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Previously on Red Pilled America.

0:57

A major enemy institutions

1:00

the rights of the that's the major enemy

1:04

power.

1:05

We want black power.

1:07

The Black Panthers then took the bold move

1:09

of attempting to enter the Capitol Building

1:11

with their firearms.

1:14

Community the

1:16

only politics in this country that's relevant

1:18

to black people today is the politics of revolution.

1:21

The Black Panther Party poses a

1:23

real threat to the peace and

1:25

tranquility of the city of Oakland.

1:28

Bobby Hutton came out with his hands in the

1:30

air.

1:31

He was gunned down.

1:32

The Black Lives Matter movement is everywhere.

1:35

Where did it come from? And perhaps more

1:37

importantly, what does it want.

1:42

I'm Patrick Crelchi and I'm Adriana

1:44

Cortes.

1:45

And this is Red Pilled America, a

1:48

storytelling show.

1:50

This is not another talk show covering the day's

1:52

news. We're all about telling stories.

1:55

Stories Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.

1:58

The media marks stories

2:00

about everyday Americans that the globalist

2:02

ignore.

2:04

You can think of Red Pilled America as audio

2:06

documentaries, and we promise only one thing,

2:10

the truth. Welcome

2:16

to Red Pilled America. So

2:24

this is part three of Hands Up, our series

2:27

of episodes delving into the origin of Black

2:29

Lives Matter to figure out where it came

2:31

from and what it wants. You

2:33

don't need to have heard the last two episodes to

2:35

understand this one, but in case you missed

2:37

them. In part one, we looked at how BLM

2:40

came into national prominence by telling

2:42

the story of the death of Michael Brown. In

2:44

Part two, we dug into the true origin

2:47

of BLM by telling the story of its

2:49

predecessor, the Black Power Movement,

2:51

a civil rights crusade that departed from Martin

2:54

Luther King Junior by advocating for

2:56

a more aggressive, even violent approach.

2:58

The movement was triggered by a Trinidad

3:00

born man named Stokely Carmichael,

3:03

who argued that the white man generally and

3:05

the police specifically were the enemy

3:07

of Black Americans. In June

3:09

nineteen sixty six, he introduced the phrase

3:12

black Power to a national audience

3:14

and inspired young African Americans to fight

3:16

literally for what they wanted. The

3:19

new movement he triggered and the message of Malcolm

3:21

X, inspired two street wise men in Oakland

3:23

that wanted to target what they saw as police

3:26

brutality. In October nineteen

3:28

sixty six, these two men, Huey

3:30

P. Newton and Bobby Seal, launched

3:32

the Black Panther Party for self defense.

3:35

They called law enforcement pigs and decided

3:37

to arm themselves and shadow Oakland police

3:40

during traffic stops. Cops

3:42

were uncomfortable with their tactic, but couldn't

3:44

stop them because, according to California

3:46

law, it was legal, so they successfully

3:48

lobbied an Oakland legislator to propose

3:51

a gun control bill to ban open carry

3:53

in the Golden State. When the Black Panthers

3:56

caught wind of the bill making its way through

3:58

the California legislature, they took the book

4:00

old step of protesting within the state Capitol

4:02

building with their loaded firearms.

4:04

The bill eventually passed, but the Black Panthers

4:07

stunt was a media sensation and it

4:09

grew membership into the group quickly, too

4:11

quickly, attracting an unvetted violent

4:13

militant element in the process. When

4:15

Martin Luther King Junior was killed, the Black

4:18

Panthers executed an ill conceived ambush

4:20

of Oakland police. The group's first

4:22

member, a seventeen year old black man named

4:25

Bobby Hutton, was killed in the shootout.

4:28

The Panthers privately blamed one of their own for

4:30

his death, but publicly they claimed

4:32

Hutton was executed by racist cops while

4:34

surrendering with his hands up. The

4:36

hands up, don't shoot mim was born. By

4:39

the early seventies, the FBI had systematically

4:41

jailed, killed, or scared off many of

4:44

the Black Power leaders, neutralizing

4:46

the militant movement, but the damage to

4:48

America was already done. The

4:50

Black Power Movement successfully seated in

4:52

the minds of America's black youth that the police

4:54

were the enemy. So why did it take

4:57

roughly forty years for BLM to rise

4:59

from the ashes of the Black Power movement? The

5:08

answer was inadvertently given by one of the movement's

5:10

early celebrity supporters.

5:13

Thank you, we

5:16

just came from Bobby

5:18

Hutton's funeral.

5:20

When speaking at a memorial for the Black Panthers

5:22

first member Bobby Hutton, the young man whose

5:24

death inspired the hands up, Don't Shoot tactic,

5:26

Marlon Brando provided the key element

5:29

missing in the Black Power movement.

5:31

That could have been my son lying there. And

5:34

I'm going to do as much as I can. I'm

5:36

going to start right now to

5:39

inform white people of

5:42

what they don't know. The

5:44

reverend said, the white

5:46

man can't cool it because

5:49

he's never dug it. And

5:51

I'm here to try to dig it because

5:53

I myself, as the white man, have got a long way

5:55

to go and a lot to learn. I

5:57

haven't been in your place. I

6:00

haven't suffered the way you've suffered. I'm

6:03

just beginning to learn the nature of that experience,

6:06

and somehow that has to be translated

6:08

to the white community. Now times

6:12

running out for everybody.

6:14

The white man needed to be educated on the oppression

6:16

of Black America, and in the words of

6:18

the Black Power movement, that oppression had been

6:20

going on continually for four hundred

6:22

years, in other words, since

6:24

the birth of slavery. By

6:27

the time of Marlon Brando's speech in nineteen

6:29

sixty eight, America's slavery past

6:31

was not emphasized. US history

6:33

classes in K through twelve public schools

6:36

focused on the Pilgrims, the founding fathers,

6:38

the American Revolution, things that built

6:40

pride in our country. As for slavery,

6:43

the topic was typically limited to how Abraham

6:45

Lincoln freed them. The harshest aspects

6:47

of this so called peculiar institution were

6:50

not discussed in great depth in the classroom,

6:52

and while neither was indentured servitude,

6:54

Japanese concentration camps, or women's

6:57

voting rights. In pop culture, the

6:59

most brutal aspect of slavery were largely

7:01

avoided as well. A few years after

7:03

Brando's Black Panther Moment, a sprinkling

7:06

of movies came out that addressed the issue.

