Alex Haley

by Robert J. Norrell

  To address his financial crisis in 1966, Haley signed on with the Colston Leigh agency, an established speakers’ bureau that represented many celebrities. Haley was steadily gaining fame as Malcolm X’s co-author. That fall he gave a lecture at Hamilton College titled “The Story Behind the Story of Malcolm X” for $300 (about $2,200 in 2015 dollars), and at the World Press Institute he delivered a talk titled “What the Negro Must Do for Himself,” for $400. In 1967 lectures became his main source of income.17

  Also in the fall of 1966, Haley attended a garden party at the Westchester County home of DeWitt and Lila Wallace. Haley explained to Lila Wallace his family history project, and the next day she convened a meeting of editors at Reader’s Digest to hear more about the forthcoming book. Haley mesmerized the editors for three hours. At the end of the meeting, the Digest offered him an advance of $12,000, most of it to cover travel while he finished the book. The magazine received serial rights for “Before This Anger.” After having rejected the Digest’s support in 1964, he gladly returned to the fold.

  Haley was determined to get to Africa to uncover the African part of his family story. He began going to the United Nations in Manhattan to look for Africans who might help him translate the words he had heard as a child in Henning. He stopped many Africans and repeated the words he had heard on the porch in Henning. After two weeks, he had stopped dozens of Africans, “each and every one of whom took a quick listen to me and then took off.” They dismissed him as some kind of American eccentric.18

  Then, in September 1966, while participating in a seminar at Utica College, Haley described to a faculty member his attempt to get the African words translated. The professor told him that there was a student from the Gambia at nearby Hamilton College. On October 11, 1966, when Haley gave one of his first public lectures at Hamilton, he insisted on meeting the student, Ebou Manga. Haley later described him as short and very dark-skinned with short-cropped hair and “clear, frank” eyes. Manga was a solemn young man, a Muslim from the Wolof tribe, who “considers at length before he speaks.” In this meeting and another a few weeks later, Manga told Haley that Mandinka was not his native language but that he understood it. In Mandinka, he said, the word he heard as “Bolongo” meant “river” and “Kamby” was the Gambia River. He then translated all the other words that Haley remembered. Along the way, Manga told Haley something that excited him: “We have in The Gambia what they call ‘traditional historians,’ . . . oral historians. Senegal is trying to get all these historians to make a collective history.” Manga told him about “village books” written in Arabic and kept in each Gambian village that recorded its history. There is no evidence that, before his encounters with Ebou Manga, Haley had focused on the Gambia as the home of his African ancestor. His previous mention of his ancestor’s place of origin, made in the Philadelphia Bulletin, had been “the slave coast.” But the slave coast encompassed thousands of miles in West Africa.19

  In November 1966 Haley went to Ireland to research his father’s roots. He traveled to the village of Carrickmacross in County Monaghan, fifty-five miles north of Dublin, to find relatives of his paternal great-grandfather James Jackson. Haley’s research had already established that a James Jackson had left that part of Ireland and arrived in Philadelphia in 1799. He inquired at both the Catholic and Protestant parishes. The Irish were cordial to Haley and far more concerned with his religious affiliation than his race. A local woman was a Jackson descendant, but she thought Haley’s ancestor came from a different line and suggested that he visit genealogical libraries in London. Haley went but made no discoveries there. Then he went to the Gambia High Commission offices in London to follow up on the information from Ebou Manga. Haley was in search of the African ancestor he now called “the Mandingo,” who he believed was put on a slave ship in 1766. In Virginia Haley had found a deed transferring “one Negro man slave named Toby”—the white man’s name the African had always objected to—from John Waller of Spotsylvania County to his brother William in 1768. With that information, Haley deduced that the Mandingo had crossed the Atlantic in 1766. At the commission offices, he was led to believe that in Bathurst (now Banjul), the largest city and the capital of the Gambia, he could find the name of the ship that had brought his African ancestor to America.20

