"Roots' was being discussed in bars, hones, subways — everywhere. By everybody.
Micso Dixon, Boston organiser ol the socans Workers parts, told me Roots" was driving some of the racists cruzy. They were calling radio shows saying things like: "ll didn't really happen like that ar 'Maybe we should do it that way again' or, They're tring to start a riot.
Newspapers sent reporters out to check inta what people wero saying about "Roots".
Mushimpton Post staff weiter Ken Ringle hustled off to Spolslyvania County. Virginin, about sixty mues southwest of D.C., ta interview people living there.
He foond ane Judge Absalom eems Judge Wailer dide't think Roots" was such a big thing. hats al part or hesory. Just like the Battle of the Wilderness or the Second Worle War Wailer mold Ringle.
Judge Waller is a product of Roots too. His great great-grandfather John Waller Uohn Reynoids 'Roots". got whipped. schools, ALI JUST TOOLE Nelson Waller did te Jews." Gerring closer.
work tad, Roots have watched its dramatisation on British TV.
the reaction to the serles in the USA.
Benjamin Cole, seventy-three, Eve near Judge in Partiow, Virginia. He reniember his grandfather telling lom ahou the slave days on the remember bie saying they had to turn a pot over a bole on the door when they were praving so the master coulder hear hem, he said. "They weren'! supposed to be praying and, if they got cauch, they Julia Thompson, eighty-four, spoke about be mandmother heing auctioned off on a block in Charles Town, W. Va.' Later she foend herself on the Waller plantarion. Mrs. Thompson's daughter-in-law now does housework for the judge.
The New York Times reports a discussion of a while family in Queens, New York: "It doesa't show an good white people,' said the wile. "There must have been some decem white people...
No, the pood whites had their day with Gone With Wind said the hushand. "Anyhow, how good could any whites look to a slave?...All the white bosses must have looked pretty bad, like Nazi Party members A young brocher stopping in a coffee shop before Al tell you obe thing, those white folks better nor mess with me today. I just might have to stamp one,' Another blood caationed Bin, •Don't do hoThings ain't champed that much. And jobs dont Roots, was published in Britain last Monday. But millions of people who will never read In America the programme was screened on eight consecutive nights. Il caused a sensation. By the end of those eight days 130 million people had seen all or part of OMARI MUSA, a correspondent of Militant, the American Trotskyist paper, describes Many parcob kept their four-and five-year-olds up to watch "Reans."
Nose of them had seen so mans Black people on TV. "Root was nac cartoons or Sesame Street One youth was rested our of hed the morning after wilh Okay. Mandicka warrior. Time to go hunting In the forest.
Sasha, my four-and a half-sear-old, was shaken ay the whippings, and the lears of Kizzy when she rell:
Sam she can't be with a man whose soul nsas58 gor for free. According to the Philadelphin Inquirer, Four Black students at Harrisburg Middle School were suspended affer a shoving match with soche white studenes. The Black students had been before the scaffie began. Harrisberg Middle School is T6 per cent Black "Roor" was one big cansciousness raiser. One landred thiny aulton peopl Afro-Americass were made. They got a peek at what chairel slavery was and what it cook to maintain is.
And they learned that al least. ancestses didn't make it across the Atlantic There were some holes and inaccuracis, though Nat Turner's rebellion rook place in August 1831 The TV pinced the date in 1941, However, the impact of the rebellion many — was shown. Whites in the consiant fear of slave rebellions. daphically portrayed in the soone in which Chicken Folks Ber passec. harder."
Some cried, others were amperce Middle scrol •Ir has chaning "Roots, Hoot"
got a glimpse of hou one-third of our mutilated, or lynched. appression. ABC's drive only one of South lived To THAT TETCHI have been righting
suffer under a Labour Government.
Hospital staging their own occupation. *sectional interests' who do talk with management. FIRST It was the Leyland toolmakers, then it was the F steelworkers, now it is the Heathrow engineers. The vo and file trade unionists in action, expressing their frust their anger at the wages and conditions they have bee Nor is it restricted to a struggle on the wages l occupying hospital workers at the Elizabeth Garrett hospital have been joined by the hospital workers at The toolroom workers did not achieve the victory hoped for. But what they did was open the breach in the of the Social Contract. The Port Talbot workers remair and the signs are that their determination and the suppo receiving from other workers grows as the strike goe Heathrow workers have so far resisted all attempts to them into defeat. The EGA and Hounslow occupations Each of the wage disputes has a striking similarity i are taking place against the wishes of the trade union who seem to endorse every new tactic the management t defeat the workers. The disputes are also similar becau trade union bosses and the management bosses try to i strikers from other workers by claiming they are fi But there is nothing "sectional' - the Heathrow w demanding the same rate of pay as others outside Brill broadly similar work. Just as the Leyland workers were driven to demanding separate rights by the their union leaderships to fight for their case, so too the engineers have been forced to say that they should have