Invites readers to reconsider the politics and scope of the Roots phenomenon of the 1970s. Alex Haley's 1976 book was a publishing sensation, winning a National Book Award and a special Pulitzer Prize. The 1977 TV adaptation earned thirty-eight Emmy nominations. These essays interrogate Roots, assessing the ways that the book and its dramatization recast representations of slavery.

Erica L. Ball (Editor)
ERICA L. BALL is a professor of American studies at Occidental College. She is author of To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class (Georgia).

Kellie Carter Jackson (Editor)
KELLIE CARTER JACKSON is an assistant professor of history at Hunter College, CUNY, and the author of Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence.