Alex Haley

by Robert J. Norrell

  30.Donald Bogle, Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1988), 208–209.

  31.AH to PR, May 5, 1973, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 25; AH to PR, July 11, 1973, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3.

  32.”Roots II,” autobiographical narrative, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12; PR to Rubin Clickman, May 29, 1973; AH to PR, August 10 and 16, October 24, November 3, 1973; PR to AH, August 16, 1973, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3.

  33.David L. Wolper with Quincy Troupe, The Inside Story of T.V.’s “Roots” (New York: Warner Books, 1978), 34–35; David L. Wolper with David Fisher, Producer: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2003), 227.

  34.AH to PR, September 7, 1974, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 4; Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1972.

  35.PR to AH, September 25, 1974, ARC, 2032, 3, 27; PR to AH, December 30, 1974, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 4; PR to AH, August 20, 1973, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3; AH to PR, March 10, 1974, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 5; Lisa Drew to author, December 9, 2014.

  36.PR to Lisa Drew, April 19, 1974; Lisa Drew to Paul Reynolds, April 17, December 11, 1974, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 5.

  37.Murray Fisher to Anne Romaine, [n.d.], ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28; AH to PR, March 11, 1973, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3; PR to AH, February 10, 1975, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

  38.Drew to PR, February 3, 1975; AH to PR, May 16, 1975; PR to AH, May 28, 1975, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 5; Lisa Drew letter to the author, December 8, 2014.

  39.Lisa Drew letter to the author, December 8, 2014; AH to PR [dated July 18, 1975, but he probably meant June], AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 4; AH to PR, September 20, 1975, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 5.

  40.AH to Murray Fisher, October 9, 1975, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

  41.AH to Murray Fisher, October 18, 1975, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

  42.Ibid.; Norfolk Virginian Pilot, February 5, 2013.

  43.AH to Ardis Leigh, October 28, 1975, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

  Chapter 8: The Black Family Bible

  1.Lisa Drew deposition, 985, in Alexander v. Haley ARC, box 5.

  2.David A. Gerber, “Haley’s Roots and Our Own,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 5 (1977–78): 90.

  3.Ibid., 100; see also Selwyn R. Cudjoe, “Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement,” in Black Women Writers, ed. Mari Evans (London: Pluto, 1985), 6; and Merrill Maguire Skaggs, “Roots: A New Black Myth,” Southern Quarterly 17 (Fall 1978): 43–48.

  4.Skaggs, “Roots: A New Black Myth,” 42–50.

  5.Gerber, “Haley’s Roots and Our Own,” 91–94.

  6.Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (March 1965), 3–47; Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, ed., The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1967), 410; Nicholas Lemann, Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Knopf, 1991), 175–176, 181; New York Times, November 15, 1965.

  7.John Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972; rev. ed., 1979), 151.

  8.Gerber, “Haley’s Roots and Our Own,” 95.

  9.AH, Roots (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976).

  10.Drew deposition, 1004–1005, Alexander trial documents, AHP, MS 1888, box 48, folder 6.

  11.Gay Talese, Fame and Obscurity (New York: Bantam, 1970), vii; Wolfe quoted in A Brief History of Literature and Journalism Inspirations, Intersections, and Inventions from Ben Franklin to Stephen Colbert, ed. Mark Canada (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 15; M. Thomas Inge, ed., Truman Capote Conversations, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987), 40.

  12.Donald R. Wright, “Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants,” History in Africa 8 (1981): 212–13.

  13.Washington Post, March 27, 1975; Willie Lee Rose, Race and Region in American Historical Fiction: Four Episodes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 5.

  14.Washington Post, January 31, 1977.

  15.Jack Temple Kirby, Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 172–73.

  16.Newsweek, July 4, 1977.

  17.Judith Mudd, “Returning a Theft of Identity: This Is Also Me: Two Indian Views of Roots,” Indian Journal of American Studies 10 (July 1980): 50.