7:08

There were Slaves starring Toyon Warwick in nineteen

7:10

sixty nine and Mandingo in nineteen

7:12

seventy five, but they were crappy films

7:14

that didn't have mainstream appeal or success.

7:17

The biggest pop culture event with slavery as

7:19

a central theme was the nineteen thirty

7:21

nine movie Gone with the Wind, still

7:23

the biggest box office hit of all time

7:26

when adjusted for inflation. That said,

7:28

Gone with the Wind positioned slavery as more or less

7:30

a civilized relationship between blacks

7:32

and white Southerners Scarlet.

7:34

I will not make money out of the enforced

7:36

labor and misery of others.

7:38

Who went to a particular about owning slaves.

7:39

That was different.

7:40

We didn't treat them that way.

7:42

Besides, I had to feed.

7:43

Them all when father died, if the war hadn't

7:45

already feed them.

7:46

Simply put, there was really no mainstream

7:48

content that dealt with the darkest aspects

7:50

of slavery. But

7:55

that would all change in nineteen seventy

7:57

seven.

8:00

Night We Present a landmark and television

8:02

entertainment roots

8:05

the true story Alex Haley uncovered in

8:07

his twelve years search across the seven generations

8:09

of his.

8:10

Ancestry Roots was

8:12

a twelve hour mini series telling the harrowing

8:14

true story of the family of black American

8:17

author Alex Haley. It was the

8:19

first mainstream depiction of a specific

8:21

African being enslaved and brought to America

8:23

and the brutal trials he and his ancestors

8:26

faced before winning their freedom. By

8:28

the end of its broadcast, Roots was the most

8:30

watched TV drama in US history

8:33

and became an international sensation.

8:35

And what Alex Haley did to find his roots

8:38

was nothing short of unbelievable.

8:40

If you ever wanted to hear yourself on Red Pilled

8:43

America, here's your chance. We're

8:45

wondering what's your favorite episode? Email

8:47

us a short voice memo with your favorite

8:49

story along with why, and you

8:52

may hear yourself on the show. Email

8:54

your voice memo to info at Redpilled

8:56

America dot com. That's info

8:58

at Redpilled America dot com. Can't

9:00

wait to hear which ones you pick? Welcome

9:02

back to Red Pilled America. By

9:05

the early sixties, one of the forefathers

9:07

of the black power movement, Malcolm X,

9:10

was beginning to receive national attention.

9:14

Once the police have

9:16

convinced the white public that

9:18

the so called Negro community is a criminal

9:20

element. They

9:23

can go in and

9:25

question rutalized,

9:28

murder, unarmed,

9:31

innocent Negroes, and the

9:33

white public is glible enough

9:35

to back them up. This

9:41

makes the Negro community a police

9:43

states. This makes

9:45

the Negro neighborhood a police state.

9:49

It's the most heavily patrolled. It

9:51

has more police in it than.

9:53

Any other neighborhood. Yet

9:55

it has more crime in it than any other neighborhood.

9:58

How can you have more cops crime

10:01

why? It shows you that the caps

10:04

must be inco hoots.

10:05

Were the criminals?

10:06

A reformed criminal who joined the black nationalist

10:09

group the Nation of Islam while in prison. Malcolm

10:12

X was a six foot three, good looking, red

10:14

haired African American who advocated

10:16

for violence if necessary in the fight for

10:18

civil rights and believed black Americans

10:21

needed to segregate from the white devil.

10:23

We are Africans, and we happen

10:26

to be in America.

10:27

We're not America.

10:29

We are people who formerly were Africans

10:31

who were kidnapped and brought to America.

10:34

By nineteen sixty three, he could not

10:36

be ignored, and Playboy assigned

10:38

one of its up and coming writers, Alex

10:41

Haley, to interview him for the magazine.

10:43

Alex Haley was a forty one year old

10:45

black columnist from a prominent family

10:48

in Tennessee that happened to be in

10:50

the right place at the right time. His

10:53

feature on Malcolm X led to a publisher

10:55

offering the black nationalist a book

10:57

deal. Malcolm X turned to

10:59

Alix to help write it, and the two

11:01

worked on the project for about two years.

11:04

When they approached the finish line in early nineteen

11:06

sixty five, the duo held up in a

11:08

hotel to bang out the final draft.

11:11

When the manuscript was finished, I went

11:13

back down and worked with Malcolm. I was by

11:15

now living upstate New York, and worked

11:18

with him in a hotel, and he went

11:20

across from first page to last,

11:22

making this event editing change with his

11:24

favorite ballpoint pen and at

11:27

the bottom of each page putting his MX

11:29

And then he said to me, I don't think I'm going

11:31

to live to read this in print. Malcolm

11:34

proved to be very prophetic, because it was less

11:36

than two weeks later he was shot to death in the

11:38

Autumn.

11:39

Ballroom on February twenty

11:41

first, nineteen sixty five. The

11:43

fiery civil rights activist was killed

11:45

by members of the Nation of Islam.

11:48

At about three fifteen pm, the

11:50

Captain on. They

11:52

were about four hundred persons present in

11:54

the ball room here, and

11:57

Malcolm was addressing the

11:59

audience from the speakers platform.

12:01

One apparently to

12:04

man approached the speakers rostrum

12:06

man discharge shots

12:09

at him from my apparently very close

12:11

range.

12:12

The following morning, Alex Haley worked

12:14

feverishly to finish the book.

