Part VI

The final chapter finds Tom Harvey (Georg Stanford Brown) and his family in Alamance County, North Carolina, with storekeeper Evan Brent (Lloyd Bridges) and brother Jemmy (Doug McClure) fighting for the Confederacy. Penniless white folks find things just as tough as the blacks, as Ol' George Johnson (Brad Davis) earns a job on the Harvey plantation as overseer, his devotion to Tom masked in public by keeping the slaves in line with a whip. Lacking the resources to conquer the North, cowardly Southerners like Jemmy Brent abandon the cause, but when he takes advantage of Tom by forcing himself on Irene, the blacksmith exacts revenge by killing Brent in self defense. Though he has no evidence of what happened, Evan takes it upon himself to wage war against the former slaves by forming the KKK, forcing a whipping on Tom that leaves him almost dead. The long awaited return of patriarch Chicken George offers salvation for the family, forming a plan to foil Brent and his criminal cohort, Senator Arthur Justin (Burl Ives), for greener pastures in Tennessee. This final chapter earned its highest ratings back in 1977, the show's cult continuing to grow year after year, and long after author Alex Haley's passing in 1992.