30 years later, Haleys re-establish 'Roots'

Out-of-print book gets new publisher as DVD boxed set returns to stores

ATLANTA -- John Amos was stunned when he heard. Alex Haley's "Roots" has been out of print for the last three years - not only the book, but the DVD boxed set of the miniseries.

"I think that's disastrous," said Amos, the veteran actor who played the older Kunta Kinte in the famed 1977 TV miniseries. "That's three years that children could have been introduced to that wonderful story and that wonderful legacy that Alex Haley left us.

"We can't afford to lose something like that for that length of time," he added.

Ron Higgins didn't know that "Roots" had become unavailable, either. He runs Savannah Movie Tours and tells tourists how the African village scenes in the miniseries were shot on Skidaway Island, outside Savannah, in 1976. Higgins visited the set as a boy.

When the show aired in January 1977, Higgins, like the rest of the country, could hardly bear the intensity of what he saw on TV. An African-American then in the seventh grade, he rode the bus to school the morning after the famous scene in which Kinte was whipped mercilessly until he acknowledged his slave name of Toby. The bus vibrated with intensity; it was all anyone could talk about.

"It was just so poignant, to break somebody down like that," Higgins recalled. "The impact that scene had ..." His voice trailed off.

The impact of "Roots" in 1976 and 1977 was simply overwhelming. It was one of those rare pop culture events that connects everyone, no matter their niche; about 85 percent of the country watched at least some of the miniseries.

"It lives past the print date," said Velma Maia Thomas-Fann, author of the slavery history "Lest We Forget" and former manager of Atlanta's Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore.

"You go to anyone 40 and over and say, 'Do you know about "Roots"?' They'll tell you."

But as the 30th anniversaries of the book and the miniseries approached in recent months, neither was available anymore, due to legal and financial moves by Haley's heirs.

Experts said that a book with the sales and reputation of "Roots" going out of print is exceedingly rare.

Fortunately, that situation ends Tuesday in a triple marketing convergence. Vanguard Press is issuing a new trade paperback edition of the book. Warner Home Video is bringing out a new 30th anniversary DVD boxed set. And for the first time, an audio book of "Roots" is being released, read by actor Avery Brooks.

Why it dropped out

"Roots" had a long, complex saga before it was ever published.

Alex Haley, an author who had written "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," spent 12 years tracing his genealogy back seven generations. He claimed to have found the African village where his ancestor, Kunta Kinte, was captured and forced into slavery, and told the stories of his ancestor in a dramatic, novelized form that he referred to as "faction" -- a blend of fact and fiction.

When Haley died in 1992, his wife and three children inherited his estate, including the copyright to "Roots." A standard copyright renewal clause came up in 2004, but when the heirs renewed the copyright, they decided not to automatically renew the contracts with the publisher, Random House, and the owner of the miniseries, Warner Home Video. In most cases, such renewals are standard, even though renegotiations of payments may be involved.

Once those agreements were not renewed, "Roots" went out of print. Used copies could be found online of both the book and DVD set, but not new ones.

Haley's son William explained that the family was concerned that Random House was not promoting the book sufficiently.