  18.Washington Post, March 27, 1975; Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1976.

  19.New York Times, August 29, October 17, and November 14 and 21, 1976.

  20.Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1977; New York Times, September 26 and October 14, 1976.

  21.Newsweek, September 27, 1976.

  22.Willie Lee Rose, “An American Family,” New York Review of Books, November 11, 1976.

  23.Philip Nobile, “Roots Uncovered,” Village Voice, February 23, 1993.

  24.Leslie Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Roots (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 17, 84; Rose, Race and Region in American Historical Fiction, 2–3, 8–9.

  25.Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic, 27; Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (New York: Anchor, 2006), 369–371.

  26.Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 151–58; Thomas Dixon Jr., The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden—1865–1900 (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902), 244, 263; Dixon was quoted in Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic, 44.

  27.Robert May, “Gone with the Wind as Southern History: A Reappraisal,” Southern Quarterly 17 (Fall 1978): 51; Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic, 61.

  28.Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic, 80; Kirby, Media-Made Dixie, 166, 169; Helen Taylor, “The Griot from Tennessee: The Saga of Alex Haley’s Roots,” Critical Quarterly 37 (1996): 48.

  29.Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic, 52.

  30.Todd explained this change in a letter to the editor in the New York Times, December 5, 1976.

  31.Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic, 40.

  Chapter 9: Pop Triumph

  1.John De Vito and Frank Tropea, Epic Television Miniseries: A Critical History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 30.

  2.David L. Wolper and Quincy Troupe, The Inside Story of T.V.’s “Roots,” (New York: Warner Communications, 1978), 179.

  3.C. Richard King, “What’s Your Name? Roots, Race, and Popular Memory in Post–Civil Rights America,” in African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings, ed. David J. Leonard and Lisa A Guerrero (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013), 73.

  4.Marty Bell, “Tale of a Talker,” New York, February 28, 1977; David Wolper, Producer: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2003), 230; Wolper and Troupe, The Inside Story of T.V.’s “Roots,” 174.

  5.New York Times, June 27, 1976; Leslie Fishbein, “Roots: Docudrama and the Interpretation of History,” in American History American Television: Interpreting the Video Past, ed. John E. O’Connor (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1983), 287.

  6.Hemant Shah and Lauren R. Tucker, “Race and the Transformation of Culture: The Making of the Television Miniseries Roots,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9 (1992): 325–36; Seattle Times, July 15, 2007; New York Times, March 18, 1979.

  7.AH, Roots (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 276; Shah and Tucker, “Race and the Transformation of Culture,” 331.

  8.Donald Bogle, Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1988), 340–344.

  9.Pauline Bartel, The Complete Gone with the Wind Trivia Book: The Movie and More (Taylor Trade Publishing), 64–69, 161–172.

  10.Fishbein, “Roots: Docudrama and the In
terpretation of History,” 279–280; Newsweek, February 14, 1977.

  11.Kenneth K. Hur and John P. Robinson, “The Social Impact of ‘Roots,’” Journalism Quarterly 55 (Spring 1978): 19; New York Times, February 2, 1977.

  12.Newsweek, February 7, 1977; Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 101–103; New York Times, January 28, 1977.

  13.Hur and Robinson, “The Social Impact of ‘Roots,’” 19–24.

  14.Newsweek, February 14, 1977.

  15.New York Times, March 6, 1977.

  16.New York Times, March 19, 1977.

  17.New York Times, March 19, January 28, 1977; Chuck Stone, “Roots: An Electronic Orgy in White Guilt,” The Black Scholar 7 (May 1977): 40.

  18.New York Times, June 7, 1977.

  19.Hur and Robinson, “The Social Impact of ‘Roots,’” 19–24; New York Times, April 24, 1977.

  20.Fishbein, “Roots: Docudrama,” 283; Wolper, Producer, 235.

  21.”There Are Days When I Wish It Hadn’t Happened,” Playboy, March 1979.

