Alex Haley (1921-1992) was born in Ithaca, NY.
He spent vacations with family in Henning,
Tennessee and stated that it was in Henning,
listening to family elders on the front porch,
that he developed a love of story-telling.
After attending college for a couple of years,
he withdrew and joined the Coast Guard
where he spent the next 20 years. It was
during that time that he developed his writing
skills, progressing from publishing the ship’s
newsletter to attaining the title of Chief Journalist. Haley received numerous
service awards, and seven years after his death, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter was
renamed USCGC Alex Haley.

After retiring from the Coast Guard, he found
employment as a senior editor with Reader’s Digest.
Throughout the 1960s, he contributed important
interviews to Playboy Magazine. He interviewed Miles
Davis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Sammy Davis, Jr., and
Quincy Jones, among others. Following two years of interviews, Haley co-wrote The
Autobiography of Malcom X (pub. in 1965) which is now
listed as one of Time’s ten most important nonfiction books of the 20 th century.

Haley’s most notable work is Roots: The Saga of an American Family (published
1976). He spent 12 years in research which included a trip to Gambia in hopes of
tracing his ancestry and learning of Gambian traditions, as well as learning of the
conditions surrounding the early period of his ancestor’s enslavement. He used
the knowledge gained to create a generational story that would be as accurate as possible, given gaps in exact evidence. His book remained for months on the
bestseller list and, as stated by CDF “… the 1977 television adaptation shattered
viewing records as it gave tens of millions of people a visual, visceral experience
of the true horrors of slavery. For the first time descendants of slaves,
descendants of slave owners, and people of all backgrounds were sharing a
common experience and understanding of America’s original sin whose
aftereffects still radiate across our land. Acknowledging that truth together was a
transformative experience.”

Roots: The Saga of an American Family won a Pulitzer Prize Special award in 1977.
At the time of Haley’s death in 1992, he was working on the partly factual
historical novel Queen, based on the life of his grandmother who was born a
slave. The novel was finished in 1993 by David Stevens who had access to Haley’s
notes. Stevens felt that long conversations with Haley gave him the most insight
into how the book should be finished. Haley was buried beside his boyhood
home in Henning, Tennessee.

Submitted by Carol H. Hobbs Sources: Wikipedia, Children’s Defense Fund
(CDF)