Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

“young’uns” grew up together, they became very attached to one another. Bell recalled two occasions when the massa had been called to attend white girls who had fallen ill when their lifelong black playmates had been sold away for some reason. Their massas and mistresses had been advised that their daughters’ hysterical grief was such that they might well grow weaker and weaker until they died, unless their little girlfriends were quickly found and bought back. The fiddler said that a lot of black young’uns had learned to play the violin, the harpsichord, or other instruments by listening and observing as their white playmates were taught by music masters whom their rich massas had hired from across the big water. The old gardener said that on his second plantation a white and black boy grew up together until finally the young massa took the black one off with him to William and Mary College. “Ol’ Massa ain’t like it a’tall; but Ol’ Missy say, ‘It’s his nigger if he want to!’ An’ when dis nigger git back later on, he tol’ us in slave row dat dey was heap more young massas dere wid dey niggers as valets, sleepin’ right in de room wid ’em. He say heap of times dey take dey niggers

wid ’em to classes, den dey argue later on whose nigger learnt de mos’. Dat nigger from my plantation couldn’t jes’ read an’ write, he could figger, too, an’ ’cite dem poems an’ stuff dey has at colleges. I got sol’ away roun’ den. Wonder whatever become a him?”

but violence against whites by black men was most often ignited by news of white atrocities or slave rebellions and the like.

But their worst enemy, it seemed to Kunta, was themselves. There were a few young rebels among them, but the vast majority of slaves were the kind that did exactly what was expected of them, usually without even having to be told; the kind white folks could—and did—trust with the lives of their own children, the kind that looked the other way when the white man took their

women into haymows. Why, there were some right there on the plantation he was sure the massa could leave unguarded for a year and find them there—still working—when he returned. It certainly wasn’t because they were content; they complained constantly among themselves. But never did more than a handful so much as protest, let alone resist.

It seemed to Kunta that these white slaves were better off than most of the free whites he’d seen on the massa’s rounds.

But as much as they loved violence among themselves, Kunta knew from personal experience that they loved violence against black people even more.

He had never been able to figure out why poor whites hated blacks so much.

Perhaps, as the fiddler had told him, it was because of rich whites, who had everything they didn’t: wealth, power, and property, including slaves who were fed, clothed, and housed while they struggled to stay alive. But he could feel no pity for them, only a deep loathing that had turned icy cold with the passing of the years since the swing of an ax held by one of them had ended forever something more precious to him than his own life: the hope of freedom.

John Pleasant had bequeathed freedom to his more than two hundred slaves.

slavery had recently been abolished in a northern state called “Massachusetts,”

a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it’s possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother’s milk made possible the life of privilege they led.

Dat coast go clear up to de Volta. It’s dat coast where de white folks cotches de Fanti an’ de Ashanti peoples. It’s dem Ashantis dats said to lead most of de uprisins’ an’ revolts when dey’s brought here. “Spite dat, de white folks pays some of dey biggest prices for dem, ’cause dey’s smart an’ strong an’ dey’s got spirit.

“Den what dey calls de ‘Slave Coast’ is where dey gits de Yorubas an’ Dahomans, an’ roun’ de tip of de Niger dey gits de Ibo.” Kunta said that he had heard the Ibo were a gentle people.

The Ghanaian thrust out his left arm, and they shook their left hands in the African manner, meaning that they would soon meet again. “Ah-salakium-salaam.” “Malaika-salaam.”

He vowed to himself that now more than ever, his dignity must become as a shield between him and all of those who called themselves “niggers.” How ignorant of themselves they were; they knew nothing of their ancestors, as he had been taught from boyhood. Kunta reviewed in his mind the names of the Kintes from the ancient clan in old Mali down across the generations in Mauretania, then in The Gambia all the way to his brothers and himself; and he thought of how the same ancestral knowledge was possessed by every member of his kafo.

some free blacks up North who called themselves “The Negro Union” had proposed a mass return to Africa of all blacks—both free and slaves.

hoe cakes got their name from slaves cooking them on the flat edge of a hoe when they were working out in the fields.

Dey liked to play teacher, ’cause dey was going to school, an’ de massa and missis didn’t pay it no ’tention on count of how de white folks tells deyselves dat niggers is too dumb to learn anythin’.”

“Scairt!” declared’ the fiddler one night. “Dat’s how come white folks so busy countin’ everybody in dat census! Dey scairt dey’s done brung mo’ niggers ’mongst ’em dan dey is white folks!” declared the fiddler.

“But you know what,” the old gardener exclaimed, “dem rich city white folks is de very kin’ ’mongst which it’s dem dat speaks ’gainst slavery.”

“I bet you half de niggers in Virginia ain’t never been off dey massa’s plantations,”

But Kunta didn’t; he lay thinking for quite sometime of how he had heard of such things being done—of unborn black babies being given as presents, wagered as gambling bets at card tables and cockfights. The fiddler had told him how the dying massa of a pregnant fifteen-year-old black girl named Mary had willed as slaves to each of his five daughters one apiece of her first five babies. He had heard of black children being security for loans, of creditors claiming them while they were yet in their mother’s belly, of debtors selling them in advance to raise cash. At that time in the Spotsylvania County seat slave auctions, he knew the average price that was being asked and paid for a healthy black baby past six months of age—when it was assumed then that it would live—was around two hundred

anger rose every time he thought of what a disgrace it was that the wife of a Kinte could want her child to bear some toubob name, which would be nothing but the first step toward a lifetime of self-contempt.