12:16

I sat down and began the most traumatic

12:19

writing I have ever done in my life, calling

12:22

forth as best I could, reminiscings of

12:24

having met and worked with this man, anecdotes

12:26

and insights into him, put together

12:28

in some kind of tumbling grenology. And

12:31

that is that part which now appears at the end

12:33

of that book, called the epilogue.

12:35

And the Autobiography of Malcolm X

12:37

was concluded and on its way into

12:39

print.

12:54

The untimely death of Malcolm X was

12:56

about to catapult the scribe of his autobiography.

13:00

The book became a bestseller, and

13:02

Alex Haley now had some leverage

13:04

to seek another idea, the story

13:06

of his ancestors journey from captured

13:08

slave in Africa to eventual freedom

13:11

in America. The idea took root

13:13

early in his life while sitting on a porch in

13:15

the South. As a young boy,

13:17

Alex Haley stayed with his grandmother in a small

13:20

town called Henning, Tennessee, about an

13:22

hour north of Memphis by car. He

13:24

often spoke about that time in his later years.

13:27

Every summer, my grandmother, who was widowed,

13:30

would invite to her home various women

13:33

members of their family.

13:34

Reciting this childhood memory displayed

13:36

his gift at storytelling, and

13:39

my.

13:39

Earliest members include that. Every

13:41

single evening across those summers,

13:45

after supper, as we called the evening

13:47

meal, when the dishes had been washed,

13:50

these ladies, who generally averaged

13:52

about my grandmother's age range late

13:54

forty's early fifties, would

13:57

go out from the kitchen and kind

13:59

of out onto the front porch.

14:02

They would each take seats in keen

14:05

bottom rocking chairs and they

14:07

would begin rocking back and forth,

14:10

and they would talk each evening. Unless

14:12

there was some local gossip to supersede

14:14

it temporarily, they would talk

14:16

about this self same thing. It

14:19

was a long narrative

14:21

history of a family, although I

14:23

didn't know that as a little boy. It

14:26

was not a very batim thing, but

14:29

bits and pieces and patches which were

14:31

told together, kind of in a

14:33

mixed, homogenized way about

14:36

this family. They would speak

14:38

about people, they would

14:40

speak of places, speak of things,

14:43

and I, as a little boy, didn't have the

14:45

orientation to understand a great deal that

14:47

they'd talk about. For instance,

14:50

when they spoke of people and

14:52

they talked about an old Massa, I didn't

14:54

know what an old Massa was. I didn't

14:56

know what an old Missus was. When

14:59

they spoke about places and they mentioned

15:01

a plantation, I didn't know what that was,

15:03

although after a while I began to get some

15:06

impression it must be something rather

15:08

like a farm, from the things I heard being

15:10

done on them.

15:11

Alex said he got the impression, even as a

15:13

young boy, that these stories dug

15:15

deep into the past.

15:17

When they were speaking of people, the

15:19

furthest back person they ever would speak

15:21

of was someone whom they called the Africa.

15:25

They would tell how this African was brought

15:27

on a ship to this country, to a place

15:29

which they pronounced as Napolis,

15:32

and they would tell how he was bought off that ship

15:35

by a man whom they called massa

15:37

John Waller, who took this African

15:40

to his plantation in a place which

15:42

they described as Spotsylvania

15:44

County, Virginia, and they

15:46

told how there this African desperately

15:48

kept trying to escape. The

15:50

first three times he escaped, he was caught,

15:53

brought back in each time given a worse beating

15:55

than previously as his punishment.

16:03

But it was the fourth time he was captured

16:05

that was the most troubling.

16:07

He was given an exemplary punishment

16:09

all in fact, choice of punishments.

16:11

It was told that he was given the choice before

16:14

the others, either of being castrated

16:17

or of having a foot cut off, and

16:19

this African chose the foot. The

16:22

story was that his foot was put on a stump

16:25

and with an axe, was cut off across the

16:27

arch. It was a hideous act.

16:29

It was, by no means a necessarily uncommon

16:32

act in the course of Antebellum slavery.

16:34

What underscored the brutality was how

16:36

Alex described what happened as

16:38

common. White slave owners frequently

16:41

handicapped their black slaves permanently,

16:44

their live in workers. The story

16:46

was absolutely heartbreaking and enraging.

16:49

This African would eventually mate with another

16:51

slave, and.

16:54

Of this union was born a little girl,

16:56

and she was given the name Kissy.

17:01

As the little girl Kizzy grew up.

17:04

It was said that when she got to be four or

17:06

five or so and could begin to understand

17:08

such things, this African father

17:11

of hers, every chance he got,

17:13

would take the little girl, his daughter by

17:15

the hand and lead her about the plantation.

17:18

He would point out to her various natural

17:21

objects a tree, a rock,

17:23

the sky, a cow, a chicken,

17:25

anything of this nature. And every

17:27

time he'd point out any such object to

17:30

his daughter, he would tell her

17:32

the name for that thing in

17:34

his native tongue. And

17:36

the little girl Kizzy, like any

17:39

child today, hearing an Asian tongue spoken,

17:42

heard and learned strange phonetic

17:45

sounds. Gradually, with repetitive

17:47

hearing of them and repetition of them

17:49

on her own part, she memorized

17:52

these sounds, and she came to associate

17:55

certain sounds with certain objects.

17:57

Alex described how these words stayed

17:59

with including her father's

18:02

African name.

18:03

In the case of this African, he was given

18:05

by his master the name Toby,

18:08

But it was said that on that plantation

18:10

that every time any of the other slaves

18:13

would address him as Toby, he

18:15

would strenuously rebuff and reject

18:18

it and tell them that his name was

18:20

Kinta. As a matter of fact, it would appear

18:22

he had a passion for trying to communicate

18:25

to his daughter a sense of his past.

18:28

Among the stories he told her was

18:31

how he had been captured. He

18:33

said that he had been not far away

18:35

from his village chopping wood,

18:38

intending to make himself a drum, when

18:41

he had been surprised, set upon,

18:43

overwhelmed, and thus had been kidnapped

18:45

into slavery. And the little girl

18:47

Kizzy came to know that story that

18:50

her father told, among other stories

18:52

that he told.

