so they are Thrills like that. But anyway, I was saying this thing that when you go to places like that now the word is around that you were there and the invitations come from here and there to go see people to have dinner with people to do something other go backstage with people and you always magically now when you couldn't get in now you got the front row Center Booth down front no bill. Everything it's just unbelievable. I love it. Yeah, it is one of the marvelous things about all this it really is and then in turn you can do things somehow we were talking about it at lunch facets of it just jumping about I don't really know. I wish I could know better than I do the component parts of why it was that Roots seem to hesitate VOC. They kind of response. It has not only in this country, but literally worldwide my mind constantly goes back to those years when it was being put together. And again, I was I was talking at lunch about how right over there whichever way it is from here WPI building which way is that that way I spent a whole summer working up in the little guest apartment up there and I had the Whole floor as big as this floor covered with notes in great lines that would get on my hands and knees just go up and down to two notes notes on the construction of slave ships notes on what happened on The Crossings and so forth and it finally got together and when it did, I guess I expected. I really expected. I headache what you'd call a good book. I thought that as I was writing it, you have to think when you put that much time that much investment on a book that you have something worthwhile. You must sustain yourself psychically if I had been pressed I suppose I would have guessed that this book probably would make its way onto the bestseller list somewhere sometime. I wouldn't have gone to be on that because it would have been idiocy to do so, there are 30,000 books a year published in this country alone. And then what did happen when it came out was Almost like an avalanche as some of you would know who have read or heard about it and I would know a little bit better about it because I was under the Avalanche and it was it was it felt like that at times the the the incredible response first in this country. And then as I say abroad it went to I was saying over there lunch. The book now is in 32 languages. I was just tickled know in about three weeks ago. When I got the first copy their most recent language is roots in Swahili. And then there was a thing that Walter Cronkite came on the show the other night that Roots was going to be published. They had learned in some huge number in the People's Republic of China and he said that I was now going to have the distinction of being the most widely read author in China without any royalties because they don't pay royalties in China, which is kind of funny but The and the film I should say is in 19 languages and I see the people the various people from time to time who are who were playing roles in the show at the table at lunch to I'm sort of keen what we talked about at lunch. One question was asked was I pleased with what had happened in the television show how it translated the book and I said that I was and I am but I would say that the biggest single disappointment. I had which amounted almost to a certain amount of grief about what the television program did I was a hand in doing it because we couldn't do anything else and that was you see when you start making a film you dealing with an absolutely finite amount of time that you have to put something on this film and we had in the course of roots 200 years to cover and we had 12 hours in that first series miniseries it Sounds like a tremendous lot of time. But when you start covering 200 years in 12 hours, it's not all that much time and one of those decisions we had to make that hurt me so much was that we had to skip a part of the book which had been one of my most moving experiences in collecting the information in writing and that was Kunta the little boy growing up in his village. I wanted desperately to be able to portray visually so much of the African culture as it would have been possible through just letting him grow up as he did in his village. But what we had to do was simply skip from his birth to about 15 because if we had gone into him growing up we would have had to use up a whole episode or two hours with him growing up in his village and we couldn't afford TimeWise to do it. So I learned one of the Great Tricks of filmmaking was we Showed Kunta Kinte baby being born and we showed the mother showing off her new born baby to all the admiring women of the village and then there was a commercial and when we came back that baby was 15 years old and we were and and we went on and I learned that to you one of the little little inside things and not all that inside but it was to me how it was done. Successfully. It's a little trick I learned visually was although you were looking at the birth of a baby and the showing off of baby the heat that baby really visually was kind of peripheral. If you notice the baby was always kind of off to the side or something. What do you really were looking at in the foreground of the camera were assisted Tyson playing the mother Maya Angelou playing the grandmother and the the father sort of in background. So your attention principally Was on those three people as you look at the baby now after the commercial when we came back and you saw those same people whose identities you knew with relation to the baby and you saw them accepting that 15 year old as that same baby. You kind of instinctively did it that was how they made what they call the jump in television and I