c. African
Americans became intensely interested in recovering their roots in the 1970s, spawning an unprecedented spike in genealogical research and heritage journeys to ancestral lands. Here, too, Black Americans provided a powerful model. The television mini-series Roots (1977), based on a historical novel by Alex Haley, followed seven generations of an African-American family in slavery and freedom. Some 85% of American television households tuned in to at least part of the eight-episode series. Most of them saw Roots not as a distinctive story about the legacy of slavery but as a broader story about the links between foreign ancestors and American descendants. Following Haley’s example, Americans flocked to libraries and historical societies in search of their own ethnic pasts.