18:53

With the birth of a new child, Alex

18:55

described how this family would gather in

18:57

the slave quarters and tell the story

19:00

of their ancestors, going all the way back

19:02

to Kissey, her father Kinte,

19:04

and the moment he was captured in Africa, and

19:07

that tradition continued through seven generations,

19:09

tracing their journey from Africa to American

19:12

slaves, to freedom, and all the way

19:14

through the birth of a girl named Cynthia,

19:16

who would eventually find herself repeating

19:19

it on a rocking chair in Tennessee.

19:21

And his fate was further to have it. Cynthia

19:24

was to become my maternal grandma.

19:27

And I told you at the outset how I

19:29

grew up in my grandma's home and little

19:31

Hinting, Tennessee, and she

19:33

pumped that story into me as if it were

19:35

plasma. It was, by all ours,

19:38

the most precious thing in her life, the

19:40

story of the family which had come down across

19:42

the generations in the manner I

19:44

have described.

19:45

Alex said he heard this story repeated

19:48

time and time again through his early teens,

19:50

and it stayed with him. So after

19:53

he finished the Malcolm X book, he began

19:55

casually searching library archives,

19:57

trying to gather bits of information about his family

20:00

past. According to Alex, he

20:02

became obsessed with the search of his roots,

20:04

but before he could go any further, he

20:07

needed a refresher on the oral history

20:09

of his ancestors, so he traveled

20:11

to the last living relative that participated

20:14

in those portside tales, his cousin

20:16

Georgia. The two met.

20:19

After the initial huggings and the

20:21

kissings, and the boy you done rode up

20:23

good. The minute.

20:26

The minute that I told cousin Georgia

20:29

spoke to her about the stories, she

20:31

was off and running, as if we'd been

20:33

sitting on that front porst the previous afternoon.

20:36

She said, yeah, boy that African.

20:39

He say his name was Kinty. He

20:41

called the guitar cold. He called

20:43

the river Cambi Belongo. He

20:45

say he was chopping wood for to make hisself

20:48

a drum when they cossed him, and all the rest

20:50

of the story told in her

20:52

own colorful way. It

20:54

was like echoes from boyhood.

21:03

Now armed with a trace of his African ancestor,

21:06

Kinte, he reached out to an expert

21:08

on African language and repeated the words

21:10

and stories to him in hopes that they provided

21:12

a clue to Kinte's homeland. After

21:15

some thought and a few calls, the expert

21:17

said that Kintay could have been from a specific

21:20

area in the Gombia, a country

21:22

in West Africa, and as luck would

21:24

have it, the expert knew of a student from

21:26

the area that was studying in America. The

21:29

student agreed to bring Alex to the Gambia to

21:31

help him search for any signs of exactly

21:33

where this Kinty was from.

21:35

The two traveled to the capital city of the Gombia

21:38

to meet the student's father, and the elder

21:40

had apparently done some groundwork when.

21:42

He spoke with me. He got together

21:45

three men whom he knew to be very knowledgeable

21:47

of the history of the country. And I met

21:49

with those men in the lounge

21:52

of the Little Atlantic Hotel.

21:54

And what they told Alex was promising.

21:57

Apparently the people of the area had a unique

21:59

way of recording African lineages.

22:01

They told me how history has

22:03

been kept for centuries in

22:06

Africa. They told me about the

22:08

existence of very old men who

22:10

are called grioles. It's spelled

22:12

g riots, as

22:15

they described them. Grios seemed to

22:17

be like walking living archives.

22:25

They told me of men who are

22:27

in a line of grio's, the senior

22:30

grio would be about late sixties, early

22:32

seventies. Beneath him would be men

22:34

at about decade intervals younger

22:36

down to a teenage boy, and that

22:38

the boy would grow on up mature,

22:41

hearing the story of a large family

22:43

clan told over and again until

22:46

he began to tell parts of it, and a little

22:48

more and a little more, until that

22:50

boy, one day, hopefully, would be

22:52

the senior grio, able to talk

22:55

for sometimes, in some big family

22:57

cases, as much as two days without

22:59

once repeating himself, telling in

23:01

the most meticulous detail, in

23:04

great, great microscopic

23:07

detail, the story of a clan

23:09

over a period of century.

23:11

A more, this was stunning information

23:13

to Alex. He now had a potential

23:15

pathway to finding the homeland of

23:17

the African ancestor his family called Kintae.

23:20

The three men said they do some digging, and Alex

23:23

returned to the States with one immediate goal. He

23:25

contacted his former publisher and

23:28

pitched the idea for a book, the

23:30

story of a Black Man's search for his

23:32

roots in Africa. The publisher

23:34

bit, agreeing to pay him a monthly

23:36

stifen for a year to finance his research.

23:40

Now Alex just needed to confirm everything

23:42

his family had passed down through the generations,

23:45

and most importantly, find the homeland

23:48

of the African named Kinta. Alex

23:50

eventually heard back from one of the three men that

23:53

he had met in the capital of the Gambia.

23:55

The same man with whom I had

23:57

previously talked told me matter of factly

24:00

that there was now found

24:02

in a backcountry village, an old

24:05

rio knowledgeable of the Kinta

24:07

clan story.

24:08

The grill was from a remote village called Jeffre

24:11

on the west coast of Africa. So

24:13

in nineteen sixty seven, Alex made the truck

24:15

to the village. After a safari

24:18

like trek with an expedition team of fourteen,

24:20

he arrived in Jiufre and was immediately

24:23

greeted by the villagers and the human archived

24:25

known as the.

24:26

Grill, the old man, the

24:28

Grillo. His name was Keba Kanga

24:30

Fofanna. He had seventy

24:33

three reigns their way of saying, seventy

24:35

three years of age. One rain is season a year.

