SOURCE: Blayney, Michael Steward. “Roots and the Noble Savage.” North Dakota Quarterly 54, no. 1 (winter 1986): 1-17.

In the following essay, Blayney discusses similarities between the Roots portrayal of Africans and the portrayal of North Americans as the mythical “noble savage.”

Time Magazine called it “Haley's Comet.” Black readers hailed it as the most important event in civil rights history since the 1965 march on Selma, Alabama. In January, 1977, Roots was proclaimed the most popular television program in the medium's history, with the last of eight consecutive episodes reaching an unprecedented 90,000,000 viewers. Roots attracted a larger audience than such all time favorites as Gone with the Wind and the 1977 Superbowl.¹ Spurred by the television success, Alex Haley's novel went into fourteen printings after its initial publication in October, 1976. During and after the nights it was telecast long lines formed outside bookstores displaying Roots. Those too impatient to wait broke into bookstores...