In the re-creation of this time and place, Haley The world of Alex Haley's book begins in Gambia West Africa in 1750 with the birth of one of his ancestors, Kunta Kinte, born of Omoro and Binta Kinte, of the Mandinka tribe, and of the Muslim faith. This means that the black people of this country bear a mighty responsibility-which, odd as it may sound, is nothing new-and face an immediate future as devastating, though in a different way, as the past which has led us here: I am speaking of theīeginning of the end of the black diaspora, which mean that I am speaking of the beginning of the end of the world as we have suffered it until now.

The weight and the meaning of the black presence in the world. In any event, and no matter how diversely, and with what contradictions, the black vote is cast in the 24 years left of this century's life, the impact of the visible, overt, black presence on the political machinery of this country alters, forever, World who know anything about them and who may be, indeed, the only people in the world who really care anything about them. They need the moral authority of their former slaves, who are the only people in the They cannot prevent it now simply because-they cannot it is not because the Americans have seen a great light. This has not happened before now for the very simple reason that, until now, Americans

To have invested the black vote with a power, and exhibits toward it a respect, which the black vote has never, in the memory of the living, had before. This electoral contest, taking place in an arena which is, presently, at the very center of the troubled world, seems Certainly a bell is tolling now for all that the Western peoples imagined would last forever. Created here in pain and darkness, remnant of slaughter, his hour may, at last, and in mysterious, unprecedented What most significantly fills this void, or threatens to, is the presence, in America, of the world's first genuine black Westerner. There is a carefully muffled pain and pain in the nation, which neither candidate, neither party, can coherently address,īeing, themselves, but vivid symptoms of it. To say that it could scarcely have come at a more awkward time-what with the conventions, the exhibition of candidates, the dubious state of this particular and perhaps increasingly dubious union, and the American attempt, hopelesslyĪnd predictably schizophrenic, of preventing total disaster, for white people and for the West, in South Africa. How One Black Man Came To Be an American: A Review of 'Roots' By JAMES BALDWINĬannot guess what Alex Haley's countrymen will make of his birthday present to us during this election and Bicentennial year. How One Black Man Came To Be an American: A Review of 'Roots'

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