expect our probably making a lot more jumps in the course of making television from here in about significances ramification of roots. I could stand up I suppose for maybe some hours and talk anecdotes experiences, which have happened to me which I have heard about which just gives some insight into what really is a kind of phenomenon one of the most warming things to me. Is that as it turned out? Roots created a new form on almost an art form in television when we were making that film. as we progress now and then people who were in the field of Television Executives who were really knowledgeable people began to drop around either the network or sometimes. I don't know sit and they would sort of chitchat a bit and then they would, you know, very comaraderie way say, you know, what you're doing is fine, but it's not going to make it and then they would just calmly tell you why it's a well first of all, If you look at the history of black material in television, it has never sustained anything more than two hours and it is simply impossible at black-themed material can sustain the whole 12 hours of prime time. And then they would go into other reason why I just couldn't work and as we got further along with the filming it seemed that the incidence of these dire predictions increased even at the network level when we finished the film and now in the process of editing it seemed to get almost frenzied the predictions of what a stupid error it had all been to spend everything was six million dollars to make the film born to die as it was predicted and it got so bad. That the network was nervous by that time hearing all these predictions from high places and first roots of scheduled to go on the air one episode a week for eight weeks, but then the predictions got even worse and finally the people of the network decided Well, if it was going to fail that bad, they couldn't dump out six million dollars worth of mistake, but they could at least get rid of it quickly and that was the decision to put it all together and they eat nights which at we know the rest and that was how a form called the miniseries got born and now you can't walk in television for many series particularly. If you're in the business of producing everybody's got a miniseries I had did that was one thing that was very very thrilling and then among some of the others I guess. Were some kind of unpredictable phenomena. One of them was that it was assumed that the book would have his (00:16:10) principal interest (00:16:13) among black people because the family written about was black and that very swiftly proved to be not the case. It proved to be very pervasive in its interest and then I remember how I became aware of something else that always moves me very much to think about it. I was in Paris making a television are doing a television interview this guy and I were walking along busy bustling Street traffic doors all around and he and I were walking along he had the microphone and the camera men were hit of us backing up as we walk. So it would just see be getting a strolling in which they like the portrait. And amidst all the traffic noises in the background. I suddenly heard the squeal of brakes of obviously a heavy vehicle, but I ignored it because we doing an interview and then you could tell it stopped and then pretty soon. I began to hear Alex Haley Cried Out by number of people now, I stopped and turned astonished. I'm in Paris and turn on you know what it was. It was a busload of people from Kentucky and what and and and I tell you what was behind it. They were not just to it but it was something it was my first experience with something which now is pretty much Nationwide. These were people who after routes had gotten enthusiastic about finding their roofs. So they had begun to go into local places in Kentucky where family records are located and people who had not known each other previously had begun in certain nationality records to meet each other and to discover that they shared ancestry from a given country and thus they met each other and became friends. In this case. It was a group of these kids Kentucky people Louisville primarily who had met and found they all had French ancestry in common and they become good friends as something about this study the genealogical quest that makes friends quickly and they had formed a clothes. The French ancestry club and the treasury of that club had as its objective from their bake sales their social events and various other things they did. (00:18:50) Hey Roland, I hadn't seen you before (00:18:54) here is the objective to raise enough money. To send the whole club to France where they had rented buses and had spent two weeks having a ball going around to little old cobbled Street Town's old churches going to the old cemetery and graveyards making headstone rubbings and so forth in the way that genealogical people do and that now has become multiplied by the thousands in this country clubs of one another nationalistic ancestry and it's just given as one of the insights of what this book and this film have seemed to evoke I should insert that when I say these things all of any or all of these things I certainly do not say them in a sense of some feeling on my part that wow, look what I did because I really honestly don't feel that way about it. I feel somehow that anyone would be the height of Stupid to start with vain to follow that to feel that he or she alone could set into motion something as enormous something as gargantuan as is the effect the influence worldwide that this book and film have seemed to do I don't think anybody can do that. I really honestly think it was meant to be there old so many things that they had any one of them not happened to fall into place in the pattern the whole thing never would have happened. I just feel that somehow for some reason Beyond me. I was kind of picked a has selected as a conduit through which a particular Thing would happen at a particular time in this case a book which would evoke among peoples plural all over something that I feel was pretty late and then just subsurface among all of us. Basically. I kind of feel it. We have gotten in our now technological age so impressed with rushing racing ahead with trying to find some button to push to make something happen a millisecond faster that we are just by definition drawing swiftly away from Foundation type things like family like ancestry like country of origin and so forth and that there's a yearning in US subliminally to get ahold on something that's real that's firmed. It's solid If you go say with the that kind of spirit and you just think about you don't have to go you can just send your mind sit right here. Think about cast in your mind your own grandmother your own grandfather flick in your mind for just a second the almost incredible distance in technological ways between you and they are in what we like to call sophistication ways between you and they and realize you're only talking about less than a century in time and realize how much we need to go back and Associate ourselves at least psychically with those things of solidity which they represent in our backgrounds all of us and one of the great things about genealogy is that we all share it. I think that we as human beings spend so much time now accentuating what we like to think as differences between our sales that we have almost forgotten how alike, we are as human beings given the same kind of stimulus for one another reason and I feel (00:22:50) that In (00:22:53) the response to this particular book, we Are merely manifesting what pull family has on everybody. I'll share with you. Another anecdote happened to me almost a year ago now, but it's very fresh. Get it moved me to tears. I was I mentioned to you I write at night. And I drink coffee a lot when I'm writing. And it seems I always run out of half and half which I like to drink and coffee after midnight. I don't know if I'd do it deliberately if I just want to take a break and don't get some in or whatever, but I do one night about 2:30 in Los Angeles. I probably predictably ran out of half-and-half and decided I'll just jump in the car and I'll go find me a 7-Eleven and get me some half and half but my mind is really maybe 1/4 of my mind thought that the other three quarters of our minds on what I'm writing you write as get like that you really like a zombie kind (00:23:56) of (00:23:57) and so I went and got in the car and drove I would suppose 30 40 minutes just aimlessly I didn't care where I was going. I was really sort of thinking about what I'm writing you do that to let your mind turn around where you're going from where you were and finally without any idea where I had gone really I just been turning streets and so for that our no traffic nothing I saw 7-Eleven that Tony and drive right up in front of it. Get out lock the car and start walking toward it. I mean corduroys and a you know, pull over just rumpled and whatever and I had walked maybe six or seven steps away from the car when all of a sudden I saw coming toward me about six young men black add C 19 in early 20s, very frightening looking citizens. Oh they were they and and suddenly hit me back. What the hell did I do this for? Because I knew I was in trouble. They were fanned out and coming toward me like that sort of And they were walking toward me with a not rushing. But with a piece that there was no sense trying to run that would (00:25:15) not just just keep moving. (00:25:17) And then the leader of them was a particular capable looking fellow with with a big afro over which was a knitted blue Wool Cap pulled out of their fro and he was in the center flanked by the others and when he came up I suppose they were as far away (00:25:37) as not as far as that wall, but maybe between atlantan wall (00:25:41) when he stopped just absolutely (00:25:43) stop. And the other stop and he said Alex. And I said thank (00:25:52) God you and and to my head my myself, you know, and in the next thing was he just sort of took a couple of halting steps and they followed him. They were like marionettes. I wish I had it on film (00:26:07) and then he stopped again. And now he had a very solemn expression on his face and (00:26:12) he said almost (00:26:14) blurted it and he said, (00:26:17) I'm sorry. Mr. Hill. I shouldn't speak to you like that and his hand went up and he pulled this knit (00:26:21) cap off his head hair and then he said, could I shake your hand? (00:26:27) Well, I Wrong is hand in better to you know, and then I shook the hands of the others and it took just a couple of minutes to get you know, get myself together to and and I remember being almost washed over by a lot of different feelings fundamental among which was somehow whatever that book represents and that film it got through all that (00:26:51) pervades these (00:26:53) fellows and I stood there talking. I (00:26:55) just, you know, made myself get into conversation with him (00:26:59) drew them now in the conversation and I began talking (00:27:03) about families and it struck me again that they were very awkward on the subject of him didn't want to talk about family. (00:27:10) They and I and if it became a parent to me that their family experiences had been so fragmented that it was uncomfortable area for them and then I asked about their grandmothers and that struck a little