Episode list

It's now April 1882, 12 years later. Chicken George returns to live with Tom Harvey and his wife Irene. Tom travels to Memphis to attend a Republican convention but soon learns that his first class ticket for the train has little meaning to the conductor who refuses to let him on and tells him to ride in the baggage car. Colonel Frederick Warner is also traveling to Memphis and intercedes on Tom's behalf. At the home of Beeman Jones, Tom is pressed to support the Democratic party in return for a guarantee to protect civil rights. Carrie Barden is a black teacher who borrows books from the Warner's library and meets the Colonel's son, Jim. Carrie is a college graduate and the two have much in common, including poetry and literature. They are soon spending a good deal of time together and Jim quickly falls in love with her. When he asks her to marry him, she runs away. Col. Warner won't hear of it however and approaches Tom Warner to have her removed from her teaching position. It all becomes moot when Jim and Carrie run off to be married but when the newlyweds return to town, it generates a harsh reaction from the townsfolk and from the Colonel who disowns Jim. Elizabeth Harvey is seeing John Dolan and her mother tells her that if she wants to keep company with a boy, she needs to ask her father's permission. He refuses after meeting the boy and deciding his father was most likely a white man. She decides she wants to become a teacher. One generation comes to an end when Chicken George dies after an accident.

It's now 1896 and Elizabeth Harvey returns home. Her father still bears a grudge over their dispute all those years ago. Cynthia Harvey makes the acquaintance of Will Palmer and he asks permission to call on her. Will plans on making something with his life and is too proud to ask her father for permission until he's something better than a railroad worker. He gets work in Bob Campbell's lumber yard and with the new job, approaches Tom who isn't going to make the same mistake he made with Lizzie. Their courting leads to marriage, though Will is late for his own wedding. Will's friend Lee Garnet is arrested and convicted of stealing from Harry Owens' cash box. Owens in fact owed Lee the amount in question but then filed a complaint. Lee is eventually released but not before he is whipped. Andy Warner begins to conspire with others to bar African-Americans from voting. He's also decided to run against his father in the next election. While Col. Warner believes the black voters to be an essential part of the larger community, Andy and others like him blame the black community for all of their ills and paint them as a threat. The Colonel has to change his views if he wants any hope of winning. Tom Harvey has a hard time believing what others see happening until is refused the right to vote. In this climate, Will is astounded at the business opportunity that is presented to him. Jim Warner is still married to Carrie and they now have a son. Jim has been shunned by the white community but his mother visits him from time to time.

Will and Cynthia Palmer's daughter Bertha is off to Lane College, the first in the family to do so. There she meets Simon Haley, a fellow student who is working his way through school. She asks him out to the school picnic, more as a joke than anything else, but they soon become close. At the end of the year, she describes him to her parents as a particular dear friend, which worries her father. When Simon gets home he learns that his father needs him to help out of the farm and that there's no money for his tuition. His mother has her own ideas. Intent on returning to school, he gets a job as a Pullman porter where he meets someone who changes his life. Congressman Andy Warner is off to Washington and there is also a new President, Woodrow Wilson. Andy's not pleased when Earl Crowther starts a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and they burn a cross without his permission. The Klan burns out Mr. Goldstein, the Jewish tailor. Simon misses his graduation when he enlists in the army.

With 8 soldiers hanged for staging a mutiny in the 24th Infantry, Bertha is worried about Simon. Criticizing the army during wartime isn't necessarily a safe practice however. Will Palmer finds that the local draft board isn't applying the rules fairly to blacks. The army is commanded by white officers only and black men get little respect. One of Simon's fellow black soldier, Heywood, is badly beaten by a State Trooper and some in the platoon want to take revenge, but its Heywood who talks sense into them. They're soon sent overseas and in France face the Germans in combat but failure to provide covering artillery fire leads to death as they attempt to take out a machine-gun nest. While in the trenches, Simon learns that his father died on the operating table. He is also wounded in a gas attack and in hospital meets a Senegalese soldier. They celebrate Armistice day and make plans for the future, Simon believes that it will be different for blacks at home now that they've fought for their country. That's not to be however as whites reassert their authority. Simon and Bertha are married but Will's not too happy when he learns the newlyweds will soon be leaving for Ithaca, New York where Simon will continue his studies at Cornell University

It's now 1932 and these are hard times during the Depression. A young Alex Haley is living with his parents Bertha and Simon and his grandparents. Simon is frustrated working at the lumberyard but with a Master's degree in agriculture, dreams of breaking free and teaching. Will has little interest in modernizing the operation but good news for Simon comes with a job offer as a college professor at Alabama A & M. He's embarrassed at the things that the school's president, Dr. Horace Huguley, has to do to please possible donors. In addition to his teaching duties, Simon tries to meet black farmers in the county to help improve their crop yield. Simon finds it difficult to help them as most don't own the land they farm. He meets Lyle Pettijohn the County Agricultural agent who is supportive of Simon's scientific approach to improving farming methods but also realizes the challenges both of them face in having to deal with the landowners. Petttijohn pays the price for supporting Simon's ideas. As for Alex, he learns of his family history from his Grandpa Will and traveling with his father, sees first hand the poverty in which black sharecroppers and farm hands live and work.

It's now 1939 and 17-year-old Alex returns to home to Elizabeth City from college. He's also there to tell his father that he's not on leave to conduct a research paper but has in fact quit school. Simon has re-married since Bertha died and Alex has some difficulty with that, all the more so when he realizes that his step-mother is pregnant. Simon has high hopes for his son and firmly believes in education as they to improve your lot in life. Deciding to compromise, Simon decides he should join the army but Alex agrees to join the US Coast Guard. Like many other blacks in the segregated military, he finds himself relegated to the kitchen serving as a steward, making beds and shining shoes and silver. Out on liberty, Alex meets Nan Branch at a church dance. With the onset of World War II, they are married but his father disapproves. They soon have a daughter and with wars end, Simon stills holds out some hope that Alex will return to college. Alex decides he likes writing but opts to re-enlist until he can decide on his future. He also realizes that little has changed when he's refused a room at a string of motels while moving to New York for his latest assignment. His new superior officer, Commander Robert Monroe, decides to help him out with his writing. He also suggests that Alex write about about those things that stir his passions.

In October 1960, Alex attends his great-aunt Liz's funeral but he and his father Simon still don't get along. Alex is now making a decent living as a writer, mainly for magazines, but his father is still disappointed in him. He interviews Malcolm X for an article he's writing for "Reader's Digest" on the Nation of Islam which leads to an article in Playboy about the black leader. "Playboy" then arranges an interview with George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party. His successful articles lead to his first book, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", completed only a short time before Malcolm X's assassination in 1965. He begins to research his own family history, attempting to locate written records that would substantiate the oral history he's heard from his childhood. After much searching, he believes he's found Kunta Kinte's original village in what is now Gambia.