Roots: The Next Generations

Reminiscences by James Earl Jones, director Georg Stanford Brown and executive producer David L. Wolper

It has now been 12 years since Chicken George and his family left their plantation in Virginia and arrived in Henning, Tennessee. The year is 1882 and the era of Reconstruction of the south and substantial progress for the newly-freed…

Thirteen years have passed in the town of Henning, Tennessee and now in 1896, the town has taken advantage of a burgeoning new industrial age thanks to the expansion of the railroad. Returning home from Kansas City after a decade away…

The year is 1914 and Will and Cynthia Palmer's daughter Bertha heads off to college, eventually meeting and falling in love with a poor but hard-working fellow student named Simon Haley. Meanwhile Jim and Carrie Warner's son has become a…

In a flashback of a military gallows in 1917 Texas, a group of black soldiers from the 24th Infantry, convicted for various crimes including mutiny, are hung. Fast forward to 1918 and the local church in Henning, Tennessee hears about the…

Eleven years after the Haley's return home with baby Alex, the story opens in 1932 in Henning, Tennessee during the Great Depression, with Simon still unable to find a job as a professor. In the interim, the family continues to live with…

Seven years have passed since Alex's mother's death and the Haley family has moved to Elizabeth City, North Carolina where Simon is teaching agriculture at the local state teacher's college after remarrying. Alex has decided to drop out…

In the exciting conclusion, it is now 1960 in Henning, Tennessee, 10 years after Alex's wife Nan left him, and Alex attends the funeral for his great Aunt Elizabeth. He has finally succeeded in a writing career by publishing free-lance…