  * * *

  By January 1967 Ken McCormick was getting worried about “Before This Anger,” which he wanted to publish in 1968. The book had now been under contract for two and a half years, and McCormick wanted to see copy. Reynolds told him that he thought the book would be finished by the end of 1967. Haley told Reynolds, “It’s my particular style (maybe I’m just not like other authors in this way) to spend 75% of my time gathering my material, and combing and cross-indexing it, until I feel the book is as I want it, in my head, and then I write, and very fast.” Haley remembered, erroneously, that he had turned in a chapter of Malcolm X about every two weeks. “Before This Anger” was not “going to get written, under my circumstances at present. It won’t get written until I can get enough money, at one time, to pay off sundry debt harassments [sic], . . . to be able to do the sustained concentrating on this book.”21

  In early 1967 Haley’s money problems seemed to be getting the better of him. The IRS had found him negligent in paying his taxes in 1960, and it appears that from then on, his file was tagged for investigation for nonpayment. The fact was that after he left the Coast Guard, he did not earn enough to pay what he owed. In February 1967 Reynolds received an IRS order for the garnishment of Haley’s royalties for payment of back taxes, which Reynolds said he intended to ignore. He would pay to Haley what he had coming for Malcolm X. But Reynolds then found out that Haley had been signing additional book contracts, and he demanded to know the details. Haley had signed one with Grove Press for a biography of Melvin Belli, although it is not clear that he told Reynolds about this. Haley had also contracted with Viking Press for a children’s book. Reynolds worried about all these commitments and warned Haley against it—in an elliptical fashion. “I know your desperate problems. But one has to be candid in these matters and tell what has happened or one gets in real trouble when one discovers these things.”22

  Haley was unrepentant. Under his current pressure, “I will entertain any honorable way to relieve it, at least that I interpret as honorable.” He again complained about the Doubleday contract for “Before This Anger,” which carried an advance of only $5,000 in August 1964 ($38,000 in 2015). That money was long gone. “Anytime a publisher advances $5,000, he cares but scantly for the book,” Haley said. The only other potential revenue sources were the paperback rights, and Doubleday was dragging its feet on selling those. “I will tell you something else they are not,” Haley wrote, “and that’s investing concern in a writer” destined to be in great demand. If Doubleday did not sell the paperback rights, then he would stop working on “Before This Anger” and start getting magazine assignments. “I will resume work on the book when I get—enough—working money. . . . I just happen to be that necessary evil, the writer. Nobody is going to get this book until I write it. And the book that is here, the Olympian chronicle, my family, my forebears, I am not going to half-write.”23

  Reynolds replied that the Doubleday contract had been signed long before Haley was well known, and at a time when publishers were not paying the large advances that writers were now getting. “Let’s grant it was a mistake—my mistake if you want to,” but “when a publisher has a firm contract at one price it’s awful hard to make him pay more money. From his point of view, why should he?” Reynolds presented three possible solutions. They could get a big paperback contract, they could buy Doubleday out, or they could abandon “Before This Anger” and come up with a new, more lucrative, book idea. Reynolds then learned that Haley had signed a contract with William Morrow and Company for $12,500 to publish a collection of his interviews with celebrities. A Morrow editor had told another agent in Reynolds’s firm that Haley had sou
ght the contract to get the money to finish “Before This Anger.” The writer was also working with James Baldwin on a script for a play about Malcolm X. Reynolds pleaded with Haley not to commit to anything else: “If you can say no to the small things and sort of keep in hiding, I think both of these books can be done this year, and this will come pretty near to solving your troubles.” Haley then told Reynolds he had also been talking to Elia Kazan about a film version of “Before This Anger,” for which Haley would write the screenplay. Reynolds answered that few nonfiction books were turned into movies, but because “Before This Anger” was uplifting, “it may make a picture.” Reynolds was desperate for Haley to keep first things first. “When can you promise me the first 10,000 words?” Not a word of the book had been written at this point, in the spring of 1967. Reynolds soon had an offer of $15,000 from Dell Publishing for the paperback rights to “Before This Anger.”24