24:38

He began now to tell me the history of

24:40

the Kinta clan. He speaks

24:43

and the words are almost as if a scroll

24:45

is being read. He

24:48

would say two or three sentences and

24:50

the interpretation of translation

24:52

would come to me. When I had

24:54

heard a good fair amount

24:57

of it, I was absolutely

25:00

all immersed

25:02

in just wonder that

25:05

such could be that out of

25:07

this man's memory and his mouth was

25:09

coming such an incredible array of

25:11

lineage, all the way

25:13

across a family line one

25:15

hundred odd years ago. Who

25:18

married whom, what

25:20

children, in what order? All

25:23

the way across that line. Then dropped

25:25

back down to the children

25:28

themselves, each child whom

25:30

they had married their children

25:32

in what order? All the way across. I

25:35

was struck by the biblical way it was

25:37

being expressed. In the translations,

25:39

and so and so took as a wife

25:42

so and so and begot, and

25:44

be got and be God. Now

25:46

I heard this wizened old Rio

25:49

say through the interpreter,

25:51

quote about the time the

25:54

king's soldiers came. The eldest

25:57

of these four sons, Cooter, went

25:59

away from this village to chop

26:02

wood, and he was never seen

26:04

again.

26:09

This was similar to the story that his family

26:11

repeated on that porch throughout his childhood.

26:14

An African named Kinta went to gather

26:16

wood to make a drum and was captured

26:18

in the process, never to see his

26:20

African family again.

26:22

What I said there is if I was carved

26:25

of rock, goose

26:27

pimples that felt to be the size

26:29

of grapes all over me. There

26:32

was no way in the world for that man

26:34

to know what he had said to me.

26:36

Alex Haley had found the homeland

26:38

of his African ancestor, Kinte.

26:41

He would spend the next six years corroborating

26:44

the details of his family stories, a

26:46

story that spanned seven generations

26:48

all the way back to Africa. In

26:50

the early nineteen seventies, he began

26:53

putting pen to paper, writing on a draft

26:55

for the book. At one point

26:57

he had trouble describing what kunte Kine

27:00

must have experienced while being transported

27:02

to America as a slave. He

27:06

decided to do something drastic.

27:09

I was trying to get into a character, you

27:11

know, to feel that character so much

27:13

that an effect, you become the character.

27:16

And what it was. I was at the time living

27:18

in San Francisco, and I was trying to write that

27:20

part about this boy sixteen

27:22

down in the hold of a slave ship with one

27:25

hundred and thirty nine other people because the ship's

27:27

cargo was one hundred and forty she left Africa

27:30

with. And I would write thirty

27:32

forty pages and out it went. It

27:34

just didn't grip. And

27:36

you a writer know that before anybody else.

27:39

You know it isn't right. And finally

27:41

I realized I had no right really to

27:43

be up in some high rise carpenter

27:45

department trying to write about him in that slave

27:48

ship hold. So I flew to Africa

27:51

and I was able to find it to book passage

27:53

on a freighter coming from Liberia

27:56

to the United States, and I

27:58

got on it, and I made arrangements

28:01

sort of that I could after

28:03

dinner each evening, I would go down

28:05

in the second hole of the ship. And you know,

28:08

I don't know if you've been in freight as much I was twenty

28:10

years in the coast, cause I know you know a good deal about

28:12

ships. But the holes

28:14

of ships are deep, dark, cavernous

28:16

cold, and down in there the cargo

28:19

was bales of raw rubber, and I

28:21

found a big rough timber

28:23

they used to put between the cargo to

28:25

keep it from shifting in rough seas. And

28:28

I would go down there and take off my clothing

28:30

to my underwear and lie

28:32

down on the plank on my back, and

28:35

I would make myself stay there all night

28:37

until in the morning I could hear footsteps

28:39

on the steel deck overhead, and I

28:41

did that crossing. And it

28:43

was an effort to try and psych

28:46

myself or put myself into some

28:48

circumstance in which I

28:50

could feel that I was he and

28:53

I could, you know, sort of work the five census

28:55

thing, what did he hear, what

28:57

did he think, what did he see? Small

29:00

so forth? And

29:02

that was how finally I was able

29:04

to write that section.

29:05

It took him three years to finish writing

29:08

Roots, and anticipation for the book

29:10

was building so much so that a TV

29:12

producer bought up the rights to the story long

29:15

before it was published. That producer

29:17

David L. Wolper explained why at

29:19

the time.

29:20

Well, I've always been interested personally in a generational

29:22

story. I try to develop a story even

29:25

before Roots, about four Indian generations,

29:27

and then I tried. I couldn't get it on. I try

29:29

to develop one about four police

29:31

generations in a family. I couldn't get that

29:33

on. I try to develop one about a family

29:35

of an automobile family, four generations and an

29:37

automobile family. But somehow I guess the

29:39

timing was right. And when

29:42

Roots came along and I said, what a great idea, following

29:44

a black family from Africa through

29:47

all the turmoil of its life until today.

29:52

Alex Haley finally published his nine hundred

29:54

and twelve page two in October nineteen

29:57

seventy six. He titled it Roots,

30:00

Yaga of an American Family, and

30:02

it was an immediate sensation, largely

30:04

because the book was so monumental. It

30:06

was the first time a descendant of American

30:09

slaves traced his genealogy back

30:11

to a specific ancestor and a particular

30:13

village in Africa. It opened at

30:15

number five on the New York Times Bestseller

30:18

list, and by mid November nineteen seventy

30:20

six, it was sitting at number one. ABC

30:23

began broadcasting the twelve hour, eight

30:25

part mini series adaptation of the book

30:28

on January twenty third, nineteen seventy

30:30

seven.

30:32

After two years of production, we

30:34

present this incredible saga in

30:36

an epic motion picture. Roots,

30:39

the current number one best selling novel,

30:41

is the television event of the year. From

30:44

primitive Africa to the Old South,

30:46

so Roots sweeps across

30:48

the panorama of a young America bursting

30:51

with all the dreams, all the joys,

30:54

and all the hardships of a vibrant country

30:56

and its people through the years of slavery.