  22.Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1977.

  23.Newsweek, July 4, 1977.

  24.”There Are Days When I Wish It Hadn’t Happened.”

  25.Ebony, April 1977.

  26.Ebony, April 1977.

  27.”There Are Days When I Wish It Hadn’t Happened.”

  Chapter 10: Roots Uncovered

  1.New York Times, March 30, 1977.

  2.AH to John Hawkins, December 13, 1976, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 5.

  3.New York Times, March 30, 1977; Publisher’s Weekly, April 4, 1977: Village Voice, May 30, 1977.

  4.AH to John Hawkins, December 13, 1976, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 5.

  5.New York Times, December 10, 1988.

  6.Sunday Times, April 10, 1977.

  7.Sunday Times, April 10, 1977.

  8.New York Times, April 10, 1977.

  9.David A. Gerber, “Haley’s Roots and Our Own,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 5 (1977–78): 99–100.

  10.New York Times, April 10, 1977.

  11.Times (London), April 12, 1977.

  12.New York Times, April 18, 1977.

  13.Village Voice, May 30, 1977.

  14.New York Times, April 19, 1977; Playboy, March 1979.

  15.New York Times, April 10, 1977; see Village Voice, May 30, 1977, for the suggestion of a “patronizing note.”

  16.Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1977.

  17.Village Voice, May 30, 1977.

  18.New York Times, November 14, 1967.

  19.New York Times, April 24, 1977.

  20.Maryemma Graham, Conversations with Margaret Walker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 133–34.

  21.Margaret Walker, “How I Wrote Jubilee,” in How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature, ed. Maryemma Graham (New York: Feminist Press, 1990), 50–65.

  22.Charles T. Rowell, “Poetry, History, and Humanism: An Interview with Margaret Walker,” Black World 25 (1975): 10.

  23.Walker, “How I Wrote Jubilee.”

  24.Margaret Walker Alexander Plaintiff’s Affidavit, December 10, 1977, AHP, MS 1888, box 49, folder 6.

  25.George Berger to author, March 14, 2015.

  26.Margaret Walker ALEXANDER, Plaintiff, v. Alex HALEY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., and Doubleday Publishing Company, Defendants, 460 F.Supp. 40 (1978).

  27.New York Times, January 21, 1940.

  28.Courlander to Haley, November 1, 1972, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

  29.Joseph Bruchac to author, March 26, 2015.

  30.Harold Courlander to Herbert Michelman, January 21, 1975, May 29, 1977, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 8; Courlander to Michelman, February 4, 1977, AHP, MS 1888, box 41, folder 3.

  31.AR Notes, 1991, ARC, MS 2032, box 5.

  32.New York Times, April 23, 1977.

  33.New York Times, November 9, 1978.

  34.Haley direct testimony, 1391–1395, Courlander v. Haley trial transcript. ARC, MS 2032, box 5, folder 7.

  35.New York Times, November 9, 1978.

  36.Joseph Bruchac to author, March 26, 2015.

  37.This information comes from an anonymous source, a person who witnessed the entire trial and was privy to Judge Ward’s comments made in his chambers.

  38.Courlander v. Haley trial transcript, 1650, ARC, MS 2032, box 6, folders 16 and 20.

  39.This information came from a source who chooses to remain anonymous.

  40.Courlander trial transcript, p. 1346, AHP, MS 1888, box 39, folder 11.

  41.Berger to author, March 14, 2015.

  42.This information came from a source who chooses to remain anonymous.

  43.Village Voice, February 23, 1993; Berger to author, March 16, 2015.

  44.Village Voice, February 23, 1993.

  45.Berger to author, March 14, 2015.

  46.AH to Murray Fisher, October 18, 1975, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

  47.Donald R. Wright, “Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants,” History in Africa, 8 (1981): 205–17.

  48.Ibid.

