The University of Tennessee at Martin, in conjunction with two UT Martin regional centers and the Dunbar-Carver Museum in Brownsville, will host screenings of the miniseries “Roots” in six sessions.
The community screenings of “Roots” will take place Tuesday evenings at 6 p.m. on Sept. 8, Sept. 15, Sept. 22, Sept. 29, Oct. 6 and Oct. 20 at these locations:
• UT Martin main campus: 121 Holt Humanities Building.
• UT Martin Ripley Center: 315 Washington St., Ripley.
• UT Martin Somerville Center: 214 Lakeview Road, Somerville.
• Dunbar-Carver Museum, 709 E. Jefferson St., Brownsville.
Following each session, the four venues will have a Zoom meeting to discuss the evening’s episode.
The screenings come on the 50th anniversary of the publication of the novel it is based on and 40 years after Haley visited the UT Martin campus in 1986.
The novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” was published in 1976 and led to an eight-part miniseries, “Roots,” broadcast in 1977. It tells the story of author Alex Haley’s family from his ancestors being brought to the United States from Africa to Haley’s life in the 1970s. The book spent 22 weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller List.
The “Roots” miniseries describes the history of Haley’s ancestors from Kunta Kinte, captured as an adolescent in Africa and brought into slavery in America, to “Chicken” George, Kinte’s grandson, and his life after the Civil War. The latter seven chapters of the novel were adapted into a second miniseries, “Roots: The Next Generations,” which aired in 1979.
The eight episodes of the miniseries were reduced to six episodes after the commercials were removed.
The “Roots” community screening event is a collaboration between the UT Martin Department of History and Philosophy, the UT Martin Ripley Center, the UT Martin Somerville Center and the Dunbar-Carver Museum in Brownsville.
Organizers include Dr. Henri Giles, assistant professor of African American Studies; Dr. Sonia Scott, director of the UT Martin Ripley Center; Kara Tapp, director of the UT Martin Somerville Center; Jason Holloway, strategic partnership coordinator for UT Martin Regional Centers; and Myron Stamps, UT Martin veteran services coordinator.
As a child, Alex Haley lived in Henning in Lauderdale County in West Tennessee. That home became the Alex Haley House and Museum State Historical Site, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The property also includes Alex Haley’s burial site, and is just 5 miles from the UT Martin Ripley Center.
William Alex “Bill” Haley Jr., a grandson of Alex Haley, will be a guest speaker at the Fall ENTICE Conference at UT Martin. He is scheduled to speak at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 23, in the Phillip Watkins Auditorium of the Boling University Center.
For more information about UT Martin, visit www.utm.edu or call 1-800-829-UTM1 (-8861).
PHOTO: Shown during a visit by author Alex Haley to UT Martin on Dec. 4, 1986, are (l-r) Dr. David Briody, professor and chair of the UT Martin Department of Communications; Haley; UT Martin Chancellor Margaret N. Perry; and Dr. Randy Perry, dean of the UT Martin School of Engineering Technology. Haley is the author of the novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” which spawned a miniseries that will have community screenings in September and October.