30:58

The.

31:02

Civil War.

31:03

Are we got on.

31:06

Reconstruction and

31:11

the struggle to survive There.

31:13

You want a film

31:16

spanning more than one hundred years, generation

31:19

to generation, continent

31:21

to continent, slavery

31:23

to freedom.

31:25

Hear me, oh African, the

31:28

flesh of your flesh

31:30

has come to freedom,

31:36

All Free.

31:38

The show aired for eight consecutive nights,

31:40

and at the time it was the biggest scripted

31:42

TV event of all time, garnering

31:44

over one hundred and thirty million viewers, almost

31:47

sixty percent of the American public.

31:50

It was a cultural phenomenon

31:52

which shocked many TV veterans. Slavery

31:55

had never been shown in such a brutal light

31:58

on primetime television. U

32:00

Ta Kinte was portrayed as almost a Jesus

32:02

like figure, and his beatings and maimings

32:04

were more than most thought the American viewing

32:07

public could take. Reports leaped

32:09

that ABC executives aired the show on

32:11

consecutive nights in an attempt to cut

32:13

their losses, but they were wrong. It

32:16

was a cultural phenomenon that touched

32:18

a nerve. The series boosted book

32:20

sales as well. At a little over six

32:22

months on the shelf, fifteen million

32:25

hardcover copies were sold. Black

32:27

Americans began making the pilgrimage to the

32:29

West African jew Fray village where

32:31

Kunta Kinte was born. When they

32:33

arrived, they were shown the ruins of the mud

32:35

bricked house he lived in. The village

32:37

would eventually be named a national monument,

32:40

and James Island, thought to be the place where

32:42

Kunta Kinte was taken before his voyage

32:44

to America, was renamed Kunta

32:47

Kintey Island. The

32:49

reason for Alex Haley's success was clear.

32:51

He was the first Black American that had

32:53

traced his family's roots to a specific

32:56

person and village in Africa. The

32:58

only problem was it was a

33:00

complete fabrication. Netflix,

33:18

Hulu, HBO, Max, Disney Plus,

33:20

Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Showtime,

33:22

Paramount, Paramount Plus, and on and

33:25

on. What are these streaming services

33:27

have in common? They are all storytelling

33:29

platforms. Which of these platforms

33:31

are you supporting with your hard earned money?

33:34

Now ask yourself if the story is being told on

33:36

those platforms truly align with your

33:38

worldview, And if they don't, ask

33:40

yourself where you go to get entertainment

33:43

in the form of storytelling that does align

33:45

with your worldview. Red Pilled America

33:47

is that show. We are

33:50

not another talk show covering today's news.

33:52

We are all about telling stories. Three

33:54

years later, we remain the only show

33:57

of our kind. And why aren't there more shows

33:59

like ours? Because it's expensive

34:01

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34:03

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34:17

Support what you love or it goes away. The

34:20

choice is yours.

34:27

Welcome Back to red Pilled America. So

34:30

Alex Haley's book and miniseries became

34:32

an international sensation, and

34:34

the reason for his success was clear. He

34:37

was the first black American to have traced

34:39

his family roots to a specific person

34:41

and village in Africa. The only

34:43

problem was it was a complete fabrication.

34:47

The first signs that something was off came a few

34:49

weeks after the release of the book, a

34:51

reviewer found some extreme historical errors

34:54

related to the story of Kuntakinte.

34:57

Then, a few months after the miniseries became

34:59

a cold trophenomenon, a curious

35:01

investigative journalist named Mark Ottaway

35:04

smelled something fishy in Haley's story

35:06

about how he found Kuntakinte's African

35:08

village. So Mark took a trip to the Gambian

35:11

village of Juffade to look into it himself,

35:13

and as he pulled the thread, part of Alex

35:16

Haley's hoax slowly unraveled. The

35:18

reporter's investigation into the Gambian archives,

35:20

British colonial records, and Lloyd's shipping

35:23

register, some of the same sources

35:25

used by Alex Haley suggested that

35:27

the facts underpinning the Kunta Quinte story

35:30

were at best sketchy. By analyzing

35:32

these records, he learned that the people of Jeufadae

35:35

were not the victims of the slave trade in seventeen

35:37

sixty seven, the year Alex Haley claimed

35:39

Kuntaquinte was captured, but instead

35:41

were actually collaborators with whites in

35:44

catching slaves farther inland. The

35:46

journalists found other traces that the author's

35:48

story was fabricated, but perhaps

35:50

the most damning piece of evidence was the

35:52

story behind the village griel. The

35:54

single person provided the base on which

35:57

the entire story of Kunta Kinte

35:59

was built. But the greel was not

36:01

a greel at all. He was basically

36:04

the village scoundrel, thought to be notoriously

36:06

unreliable. But that wasn't all. The

36:08

Greel actually knew what Alex wanted

36:10

to hear before reciting the story of Kunta

36:13

Quinte to Alex. You may recall

36:15

that Alex first went to the capital of the Gambia

36:18

and met with three men who were knowledgeable of

36:20

the history of the area. In their first

36:22

meeting, Alex told them in great detail

36:24

the story of Kunta Kinte. Here's him admitting

36:26

to that at the time.

36:27

And I met with those men in the

36:30

lounge of the Little Atlantic Hotel,

36:33

and I'm telling them as I had told Doctor

36:35

Vancina, every stread, every

36:37

nuance of that story which I

36:40

first had heard as a little boy on

36:42

a western Tennessee front porch. And

36:44

these Africans listened most intently.

36:47

Those Gambian men then went out and told

36:49

the Griol of Juffada the exact

36:51

story Alex wanted to hear. So

36:53

when Alex met the so called Griol, perhaps

36:56

the most dramatic moment in the entire story,

36:58

the Griol was simply regurgitating Alex's

37:01

story back to him. In other words, Alex

37:03

was the source of the Greel's ancient memory.

