Roots: The Next Generations Premiered 42 Years Ago Today

In 1977, the television event Roots became a worldwide phenomenon. On February 18, 1979, ABC premiered Roots: The Next Generations, which picked up 12 years after the first series left off to explore the final seven chapters of Alex Haley's book, completing the trace of his family lineage from Kunta Kinte to Haley himself, as played by James Earl Jones. It was named Best Limited Series at the Primetime Emmy Awards that year, and you can watch the entire first episode right here.

It opens in the 1880s, with an elderly Chicken George from the first series moving in with his son Tom Harvey (Georg Stanford Brown), great-grandson of Kunta Kinte and leader of his Tennessee community in the Jim Crow era. Tom has established an uneasy working relationship with the town's leader, former Confederate officer Col. Warner (Henry Fonda), but when Warner's son starts an interractial relationship with a local schoolteacher, things get even more tense. The series tells tales of the turn of the century, both World Wars, and ends in the 1960s, when Haley travels to Africa and joyously finds the very village that Kunta Kinte disappeared from all those generations ago. 

Roots: The Next Generations ran for seven straight nights, and it had a budget nearly triple the size of the original, the success of which brought a lot of interest in this sequel, including from Marlon Brando, who apparently called up out of the blue and asked to be in it. His role as American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell earned him an Emmy Award. The series was nominated for seven Emmys in total.

Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.