How Accurate are the Film's Roots? The film Roots is a great historical film. The film's depiction of slavery and abolition is not only a highly emotive and potentially divisive subject, it also offers a way to access the past in an empowering and enriching way. Representations of historical contexts in cinema and television have often proven to be very important in the creation of public memory. Indeed, these modes of cultural expression are often viewed critically as one of the primary sources of perceptions and memories of the historical past. The roots of the film were very specific. Some of the things that were accurate in the movies were: black men were kidnapped and taken to be sold, slaves were punished by being harmed, and slave owners fornicated with their slaves. Roots enhanced some incidents for dramatic effect but the bulk was based on historical reality. The film confirmed most of what we know about slavery during this era. Early in the film, Haley described a man who saw white men and was carried away by them. This was a very specific story because white men were kidnapping slaves during this time to sell them. Europeans bought from different tribes such as African tribes who captured slaves themselves. European traders captured a few Africans in raids along the coast, but purchased most of them from local African or Afro-European dealers. Europeans also played a role in the kidnappings of Africans. In many cases, Europeans started wars between African tribes so that they would sell each other into slavery. And while Africans fought each other, Europeans sometimes targeted weak tribes for kidnapping. Some European Christian missionaries also tricked some African leaders into selling their prisoners of war and criminals. Europeans began to explore and establish trading posts on the west Atlantic coast of Africa. The first major group of European traders in West Africa were the Portuguese, followed by the British and the French. In the 16th and 17th centuries, these European colonial powers began practicing plantation agriculture in their expanding possessions in the New World in North, Central, and South America, as well as in the Caribbean islands on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. As European demand increased for products such as sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, and cotton, and more land in the New World became available for European use, the need for labor work on the plantations increased as the State http://encarta.