37:06

As the investigative journalist began to press

37:08

Alex Haley on these details, the reporter

37:11

began to see a crack in his armor. Alex

37:13

seemed prepared to concede that he may

37:16

have been misled during his research in the Gambia,

37:18

but that wasn't true either. Mark

37:20

Ottaway uncovered a letter written from

37:23

the Gambia National Archivist to Alex

37:25

Haley informing him that the Greel, who provided

37:27

the entire basis for the story of Kuntaquinte

37:29

was not a greel. The letter was dated

37:32

in nineteen seventy three, three years

37:34

before the book was published. With

37:36

the credibility of Alex Haley's Root Story

37:38

beginning to crumble, he pulled a play that

37:40

has become commonplace today. He accused

37:43

the investigative journalist of racism. But

37:45

that wasn't enough. Alex stepped it up even

37:47

further, claiming that the reporter's suggestion

37:49

that Roots was a fake was like quote

37:51

saying that Anne Frank never existed,

37:54

or that the whole Nazi thing was a hoax.

37:56

The investigative journalist challenged the author

37:58

to a debate. Alex accepted, but

38:00

then he backed out. It

38:04

was becoming apparent to anyone that was paying

38:06

attention, including The New York Times

38:08

that ran an extensive story on the building

38:10

controversy, that Alex Haley's Root

38:12

Story may be a fake. But in a

38:14

stunning turn, a little over a week

38:17

after Mark Ottaway's explosive investigation

38:19

was published, Alex Haley was given a

38:21

Pulitzer Prize for the book. The

38:24

establishment was apparently unconcerned

38:26

that Alex's House of cards was falling

38:32

in the coming months, and years. However, the fraud

38:34

would become even more apparent. Alex

38:36

would eventually be sued by two authors

38:38

accusing him of plagiarism, including

38:41

Harold Korlander, a white American

38:43

novelist that specialized in the study

38:45

of Afro American cultural connections

38:47

to Africa. In nineteen sixty

38:49

seven, he wrote the novel The African

38:52

and claimed that Alex had copied some eighty

38:54

one passages from the book. Literary

38:56

experts testified during the trial as well,

38:59

including one the evidence

39:01

of copying from The African in both

39:03

the novel and the television dramatization of Roots

39:06

is clear and irrefutable end quote.

39:09

The trial lasted five weeks, and towards the

39:11

end the judge signaled that Alex was going to

39:13

lose the case, so on the eve of the

39:15

verdict, instead of facing headlines

39:17

that he copied, Alex settled with Corlander

39:20

for a reported sum of six hundred and fifty

39:22

thousand dollars or roughly two point

39:24

six million and twenty twenty dollars. The

39:27

author of Roots also had to issue a statement

39:29

saying, quote, Alex Haley acknowledges and

39:31

regrets that various materials from The

39:33

African by Harold Korlander found

39:36

their way into his book Roots, end quote,

39:38

but the hits kept on coming. A

39:40

highly regarded genealogist researched

39:42

Roots and found that Alex Haley got

39:44

everything wrong in his pre Civil War

39:47

lineage. She concluded, quote

39:49

one hundred and eighty two pages and thirty

39:51

nine chapters on Haley's Virginia family

39:54

have no basis in fact end quote.

39:56

Another investigative journalist named Philip

39:58

Noble found that Alex Haley fabricated

40:01

the story that he'd stripped down to his underwear

40:03

in a ship's cargo hold to get into

40:05

the character of Kunta Quinte. The journalist

40:08

questioned the person in charge of the ship's

40:10

hold, and that person said it never

40:12

happened, and he knew the author never

40:14

slept in the hold because he had the key

40:16

to the area and never gave it to Alex.

40:19

Philip Noble also reviewed Alex Haley's

40:21

collection of papers and recordings related to

40:23

Roots that were released after his death and

40:25

found that in their initial meeting, the village

40:28

Griol did not give a detailed description

40:30

of Kunta Quinte's family and descendants, as

40:32

Alex Haley famously described. Never

40:35

fully admitting to a fakery. Alex Haley

40:37

did say to one of his detractors, quote,

40:39

I was just trying to give my people a

40:41

myth to live by. Today,

40:46

it's largely accepted by historian experts

40:48

that Roots was not a true story.

40:51

In a candid moment, respected literary

40:53

critic and African American historian Henry

40:55

Lewis Gates Junior, who was friends with Alex

40:58

Haley, would later admit, quote, most of

41:00

us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex

41:02

actually found the village from whence his ancestors

41:05

sprang Roots is a work of the imagination

41:08

rather than strict historical scholarship. This

41:11

is no small admission, because each

41:13

instance of brutality displayed in Roots

41:16

was portrayed to the public as not only factual

41:18

history, but generally not uncommon to how

41:20

white people treated black slaves. The

41:23

impacts of the book and miniseries were

41:25

not only limited to nineteen seventy seven.

41:27

They led to the final element needed

41:29

to trigger Black Lives Matter to rise

41:31

from the ashes of the Black Power movement. Roots

41:35

introduced whites to the black oppression narrative

41:37

and opened the doors to that narrative being

41:39

a staple in America's cultural institutions.

41:42

After Roots initial broadcast, schools

41:45

at all levels began using both the book

41:47

and the miniseries as a history teaching

41:49

tool.

41:50

Over two hundred colleges gave academic

41:52

credit to those who watched Roots.

41:54

On the air.

41:56

The film is now a teaching too at all educational

41:58

levels from kindergart.

42:01

I watched it in my public elementary school

42:03

as a history lesson about slavery as well,

42:06

and so did others, including video

42:08

streaming stars Diamond and Silk.

42:12

Okay. So I may not have paid attention

42:15

to school, but this is what they would do. They

42:17

will play this show called Roots.

42:20

That's Diamond.

42:21

They will play that show, and that's

42:23

how you learned the history of what was going on nowhere.

