In 1977, African-American author Alex Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, in which he traces the history of his mother's family. Roots begins in 1750 with Kunta Kinte, a young man who was captured in Africa by slavers and brought to the United States where he eventually tells the story of Kinte's descendants through seven generations in America. The book immediately captured the imaginations of both whites and blacks in the always racially uneasy United States. By February 1977, it was the number-one-selling book in the nation. Roots: The Saga of an American Family spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, earned its authora Pulitzer prize, and, later the same year, was made into a television event: a 12 hour mini-series that was broadcast over eight consecutive nights to more viewers than had watched any program in the history of television. One hundred and thirty million people watched some portion of Roots, drawn by its all-star cast and its moving drama. In 1979, the story continued with another hit mini-series, Roots, the Next Generations.
LeVar Burton in Alex Haley's Roots.
Starting with Kunta Kinte's traumatic capture and tracing an African-American family through slavery, the Civil War, and the complex transition into freedom, Roots gave blacks something they had been lacking in American popular culture: a history with a human face. Though the days of slavery had been the subject of debate, bitterness, and defensiveness, Roots looked at slavery in a different way, as the life experience of real people, bringing the African-American experience vividly to life in an epic tale of family continuity. Black faces were rare on television, and devoting so many prime-time hours to the story of a black family was a fairly radical concept. Though there were some complaints from whites that Roots villainized white people, many more whites were themselves captivated by the humanity of the story.
Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1921. His father was an architect, the first of his family to attend college, and Haley's brothers followed his upwardly mobile track, becoming professionals themselves. Alex, however, sought something different, a search that led him to spend 20 years as a cook in the Coast Guard where he honed his writing skills and earned extra money writing love letters for fellow crew members. After his retirement from the Coast Guard, he began his writing career in earnest with adventure stories published in Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, and Playboy. He landed a regular job writing interviews for Playboy, and collaborated with civil rights activist Malcolm X to write The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Haley remained relatively obscure, however, until his grandmother's stories inspired him to begin to research his family history. The research took him 12 years and led him to the small African nation of Gambia, where he supposedly found the village where his great-great-great-great grandfather had lived before being captured into slavery.
With the publication of Roots, Haley became famous and Roots would dominate the rest of his career. He outlined another television special, Roots: The Gift, which he later wrote in book form as A Different Kind of Christmas, and he continued his family research, spending 20 years tracing his father's family. He died in 1992, before he could write up the results of his work, leaving white British writer David Stevens to take over for him. Stevens wrote the epic Queen, which was also made into a television mini-series, but critics lambasted both the book and series as boring and derivative. The problems were just as likely the overworked mini-series format and a jaded new audience of readers and viewers. The topic of Roots, once innovative, had become "old hat."
Writing the story of Kunta Kinte and his descendants Kizzy, Chicken George, and others, Haley blended history with fictional embellishments to create a writing genre he called "faction." Though Roots: The Saga of an American Family was published as nonfiction, its authenticity has always been questioned. Immediately upon publication novelists Harold Courlander (The African) and Margaret Walker (Jubilee) brought suits against Haley, accusing him of plagiarism. Walker's suit was dismissed, but Haley paid Courlander $650,000 in settlement, admitting that parts of his book "found their way" into Roots.
In 1997, as Haley's publisher Doubleday was preparing a twentieth-anniversary celebration for Roots, the British Broadcasting Company released a documentary called The Roots of Alex Haley, pointing out the many controversies about Roots. Along with the accusations of plagiarism, Haley was frequently accused of making up many of the most important facts in the book, even his emotional meeting with the griot, or oral historian, in Gambia, who confirmed for him that Kunta Kinte was Haley's forefather. Haley's critics claim that his family cynically planned to set the beginning of the story in Gambia so that they could use the success of Roots to boost the family travel business which arranges tours to Gambia. Haley's supporters call this sort of criticism "literary lynching," and point out that it matters little whether or not the actual facts in the book are true. Roots, they say, contains a truth that is deeper than small details of fact, and it continues to resonate with readers and viewers on the basis of that deeper truth. Johns Hopkins historian, Philip Carter, counseled those trying to disprove Haley's story, "You can't win," he advised, "You're fighting TV."
In Gambia, Roots has brought a steady stream of African-American tourists, seeking perhaps something of their own roots in the country from which Kunta Kinte was stolen. In June of 1997, the country hosted the Roots Homecoming Festival to celebrate the connection between Africa and the descendants of slaves. Gambia, however, is a poor country, one of the smallest in Africa with a population of 1.2 million, and there are conflicting feelings about the fame that Roots has brought. Many Gambians are angry that Haley and his family did not share more of the profits from the books and television shows with their nation of origin, while the Haleys insist that adequate compensation was made.
Both a best-selling book and a record-breaking television production, Roots was remarkably influential as literature and entertainment. Though Haley did not invent the expression "tracing one's roots," he did introduce it into everyday parlance, bringing the idea of tracing one's heritage dramatically into the popular imagination. Since the publication of Haley's book, the word "roots" has become a sort of shorthand for the search for a personal history that will give meaning to modern struggles. After Haley's death, many of his possessions were auctioned off to pay debts on his estate. The manuscript of Roots sold for $71,000, and the Pulitzer Prize Haley had won for it brought $50,000. Ironically, the man who had impressed upon the nation the importance of gathering one's history together had much of his own history scattered upon his death. He left an enduring legacy, however, an affirmation that each family history is a drama of survival and endurance and an inspiration for people to seek out their own histories. Distinguished African-American writer James Baldwin described the phenomenon this way: "Roots is a study of continuities, of consequences, of how a people perpetuate themselves, how each generation helps to doom or helps to liberate, the coming one."
Further Reading:
Fisher, Murray. "In Memoriam: Alex Haley." Playboy. Vol. 39, No.7, July 1992, 161.
Gonzales, Doreen. Alex Haley: Author of Roots. Hillside, New Jersey, Enslow Publishers, 1994.
Reid, Calvin. "Fact or Fiction? Hoax Charges Still Dog Roots Twenty Years On." Publishers Weekly. October 6, 1997, 16.
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