From about the time Kizzy had been born, both Kunta and the fiddler had returned to the plantation now and then with news about some island across the big water called “Haiti,” where it was said that around thirty-six thousand mostly French whites were outnumbered by about half a million blacks who had been brought there on ships from Africa to slave on huge plantations growing sugar cane, coffee, indigo, and cocoa.

“An’ dem Methodists is de nex’ bes’. I ’members readin’ ten, leben years back, Methodists called a great big meetin’ in Baltimore, an’ finally dey ’greed slavin’ was ’gainst Gawd’s laws an’ dat anybody callin’ hisself Christian wouldn’t have it did to deyselves. So it’s mostly de Methodists an’ Quakers makin’ church fuss to git laws to free niggers. Dem Baptist an’ Presbyterian white folks—dat’s what massa an’ all de Wallers is—well, dey seems like to me jes’ halfhearted. Dey’s mostly worried ’bout dey own freedom to worship like dey pleases, an’ den how dey can keep a clear conscience an’ dey niggers bofe.”

Whoever would successfully manage slaves, someone would always say, must first understand that their African pasts of living in jungles with animals gave them a natural inheritance of stupidity, laziness, and unclean habits, and that the Christian duty of those God had blessed with superiority was to teach these creatures some sense of discipline, morality, and respect for work—through example, of course, but also with laws and punishment as needed, although encouragement and rewards should certainly be given to those who proved deserving.

Any laxity on the part of whites, the conversation always continued, would simply invite the kind of dishonesty, tricks, and cunning that came naturally to a lower species, and the bleatings of antislavery societies and others like them could come only from those, particularly in the

North, who had never owned any black ones themselves or tried to run a plantation with them; such people couldn’t be expected to realize how one’s patience, heart, spirit, and very soul could be strained to the b...

And these were the lucky ones, Kunta knew. Many old folks began to get beaten when they were no longer able to perform their previous quota of work, and finally they got sold away for perhaps twenty or thirty dollars to some “po’ white trash” farmer—with aspirations of rising into the planter class—who worked them literally to death.

They kept on singing all the way to the slave graveyard, which Kunta had noticed everyone avoided in a deep fear of what they called “ghoses” and “haints,” which he felt must bear some resemblance to his Africa’s evil spirits. His people also avoided the burial ground, but out of consideration for the dead whom they didn’t wish to disturb, rather than out of fear.

More likely he had died as he had lived—without ever learning who he really was.

As they trudged silently back from the graveyard, Kunta thought how the family and close friends of one who had died in Juffure would wail and roll in ashes and dust within their huts while the other villagers danced outside, for most African people believed that there could be no sorrow without happiness, no death without life, in that cycle that his own father had explained to him when his beloved Grandma Yaisa had died.

He remembered that Omoro had told him, “Stop weeping now, Kunta,” and explained that Grandma had only joined another of the three peoples in every village—those who had gone to be with Allah, those who were still living, and those who were yet to be born. For a moment, Kunta thought he must try to explain that to Bell, but he knew she

wouldn’t understand. His heart sank—until he decided a moment later that this would become another of the many things he would one day tell Kizzy...

he’d heard about who had bashed out her infant’s brains against the auction block, screaming, “Ain’t gon’ do to her what you done to me!”

As usual, Kunta said nothing, but he had seen and done enough during his quarter-century years as a slave to know that the life of a field hand was the life of a farm animal,

Toussaint, the driver said, had learned about war from reading books about famous ancient fighters named “Alexander the Great” and “Julius Caesar,”

Allah would wreak terrible vengeance on any toubob who ever harmed their Kizzy.

It flashed into Kunta’s mind how the fiddler had once told him that on some plantations where the massas forbade slaves to worship, they concealed a large iron pot in the woods nearby, where those who felt the spirit move them would stick their heads inside and shout, the pot muffling the noise sufficiently for it not to be heard by the massa or the overseer.

“if you set a teaspoon o’ black pepper an’ brown sugar mashed to a paste wid a l’il cow’s cream in a saucer in a room, ain’t no flies comin’ in dere nohow!”

“Playing nigger,” bursting open a ripe watermelon and jamming their faces down into its crisp wetness one afternoon,

He wanted to tell her how the life-giving river was revered by his people as a symbol of fertility,

Every critter got a right to be here same as you. Even de grass is live an’ got a soul jes’ like peoples does.”

“Puts ’em down in Georgia an’ de Carolinas to keep up wid de cotton crop every since dat cotton gin come in few years back.

asinine.

It was almost time for Kizzy to drop another pebble into Kunta’s gourd—about a year later, in the summer of 1800—when

Dey say Massa Jefferson want to see us sot free, but not stickin’ roun’ dis country takin’ po’ white folks’ jobs—he favor shippin’ us back to Africa, gradual, widout big fuss an’ mess.”

“What y’all think ’bout what white folks always says dat dem mulattoes an’ high yallers do so good cause de whole lot o’ white blood dey got in ’em make ’em smarter’n we is?”

Or take dat brown-skin Benjamin Banneker what white folks calls a genius wid figgers, even studyin’ de stars an’ moon—but whole heap o’ smart niggers black like y’all, too!”