Roots: The Gift

Roots The Gift is a 1988 television film. It is the third installment of the Roots series, which traces the maternal family history of African American author Alex Haley, starting with his fourth greatgrandfather Kunta Kinte. The film premiered on ABC onDecember 1988, with ATampT as the sole national sponsor for the broadcast. LeVar Burton and Louis Gossett Jr. reprise their respective roles of Kunta Kinte and Fiddler. The film takes place between the second and third episodes of the original Roots miniseries.

In December 1775, Cletus Moyer Brooks is a free black Northerner in colonial America, working with a preUnderground Railroad network to help slaves escape captivity. In the days just prior to Christmas, a group of bounty hunters led by Hattie Carraway Mulgrew captures Moyer near the Parker plantation in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Because of his capture, dozens of slaves who have already left their plantations in escape attempts are in danger of being captured as well. Moyer implores two slaves from the nearby Reynolds plantation to take his place Kunta Kinte Burton, a Mandinka in his midtwenties who was captured in what is now the Gambia, and Fiddler Gossett, an elderly man who was born into slavery. Kunta is eager to help and to escape himself, but Fiddler is unwilling, fearful of the consequences if they are caught.After an unsuccessful slave revolt elsewhere in the colony, Moyer and two slaves are hanged by Carraways men on Christmas Eve, prompting Fiddler to set aside his fear and help Kunta lead the runaway slaves to freedom. Although the pair successfully leads the runaways that night to their next stop on the escape route a boat waiting at the river there is only room for one of them, and since neither one wants to go without the other, they decide to both stay. That decision forced them to return to the Parker plantation and manufacture an excuse for their temporary absence. Nevertheless, Kunta and Fiddler are left with the satisfaction of knowing that they helped to give a group of fellow slaves the best Christmas gift of all freedom. ........

Source: Wikipedia