Roots: The Next Generations

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.

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.

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.