bit more called they seem to have known (00:27:27) Their grandmothers as (00:27:28) such and (00:27:30) then we just talk for a while chit chatted back and forth and one of the fellows kind of blurted out. That he said you asked me something about family at any burden. He said I'm a basket and I told him I said brother please for me never ever use that expression about yourself and never think that about yourself and I told him I thought and I do think if there's any one word that I had the power to strike from the English language. Totally it would be the word illegitimate. It has crawled caused more people more anguish pain than any single word. I know needlessly a reason being that anybody with a lick of sense has owner to think for a second to know there is no such thing. In fact as an illegitimate child every child on Earth has a mother and father, but Society has put that that scourge of a term. Upon so many people and caused so much anguish. And so I'd like to feel a truth sort of works in the area of The Human Condition. Opening up a little bit more than had been opened up before. Look at us causing us maybe to look at ourselves. If I had a wish that I could bring true. It would be that there would be a Roots book and film form for every nationality religious group ethnic or whatever other discernible group on the face of Earth for us all to be availed of the opportunity to know more about each other's history culture background and so forth because everyone of us, it doesn't matter who we are have such Rich cultural background most of us. In fact don't even know our own cultural history no matter what group it is it sort of tickles me is among widespread among black people. Is the belief that all white people can't raise themselves back to William the Conqueror and that's not true. The fact is that most white people don't know much more than black people do about their family pass. It's just that among the greater number of white people in this country. There is a greater number who have been able to trace back so that the impression is given that the average is that but that's not true at all and of course people of European descent. There is a greater average of Records available then is the case of black people are various other groups, but the pattern is that usually when people came over to this country as immigrants and saying this immigrant picture, like people simply are the most only unwilling immigrants in the country. But the Immigrant pattern was that when the first generation was born in this country. They wanted to get away from the old country ways and Association and they almost blocked out all association with the old country and then that begin to to be the case for about the next 2-3 generation until that group of people begin to assimilate and become successful and it's usually around the 5th 6th generation that then people want to go that generation wants to go back and find out what happened on the other side of the ocean by which time many of the records are obscured or lost and so forth. I was talking about with my son. About just things like this people often ask me, you know your children share your interest in this in genealogy and it's been tickled me because (00:31:19) last time I was my son (00:31:20) his passion interest was could I possibly get him a Jaguar? No way, you (00:31:26) know, but anyway, we were talking about this thing (00:31:32) and The expression of this country about this country as a Melting Pot has long been with us and you kind of get to Peach the impression from that of like homogeneous like milk that everybody would just pour into the same place and we all turn around and in centrifugal force ways. We'd all sort of like become alike. And that's really not very practical. I wouldn't want to wake up tomorrow morning white. It would be very strange to me and I'm damn sure. Nobody wait wants to wake up black tomorrow, that'd be very strange to them. But there's another now that he gave it to me. And I think it's a better one for the way this particular country is socially now and that is instead of a Melting Pot a salad bowl and what the thing he made to me was he said, you know, they had said if you make a salad and they've gotten his knee Army he's and something race relations in the Army, you know salad, you may put any number of ingredients you choose you may make a salad with two ingredients. You may make it with 12 if you want and you use your salad dressing of your choice and put it over and you mix it up and there is your salad you enjoy it. He said but the interesting thing about it, it makes it social analogy with the country is that however many ingredients you have in the process of creating and mixing your salad not one single ingredient in the salad loses its own distinct flavor and characteristics in the process. It always remains pepper remains pepper deal remains deal. Whatever remains Whatever it is. It's merely mixed with the others to make the collective salad and it occurs to me that that is I think a much much better analogy for what this country socially is mixing of people's from all over the world each with their own particular cultural qualities their own inherent ethnic strengths traits. So forth mixed into one big container of a country that I think derives its strength out of the Vitality of the mixing itself are the mixture itself including its frictions when We were filming not accrue see that most people think about filming in terms of the people in front of the camera who are being filmed, but when you actually making a picture and you are the producer you really think almost secondarily about them you worry most about your camera people