January 23, 1977 saw the premiere of Roots, a groundbreaking
television program. The eight-episode miniseries, which was
broadcast over eight consecutive nights, follows a family from
its origins in West Africa through generations of slavery and
the end of the Civil War.

Roots was one of the most-watched television events in U.S.
history and a major moment in mainstream American culture’s
reckoning with the legacy of slavery.

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley
(August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992)

A critical and ratings success over the course of its run,
Roots received 37 Primetime Emmy Award nominations
and won nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody
Award.

                        
CAMILLE BOHANNON

SANDY KOZEL

On December 23, 1823, “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” perhaps
the most famous and influential Christmas poem ever was
published in the Troy Sentinel newspaper in New York by
an anonymous author.

It wasn’t until nearly 20 years later, in 1844, that American
writer Clement Clarke Moore claimed authorship after
seeing the poem misattributed in the Washington
National Intelligencer.

Moore took credit for the poem, claiming to have authored 
“some lines, describing a visit from St. Nicholas, which I
wrote many years ago, not for publication, but to amuse
my children.”

On December 19, 1843, Charles Dickens’ classic story “A
Christmas Carol” was published.

Dickens was born in 1812 and father, a clerk in the navy
pay office, was thrown into debtors’ prison in 1824, and
12-year-old Charles was sent to work in a factory.

The miserable treatment of children and the institution of
the debtors’ jail became topics of several of Dickens’
novels.

Charles John Huffam Dickens 
(7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870)