Olivia Cole (Maggie Rogers) is less than a year older than Leslie Uggams, who played the role of her adult daughter, Lillian Rogers Parks. In Roots (1977), Leslie Uggams played Oliva Cole's mother-in-law.
Andrew Duggan previously played U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Tail Gunner Joe (1977), a TV movie about Senator Joseph McCarthy. He later played Eisenhower in J. Edgar Hoover (1987). (Duggan also played U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977), another TV movie about J. Edgar Hoover.)
The miniseries includes eight Oscar winners: Celeste Holm, Eileen Heckart, Estelle Parsons, George Kennedy, Lee Grant, Kim Hunter, Cloris Leachman and Louis Gossett Jr.; and six Oscar nominees: Victor Buono, Julie Harris, Jan Sterling, Paul Winfield, Robert Vaughn and Barbara Barrie.
Harry Morgan plays U.S. President Harry S Truman. In the TV series M*A*S*H (1972), Morgan plays Colonel Sherman T. Potter, a Missouri native who often references his fellow Missourian, Harry S Truman. In the episode Dear Ma (1975), Potter tells Hawkeye that he learned about foot maintenance during World War I, from Captain Harry Truman. ("He had a great pair of feet.") Morgan and Andrew Duggan (Dwight D. Eisenhower) worked together in the episode, Father's Day (1980), in which Duggan played Colonel "Howitzer Al" Houlihan, Margaret's father.