Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

he lifted up the infant and, as all watched, whispered three times into his son’s ear the name he had chosen for him. It was the first time the name had ever been spoken as this child’s name, for Omoro’s people felt that each human being should be the first to know who he was.

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he walked to the edge of the village, lifted his baby up with his face to the heavens, and said softly, “Fend kiling dorong leh warrata ka iteh tee.” (Behold—the only thing greater than yourself.)

He reminded Kunta of the old people back in Juffure who, ashamed of their weakness, continued to totter about making the motions of working until they were forced to retreat

“Reason massa like he is ’cause he of a family was rich even ’fore dey come here from dat England ’crost de water. Dem Wallers always been what most massas jes’ tries to act like dey is. ’Cause most of dese massas ain’t nothin’ but coonhunters what got hole of a piece of lan’ an’ one or two niggers dey worked half to death, an’ jes’ kep’ on growin’ from dat.

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“lazy, shiftless, no-count white trash.”

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

Yep

but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn’t believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way.

a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, 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.

He had kept his dignity.

his countrymen didn’t simply kill every toubob who set foot on African soil. He was never able to give himself an answer that he was able to accept.

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Kunta would notice with amusement how both the “po’ crackers” and those of the massa’s class would smile and tip their hats at one another, acting as if their both being white made them both the same.

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there seemed no limit to the anguish whites were capable of wreaking upon black people. But the worst thing they did, Kunta had said, was to keep them ignorant of who they are, to keep them from being fully human.

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George Johnson quietly told them how it had been to be dirt-poor for all of his earlier life, even before his family had been routed with their fields ruined by the war, until he had sought some new, better life.

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“He ’bout de only white man we ever gwine meet dat’s jes’ plain honest ’bout hisself,” Virgil expressed their collective appraisal.

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Ashford, of course, got so angry that he threatened—emptily—to “go down dere an’ stuff it down dat peckerwood’s throat.”

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But on the freight ships, not many of them carry passengers, but those which do carry passengers carry a total of twelve, a maximum of twelve people. The law is that if a ship carries more than twelve, it must have a doctor on board. So the people who go out there tend to be very quiet people.

Huh. Wonder if they still do this. Sounds right up my alley

And I’ve been really seriously thinking about maybe the latter part of next year trying to see if I can’t set up a schedule where I would spend one month at sea and one month ashore right around the year. And that way I’d get my work done. And I could come back here and be all the things that you are as a kind of public writer. As it is, it’s silly, but I would like to be cloned.

This