John Amos (with Esther Rolle) in “Good Times”: the very definition of a man.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, John Amos seemed the very definition of a man to me. He was forceful and joyous, stern and affable. He put his best face on, and fought as best he could, and usually it wasn't enough—but he was still strong. If you'd asked me what a man was, I would've said that guy: James Evans, Sr., Gordie the weatherman, Kunta Kinte.

I guess I saw him on “Mary Tyler Moore” first, but he made the bigger impression on “Good Times,” and the show was never the same after he left. For some reason, I thought he'd left it, but I guess it was the opposite. The show couldn't sanction his public criticisms of its most popular character, his son, J.J. “Dy-no-MITE” Evans (Jimmie Walker), and let him go. History has since backed up Amos on the matter—though, in a perfect world, where groups controlled their own narrative, and there was much representation rather than a few characters against a sea of white, you might argue that J.J. wasn't dissimilar from what Barney Fife was doing on “Andy Griffith.” But it wasn't a perfect world.

After the dismissal, Amos played one of the most central roles in one of the most watched and impactful miniseries of all time: “Roots.” There was that strength again, to keep running, to be free, only to have his foot chopped off. More heartbreaking, for me, was a later scene. He and another slave, Bell (Madge Sinclair), have a daughter, and he suggests they name her Kizzy, which means “Stay put” in his language. That makes Bell happy because she's tired of Kunta running. But once Kizzy is an adult, now played by Leslie Uggams, a series of unfortunate circumstances (being taught to write by a stupid white girl, then using those skills to help her boyfriend escape, and then him giving her up), all of that lead to her being sold to a man who rapes her. I remember her being tied up in the bag of a wagon that's being pulled away from her crying mother and distraught father, and the father, after she's gone, does something with the dirt, an old African ritual so she will return to them. The wife looks at him with contempt and says:

“I thought her name was supposed to do that!”

The look of utter defeat on the man after that. Was it the last we ever saw of Kunta Kinte in the miniseries? I think it was. That awful moment. (Apologies if I misremembered anything. It's been nearly 50 years.)

It's odd when an actor will be in your field of vision constantly and then, though they keep working, not at all. Amos appeared in stuff I knew about—“Love Boat,” “The A-Team,” “Trapper John, M.D.,” “Hunter”—but those weren't shows I watched. To be honest, they seemed a step down from MTM and Norman Lear productions. Did he get a bad rep from the J.J. complaints? And relegated here. I don't think I saw Amos in anything until “Coming to America” 10 years later, when he played the overly ambitious restauranteur Cleo McDowell. Then he was in “Die Hard 2” ... as a villain! That was a shocker. James Evans Sr.—the bad guy? And then maybe I saw him on “West Wing” 10 years after that? We just kept missing each other. But during my formative years, John Amos was formative. He meant something.