42:26

It's really the truth. And now that

42:28

kind of stuff would outrage people. But

42:30

what they did not do is they did not tell

42:33

us who saw black

42:35

people into slavery, because really there was

42:37

other Africans that had solved

42:40

other Africans into slavery. Like they

42:42

didn't give you the details. They took a story

42:44

and sensationalized it right,

42:47

and that's how you loved it.

42:50

And the more that they continue to play that

42:52

that story, Root that silk

42:54

over and over and over and more more stories

42:57

like that what it did, It kept

42:59

you stuff in the pain of your

43:01

ancestors. You begin to believe

43:04

that that's you, and that's happening to

43:06

me and my people right now, even

43:08

though you've never picked cotton a day in your

43:10

life, even though you was never

43:13

a slaves under

43:15

any slave master a day in your

43:17

life. And that's being implemented

43:20

in little generations that they feel

43:22

like, Oh, I'm so in pain, I've

43:24

been whipped with many strikes,

43:27

and the white man is the one that's

43:29

out to get me. That's

43:31

taught mentality.

43:33

Entire programs were built around this fabricated

43:36

story, and Roots is still

43:38

used as a history of slavery teaching tool

43:40

to this day. Roots showed

43:42

the way forward for the black power movement

43:45

to rise again. It needed to

43:47

penetrate America's cultural institutions

43:49

Hollywood, the media, the music industry,

43:52

literature, sports, and most importantly,

43:54

the educational system. The black power

43:56

movement needed to infiltrate these institutions

43:59

and see in the minds of white Americans

44:01

the idea that blacks have been oppressed

44:04

for four hundred years, and it would

44:06

need to continue planting that idea for

44:08

at least a generation. That way,

44:10

there'd be an entire crop of citizens that

44:13

would know nothing else but that America's

44:15

operating system was and is

44:17

racist. It didn't matter if the

44:19

message being planted was factually challenged,

44:21

like the True Story of Roots, as

44:24

long as it was wrong in the right direction.

44:26

If delivering this message could become a structural

44:29

part of America's cultural institutions, the

44:31

machine would slowly pump out adults infected

44:33

with the idea that America was systemically

44:36

racist. So disciples of the Black Power

44:38

movement embarked on this long march

44:40

through the institutions. They entered

44:42

Hollywood and pumped out movies like Mississippi

44:44

Burning, The Color Purple, Driving This Daisy,

44:46

Do The Right Thing, Glory, Hidden Figures,

44:49

Twelve Years a Slave, The Help Get Out,

44:51

d Django, Unchained forty two, The Butler,

44:53

fruit Vale Station, Selma, The Birth of

44:55

a Nation, Black Panther, Black Clansman,

44:58

and on and on and on. They

45:00

used music to continue the anti police

45:02

gospel of the Black Panthers, with songs

45:05

like NWA's Police Iced

45:07

Teas, Cop Killer, Public Enemies, Fight the

45:09

Power, and Snoop Dogg and doctor Dre's

45:11

one eight seven on an Undercover Cop meaning

45:13

Murder, law enforcement and in education

45:16

Roots showed the way as well teach

45:18

your youth that America is inherently

45:21

racist. Historians like the socialist

45:23

Howard Zinn flooded university

45:25

courses with his slanted anti

45:27

American history book, A People's History

45:29

of the United States. That book gave a legion

45:32

of historian teachers and professors the perspective

45:34

they needed to sell their students on

45:36

the idea that America was an oppressor

45:38

of the black and brown people. The

45:41

disciples of the Black Power movement entered

45:43

prestigious colleges and repackaged

45:45

the oppression narrative into a serious

45:47

sounding concept called critical race theory,

45:50

which favors people not based on their ability,

45:52

but instead on how many oppression groups

45:54

they belonged to. The theory claims

45:56

that black men are more oppressed than white

45:58

men, gay blacklack men are more oppressed

46:01

than straight black men, and black trans

46:03

Muslim women are more oppressed than

46:05

them all. Activists built on this fraudulent

46:08

theory to create chief diversity officers.

46:10

These officers first sprouted up in colleges

46:12

to make sure that the most oppressed groups received

46:15

the most leeway. Then this idea

46:17

spread outside the university. Today,

46:20

every major corporation in America has

46:22

a chief diversity officer ensuring

46:24

that opportunity is doled out based on a

46:26

person's oppression ranking. Roots

46:41

opened the door to all of this and showed

46:43

the power of the oppression narrative. Once

46:49

this idea entered our cultural institutions,

46:51

it slowly corrupted the entire American

46:54

experience, like an arson ist

46:56

secretly opening a homes gas line.

46:58

The toxic ideology of a press

47:00

slowly filled every space of our culture,

47:03

and it was just waiting for someone to strike

47:05

a match to expose just how

47:07

thoroughly the victim narrative had saturated

47:10

America. And that match came on

47:12

May twenty fifth, twenty twenty.

47:14

Moments ago, the chief of police in Minneapolis

47:17

announced that he had fired four police officers

47:19

involved in the arrest and subsequent

47:21

death of a black man in police custody.

47:24

George Floyd repeatedly told the officers

47:26

that he could not breathe after an

47:28

officer knelt on his neck,

47:30

pinning him to the ground during an arrest. A

47:32

bystander captured yesterday's incident

47:35

on a cell phone camera.

47:36

All of the pieces of the puzzle came together

47:38

on that day, and when they did,

47:41

the true goal of Black Lives Matter was exposed,

47:44

a goal will reveal in the next

47:46

and final episode of our hands up

47:48

series.

47:49

Redpooled America is an iHeartRadio original

47:52

podcast. It's produced by me Adriana

47:54

Cortez and Patrick Carrelchi for Inform Ventures.

47:57

Now, our entire archive of episodes is

47:59

only available to our backstage subscribers.

48:01

To subscribe, visit Redpilled America dot

48:03

com and click support at the top of the menu.

48:06

That's red Pilled America dot com and click support

48:08

at the top of the menu. Thanks for listening.