  * * *

  In March 1967 Haley organized his first trip to Africa. George Sims gave him a list of African historians, and he was most impressed with the qualifications of Jan Vansina. Haley wrote to him, but the professor was doing fieldwork in the Congo, and the letter was delayed in reaching him. With the new focus on the Gambia that Ebou Manga had provided, Haley read up on the country in John Gunther’s Inside Africa. The Gambia had just won its independence from Britain in 1965. A tiny country geographically, a thin snake following the path of the Gambia River on both banks, it had a population of about three hundred thousand, most of whom were Muslim, and less than three hundred of whom were white. Few were literate, but there was a small black professional and civil-servant class. The country was dependent on a single crop—peanuts.25

  Ebou Manga agreed to help Haley. His father, Alhaji Manga, a pharmacist who worked for the Gambian government, provided Haley with a list of Gambians who could assist in tracing his ancestor. On March 16 Haley wrote letters to the thirteen contacts. He described his book to an official in the office of the Gambia’s prime minister, explaining that Reader’s Digest, read by 24 million people in thirteen countries around the world, was going to condense the work. He added, “Recently America’s greatest cinema director [Kazan] has announced plans to film from the book a major motion picture. A sizeable portion will be filmed in The Gambia, employing many Gambians as actors. I think it’s safe to predict that by 1969, The Gambia will enjoy world recognition—and tourism.”26

  Haley paid for Ebou to travel ahead of him and set up meetings with people in the Gambia who could help. Ebou formed what came to be called the Haley Committee, providing its members with information he had gotten from Haley as well as an idea of what Haley wanted to find. On April 9 Ebou and his father brought the Haley Committee together at the bar of the Atlantic Hotel in Bathurst. Haley met with six men, including the minister of local affairs and the secretary of the Gambia Workers Union. Ebou identified each man’s ethnicity; there were four different groups represented—Jola, Serahule, Fula, and Serere—but no Mandingo. One of the men lectured Haley: “You Negro Americans feel that you have been depersonalized. Well, so have we.” Haley in turn disapproved of what he saw as the Africans’ posturing. “They acted more British than do the British,” a shame, he thought, “when the African, being African, is such an utterly charming person.” He lamented “how much very vital time and psychic energy the Africans with any kind of position whatever waste acting like what they are not.” It was like how “many Negroes in America try to ape sundry white people.” He sounded a lot like his friend Malcolm X.27

  In the lobby of the hotel, a member of the committee happened to see Alhaji Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof, a trade unionist, journalist, and radio broadcaster who had been a leader in the Gambian nationalist movement. Haley was introduced to Cham Joof, who was interested in Haley’s purpose for visiting. Cham Joof in turn introduced Haley to M. E. Jallow, K. O. Janneh, and A. B. Sallah, all of them Cham Joof’s colleagues in Gambian nationalism and trade unionism. These four men offered to help with Haley’s research and proved to be the most active in finding his ancestor. Haley told them that his forefather’s name was Kin-tay and that he believed he was taken from the Gambia in the late 1760s. He gave the committee pictures of his family. The Gambians thought that the name was significant because, they said, “our oldest villages tend to be named for those families which founded” them. They examined a map on which were marked two villages, Kinte-Kundeh and Kinte-Kundeh-Janneh-Ya. They explained about griots, to whom Ebou Manga had alluded in his first meeting with Haley. Griots functioned as oral historians; they told stories over and over about the history of villages, clans, and empires. What Haley needed was a griot of the Kinte clan, and the committee promised to see if they could find such a person. After five days Haley returned to the United States.28

