I can remember with clarity the effect Roots had on me the first time I watched it.  Awe, shock, pride, anger.  I cried pretty good the first time I saw the scene where they whipped Kunta Kinte until he said his name was Toby.  I was one of the first in my family to be born outside Louisiana.  I knew the towns my parents grew up in.  I had been to the homes of my grandparents, my great-grandparents.  But like many others, Roots made me feel as though I knew nothing of my own heritage.  I was always an avid reader as a kid, so it didn’t faze me to search out and read the novel the miniseries was based on.

Diving into the history of the civil rights movement and the history of black people in this country altered the way I looked at life to say the least.  I took to it like a fish to water.  I hardly digested one book when I was already seeking out something else: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Eyes on the Prize, Go Tell It On the Mountain.  The more I read, the more aware I become of an ‘angrier’ side to the Movement.  But I personally wasn’t there.  Yet.

The next logical step, once I became a true student of black history, was to become a conspiracy theorist.  My grandfather had the prototypical three way portrait of JFK, Jesus, and MLK sitting above all the family photos.  It struck me for the first time that all three of these men were murdered; now I wanted to know why?  And how was it possible Jesus looked the way he looked on all the church fans if he spent his entire life in the Middle East?  My questions no longer just had teeth; they were growing fangs.  The Tuskegee experiments, the ‘war’ on drugs, Rodney King…I was swiftly morphing into a nice little cocktail of paranoia, social consciousness, and teenage rebellion. 

The mid 90s also doubled as the second perfect storm of my life:  Spike brought a lot of social consciousness into his films.  He broadened the audience for guys like Wesley, Sam Jax and Denzel to eventually become what they became.  Hip hop was going through its political phase, where acts like Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and Arrested Development could get major airplay.  One man’s name kept appearing over and over again in a lot of the things I was reading, watching, and listening to.  I eventually found a picture of him: another brother who wore glasses like me.

Of course I really loved Roots the novel, more than the miniseries even.  I went to the library one day looking for other books written by Alex Haley.  And I found one…