MANSFIELD — It was hard to find a seat at the Mansfield Richland County Public Library on Saturday.
The place was simply bustling with activity.
In one corner Jesus Jewels dancers were performing. In another one could learn work through a puzzle or test trivia knowledge, maybe even pick up information on health concerns, all with the common thread of Black History.
The Mansfield Senior choir began the event at 11 a.m., and G’s Friends jazz group picked up the musical scene, then passed it along to Vaun Doom, a hip hop team, before Conne, took over with her voice talents.
Finally, a three-person academic panel conducted a discussion on the 50th anniversary of Alex Haley’s novel “Roots.” The program was titled “Reimagining the Legacies of Lineage” and took place in The Sherman Room.
Ohio State University professor Ryan Fontanilla noted the controversy that surrounded the novel, which was originally published by Doubleday as historical nonfiction. Haley eventually settled a 1978 plagiarism lawsuit in connection with his work.
However, Fontanilla and fellow OSU professor DeAnza Cook stressed the importance of the work from a cultural and political aspect. Fontanilla said Haley himself would later describe “Roots” as faction, a mixture of fact and fiction.
The audience at the Sherman Room noted the impact of the eight-part miniseries that was broadcast by ABC from Jan. 23 to 30, 1977, and rebroadcast many times thereafter. It sparked a lasting impact and triggered a fresh interest into Black History that lasts to this day.
Indeed, Roots was a cultural phenomenon in an era with three networks on TV, and no internet or cell phone.
A critical and ratings success over the course of its run, Roots received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. The story traced the roots of a modern man who tracked his lineage to a captured African slave named Kunta Kinte.
It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which holds the record as the third-highest-rated episode for any type of television series, and the second-most-watched overall series finale in American television history
“(Roots) became a doorway for me into becoming a historian,” Cook noted.
The panel agreed that the legacy of Haley’s work wasn’t as a genealogist, but rather as a storyteller who brought to light the struggle, structure and residual ripples of slavery — viewed through the generations of a family.
“The story of ‘Roots’ is now bigger than him, bigger than the man,” Fontanilla said.
The library will continue its Black History Month celebration on Feb. 14 with a 45-minute family-friendly show, Harriet Tubman: Straight Up Outta’ the Underground at 1:30 p.m., presented by the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati.