your sound people your grips your you know, the technicians who are making that thing. There were a few film few scenes in the film one of them. I remember when we had conferences around David Walker Sandlin Margulies ABC people Banning the starter tonight and and we would pick out major scenes, you know, you need X number of major scenes and I remember saying one time at one of the table not tend to be rather quiet, you know and all that kind of thing. It's a good good thing not to be a shouter. Yeah. I just don't like shouting and I would say look there is one scene that I want simply to say that I don't care what else we do. However powerful navy but this particular scene. I want to be as dramatic as anything in the film and that is a scene where Kunta Kinte fights to keep his name. Remember the time when they were trying to flip him to make him say his name was Toby. And when we got out there on that set that day, let me tell you. Here was I guess as many people as in this audience, I want to sit technicians doing one thing another and when that scene was being done Vic Morrow is playing the overseer or during the whipping Kunta Kinte's being played by LeVar Burton Fiddler is being played by who yeah Lugar just talked to Lou yesterday. And when that thing got the role in every now and then something will happen where what's on the script gets transcended and that was one of those moments when it got to be that you look and you see camera man standing there, you know how they look through these thing that glued to the camera and you look right beneath the rubber eyepiece and you see tears running on a cameraman has been a business 25 years when that happens, you know, you've got a scene that is going emotionally to move whoever looks at it on film that Was one case another I remember was the first time we were down in Savannah Georgia. We for the first time we walked into the set which was to be the hold of the slave ship. Now, we had an action ship we've gotten from Florida and paid the people some money to repaint it and make it up and do it like a slave ship but the inside the ship was actually a warehouse where we'd had them built built up to scale and the set designers had gone in there and I had to chart from from Wilberforce Institute in England and they have built it right to specifications and when you know people always chattering and going on running their mouths on a sit a lot of people but let me tell you when we walk in that warehouse that day and they clicked on the lights and people looked at that bear slave ship hold is shelves and it symmetrical distances apart with a chains with this checkles and stuff at please got quiet as a tomb with all those people in there. It was just you know, the And drama so somehow we had a kind of almost like a preview on in the filming process of what was going to happen. Although we couldn't have sworn. It was what we thought we did when it got out of hand. That is I think what tended to communicate to people why are there wasn't anger. I mean there was a lot of anger. Yeah, but I mean there was no oof there was not much overt anger. There were no riots as a result. I think that we all went through a certain kind of catharsis to look at it slavery up to then had been a kind of an abstract word who the hell knew anything about slave who ever really thought that much about it. I hadn't either and I was telling them hit it right over there in that WPI building. I laid out diagrams of slave ships. In fact, I wrote that first section right here in st. Paul come to think of it the first draft of the right over across the street. And they let me use a Volkswagen. I used to run all around in a Volkswagen and we find barbecue and stuff. But anyway. I had never really stopped to think what happens. In fact, when you put a hundred people nude on shelves in Chains in the bottom of a ship crossing a rough ocean for two months. At least what happens just take the bodily functions just that don't even go into the psychic area. Don't even go into just one fat. What about the stench? What would that be? Like it would like a hammer blow, you know and when I began to put all that together, then the question became how do you minimize this in a book? Even God forbid anybody to have have to experience it some people complain there were criticisms made that we had made slavery seem worse than it was that's ridiculous. You could not you're not going to show people what it was like to have vomit and excrement inches deep all over the deck of a ship dripping from the shells and all this kind of stuff. You couldn't show that the if you had a conscience you wouldn't do at the census wouldn't have to tell you not to do it. We Simply Built the sit we got dog food that Kibble dog food and wet it and sprinkle that all around just to represent they breathe whatever, you know, and that was how bad we made it and there were people who said we made it worse than it was. So I guess in essence what I'm saying, is that no matter what you do when you get into the things of creating products and I guess this is the first lesson the pre-eminent lesson. I have learned. I kind of look at Roots all together now in every one of his aspects that nice things the unpleasant things all of it collectively. I look at it as having been my manhood training sort of and one of the first things you learn is if you are to be a creator of products which people will look at or read or whatever is never ever get diluted to think you would please everybody because you it's impossible. You just do the best you can do and try to put it out there as honestly as you can and that's it. He's risen. Okay, okay. Just have a seat for money.