  * * *

  Haley immediately wrote to Reynolds. “I am about to produce the single biggest book success of 1968. You watch! Can you imagine that in Africa, they were able to determine for me even the very village from which my 1760’s forbear [sic] was taken! And the history of that village can authentically be taken back to about 1600! Ain’t never been a book like this! We’re going to go hang a Pulitzer Prize copy on that Reynolds office hallway wall!” He had a letter from Jan Vansina, whose advice was similar to that of the Gambian men: look for a clan name, and if one was found, it probably still existed. Then a letter arrived from Cham Joof saying that a griot had been found. Haley should return and be prepared to travel up the Gambia River. Haley needed money to go back. In the second half of April, he delivered six lectures for Colston Leigh in ten days and made $3,200 ($22,300 in 2015).29

  He and George Sims arrived in Bathurst on May 13 and met with the Haley Committee. A. B. Sallah had an employee named Demba Kinte, who came from the village of Juffure and had discovered Kebba Kanga Fofana, identified as the griot of the Kinte clan. Cham Joof and Sallah had met with Fofana, the seventy-two-year-old whom they described as shy and reticent but from whom they had elicited the needed information. Sallah told Haley that often the easiest way to establish a family connection was to examine facial features. His employee Demba Kinte resembled the photograph of Chicken George that Haley had given the Gambians. After talking with Fofana, Cham Joof and Sallah had calculated that a Kinte ancestor called Kunta could logically have disappeared in the 1760s. “You see, Mr. Haley,” Cham Joof said, “Kunta Kinte seems to be our man.” To go to the griot, Haley engaged a small steamboat that would transport a photographer; a radio producer; three musicians necessary for eliciting a performance from the griot; and Cham Joof, Jallow, Sims, and Haley. On May 17 the party sailed. Another party from the Haley committee traveled overland in a Land Rover.30

  Thirty kilometers upriver, they came to tiny James Island, site of the oldest British fort in West Africa, where captured slaves were collected for shipment across the Atlantic. Haley explored a dungeon where slaves had been chained. They moved to the river’s north bank to a village called Albreda, where they were greeted by people from Juffure. “Asalakium Salaam,” they said to Haley. “The first thing that hit me was the intensity of their stares,” he later wrote. “Their eyes just raked me.” They walked a kilometer to Juffure, a collection of mud houses with thatched roofs, home to seventy adults. Suddenly the crowd parted and three old men approached. The one in the center, the oldest, wore a white robe and a white pillbox hat, and Haley knew instantly that this was the man he had come to see. The man was Kebba Kanga Fofana, the griot. He looked at Haley and spoke in a formal, reserved tone. Through an interpreter, he said, “You resemble the Kintes, especially the one called Mali Kinte, except that your light color is different.” Fofana pointed to a man in the group who was the son of Mali Kinte.31

  Then Haley asked the interpreter to tell the people that he had come there “to find out who I am” and to learn of his ancestor Kinte. He passed around pictures of the Palmer and Haley family members in America. Then Fofana said, “Everybody should try to know where he
came from—yourself, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great-grand ancestors, all should want to know where they came from.” Fofana said that they heard through the ages that they had many relatives “in the white man’s country.” Then, as Haley recounted it, Fofana sat down and began to speak differently, as if he were reading from a scroll. His torso bent forward and the veins in his neck bulged. Haley later recorded in his notes that Fofana said that their forefathers had come from Mali, where they “conquered fire,” which meant they were blacksmiths.

  Fofana recited many generations of the Kintes’ history. The family grew larger over the generations and was forced to spread to new areas and build new villages. In Juffure, Omoro Kinte had married Binta Kebbe, and they had four sons: Kunta, Lamin, Suwadu, and Madi.

  Fofana descended from Lamin. The sons of Omoro suffered tragedy: one drowned and one died of sickness, and Kunta Kinte suffered a particularly tragic end.

  About the time when the king’s soldier’s came,

  He went away from his village

  To get wood from the bush,

  And he was never seen again.