![]() For 14 years he has been the host and co-executive producer of the award-winning PBS children's series "Reading Rainbow." There is a whole subculture of people who know his every word as Lt. Though he didn't rocket into the mega-stardom that was predicted at the time, Burton has worked steadily and respectably. "Since Roots' it has been my desire to use the medium in a way to affect people positively." " Roots' set a really high standard for me, and I have tried for the last 20 years to maintain that high standard," says Burton, who was then 19 and plucked out of a University of Southern California drama class. It was not only his first acting job but a defining moment in his career. "We were linked together electronically and the next day that is all we talked about - no matter where we were, no matter who we were," Burton recalls. They remember the joy when Kunta Kinte's father lifted him to the sky they remember barely being able to watch the slave auction scenes, and they watched through their own tears as Louis Gossett Jr., as Fiddler, washed Kunta Kinte's wounds after a beating. ![]() People remember how they felt about it even if they can't remember the details of scenes. And the series hasn't had the lasting impact on television's portrayals of minorities that the entertainment community wished at the time.īut two decades later, the effect of "Roots" is still perceptible. But most of those who delivered this blockbuster were not rewarded afterward with star-ranking work. ![]() The third-largest television audience in history, 98 million Americans, watched the final episode on ABC.įor a brief time, "Roots" provided an unequaled showcase for black actors. Told simply but with scene after scene touching on complexities rarely explored by television, "Roots" still stands as the highest-rated television series of all time. And it opened up endless discussions of both the social and personal costs of slavery. It introduced millions of people to the dimensions of black American history, a history that grew out of the internal feelings of the black participants. "Roots," adapted from the late Alex Haley's best-selling book about his own family, made unerasable history. More than 130 million people locked in, sharing the triumphs and trials, the joy and horror of generations of one black family. Night after night, the country fixed on him as Kunta Kinte made his emotional, fateful journey from West Africa to the American South.Īs the story of Kunta Kinte's family unfolded for eight nights in the powerful miniseries "Roots," viewers couldn't let go. Twenty years ago a national audience was drawn into the cavernous, startled eyes of actor LeVar Burton.
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