  49.Gary B. Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills, “‘Roots’ and the New ‘Faction’: A Legitimate Tool for Clio?” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89 (January 1981): 3–26.

  Chapter 11: Find the Good and Praise It

  1.AR interview with Leonard Jeffries, May 9, 1994, MS 2055, box 1, tape 40; New York Times, December 10, 1988.

  2.Mallon quoted in Julia Kamysz Lane, “A Brief History of the ‘P’ Word,” Poets&Writers, May 1, 2002, http://www.pw.org/content/brief_history_quotpquot_word.

  3.Donald Bogle, Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1988), 343–344.

  4.Ibid.

  5.Palmerstown file, AHP, MS 1888, box 64, folder 11 and MS 1888, box 59, folder 1.

  6.Bogle, Blacks in American Films and Television, 296.

  7.Herman Gray, “The Politics of Representation in Network Television,” in Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America, ed. Darnell M. Hunt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 161; C. Richard King, “What’s Your Name? Roots, Race, and Popular Memory in Post–Civil Rights America,” in African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings, ed. David J. Leonard and Lisa A Guerrero (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013), 79–80.

  8.Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge, Lauren Berlant, and Manthia Diawara, “On Thinking the Black Public Sphere,” Public Culture 7 (1994): xi.

  9.Tennessee 1 (1988): 28–31; Los Angeles Times Magazine, March 16, 1986.

  10.New York Times, February 14, 1993.

  11.AR, “Alex Haley Notes,” 1991, ARC, MS 2032, box 5.

  12.William Bruce Wheeler to author, March 12, 2015.

  13.AR, “Alex Haley Notes,” 1991, ARC, MS 2032, box 5.

  14.David L. Wolper with David Fisher, Producer: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2003), 240–241.

  15.Essence, February 1992.

  16.Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1992; Knoxville News-Sentinel, March 1, 1992.

  17.Jet, March 2, 1992.

  18.New York Times, February 14, 1993.

  19.Knoxville New Sentinel, March 17, 1992.

  20.People, October 5, 1992.

  21.Charles Thomas Galbraith, telephone interview with author, September 2014.

  22.Philip Nobile, “Alex Haley’s Advice to Ambrose and Goodwin,” History News Network, July 8, 2002, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/539.


  23.Stanley Crouch, “The ‘Roots’ of Huckster Haley’s Great Fraud,” Jewish World Review, January 18, 2002, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/crouch011802.asp; Jack Cashill, Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture (Nashville: Nelson Current, 2005), 107–20.

  24.Jan Vansina, Living with Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 218; Richard Marius, “Alexander Murray Palmer Haley,” Tennessee Encyclopedia, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=586.

  25.See Nobile’s castigation of Gates at http://www.angelfire.com/il2/mapleparklibrary/alley/doc03.html.

  26.Boston Globe, November 3, 1998; The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay (New York: Norton, 1997).

  27.Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America’s ROOTS (Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Association, 2007).

  28.Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2005.

  Index

  The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

  ABC (American Broadcasting Company), 161, 164, 166–68, 181

  Achebe, Chinua, 189

  African, The (Courlander), 183–84, 188–94, 197, 202

  African American Lives (miniseries), 225

  African Studies Association, 101

  Alexander, Lamar, 210, 212, 218, 226

  Alexander, Margaret Walker

  see Walker, Margaret

  Ambrose, Stephen, 223

  antebellum South, 122, 185, 199

  anti-Semitism, 53, 64–65

  Asner, Edward, 161, 164, 192

  “Assertive Spirit Stirring Negroes” (Handler), 56

  Autobiography of Malcolm X, The

  critical reception, 105, 137, 183

  Doubleday and, 88, 176

  fiction vs. nonfiction in, 77–78

  Grove Press and, 90

  Hollywood and, 120–21, 217

  Malcolm X’s view of, 58

  “missing chapters,” 77

  writing of, 60–61, 77–79

  publication, 91–95