Notes

Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.

Chapter 1: Grandma’s Boy

1. Unless otherwise cited, the information on the Palmer and Haley family in this chapter is drawn from the many interviews that Alex Haley gave in the 1960s and 1970s and from his various autobiographical works, only some of which were published but all of which can be found in his papers at the University of Tennessee’s Special Collections. Alex and George Haley gave lengthy interviews to researchers. See especially Anne Romaine interviews of Alex and George Haley, Anne Romaine Papers, University of Tennessee Library Special Collections, MS 2828, box 1, folders 1, 2, 7, and 8. See also Mary Seibert McCauley, “Alex Haley, a Southern Griot: A Literary Biography” (unpublished PhD dissertation, George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, 1983). This work contains long quotes from McCauley’s interviews of Alex Haley. The author interviewed George Haley on May 11, 2014.

2. Transcript, Haley “Roots” lecture, n.p., AHP, MS 1888, box 30, folder 18.

3. Search for Roots manuscript, AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 55.

4. Alabama A&M Reports, 1932–34, Alabama A&M University Archives, Normal, Alabama.

5. Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).

6. George Haley, interview by AR, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 34.

7. Donald Bogle, Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1988), 295.

Chapter 2: The Cook Who Writes

1. Roy Byrd, interview by AR, March 10, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26.

2. Logan Lannon, interview by AR, February 3, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26.

3. AR, “Alex Haley Notes,” 1991, ARC, MS 2032, box 4.

4. George Webb, interview by AR, January 21, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26.

5. AR, “Alex Haley Notes,” 1991, ARC, MS 2032, box 4; “Roots II” file, AHP, MS 1888, 38, 12.

6. AH, “Why I Remember,” Parade, December 1, 1991.

7. Nan Haley, interview by AR, February 22, 1992, ARC, MS 2828, box 1, folder 6.

8. AH, “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met,” Reader’s Digest, March 1961, 73–77.

9. The Seafarer, vol. 1, no. 17, February 1944, ARC, MS 2828, box 2, folder 19.

10. The Seafarer, vol. 1, no. 9, n.d. (but probably late 1943), ARC, MS 2828, box 2, folder 19.

11. Byrd, interview by AR.

12. Ibid.

13. New York Times, May 21, 1950; Kenneth Black, interview by AR, February 20, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26.

14. New York Post, August 2, 1943; Dominic J. Capeci Jr., The Harlem Riot of 1943 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977).

15. MM, MX, 108.

16. Horace R. Cayton, “Fighting for White Folks?” Nation, September 26, 1942.

17. Roots II” file, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12.

18. Ibid.

19. James Playsted Wood, Magazines in the United States (New York: Ronald Press Company, 1956), 154, 222, 201.

20. Alex Haley: The Playboy Interviews, ed. Murray Fisher (New York: Ballantine, 1993), viii.

21. Notes, “The Lord and Little David,” AHP, MS 1888, box 9, folder 2.

22. Peggy Dowst Redman to AH, July 17, 1954; Maryse Rutledge to AH, January 22, 1954, both in AHP, MS 1888, box 9, folder 4.

23. John H. Johnson with Lerone Bennett, Jr., Succeeding Against the Odds (New York, 1989), 207,155–59.

24. John B. Mahan, interview by AR, March 14, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26.

25. William Earle, interview by AR, March 1, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26.

26. Barnaby Conrad, Name Dropping: Tales from my Barbary Coast Saloon (New York: HarperCollinsWest, 1994), 60–66.

27. Barnaby Conrad, interview by AR, n.d., ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 28; C. Eric Lincoln, interview by AR, April 21, 1993, ARC, 3041, 2, 1; Nan Haley, interview by AR, February 22, 1992, ARC, MS 2828, box 1, folder 6.

Chapter 3: People on the Way Up

1. Nan Haley, interview by AR, February 22, 1992, ARC, MS 2828, box 1, folder 6.

2. Haley diary entry, July 12, 1963, AHP MS 1888, box 19, folder 8. Fella apparently had sex with an underage girl. At the time he was sixteen years old. It is not clear whether it was the girl or her parents who accused him. Haley refers to the charge as one of statutory rape, but in 1962 the closest designation the New York Penal Code had to statutory rape was rape in the second degree, or sex with a girl under eighteen without force, coercion, or mental incapacity. The code makes no explicit provision for sex between minors. There is no evidence that what took place was forcible rape; nor is there evidence that it was not.

3. ”Origins of Roots” manuscript, AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 8; Logan Lannon, interview by AR, February 3, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26; McCauley, 46–8; Ronald Wells, interview by AR, March 8, 1993, handwritten notes, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 26; Jeffrey Elliot, “The Roots of Alex Haley’s Writing career,” Writer’s Digest, August 1980.

4. McCauley, 49.

5. Biographical information, AHP, MS 1888, box 19, folder 8.

6. ”Search for Roots” manuscript, AHP, MS 1888, box 19, folder 8.

7. ”Roots: The Second Hundred Years,” story meeting, January 9, 1978, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 6.

8. AH, “Negro Entertainer’s Contribution to the American Way of Life,” Cosmopolitan, 1962.

9. Haley autobiography typescript, AHP, MS 1888, box 19, folder 8.

10. AH, “She Makes a Joyful Noise,” Reader’s Digest, November 1961.

11. Miller Williams, letter to the editor, Readers Digest, and Alex Haley, January 22, 1963; Miller to Haley, January 28, 1963, ARC, MS 2083, box 3, folder 23; AH to Barney McHenry, February 11, 1963, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 28.

12. AH to PR, July 14, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14; McCauley, 45.

13. MM, MX, 139.

14. MM, MX, 117.

15. MM, MX, 113–123.

16. Roots II” file, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12; AMX, 390.

17. MM, MX, 160-61; New York Times, March 12, 1961; James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (repr. New York: Dell, 1963), 72.

18. C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961).

19. AH, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” Reader’s Digest, March 1960.

20. Nat Hentoff, “Through the Looking Glass,” Playboy, July 1962.

21. Thomas Weyr, Reaching for Paradise: The Playboy Vision of America (New York: Times Books, 1978), 171–172; Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2002; Playboy, September 1962.

22. M. A. Jones to DeLoach, memo, October 9, 1962, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 16.

23. AH and Alfred Balk, “Black Merchants of Hate,” Saturday Evening Post, January 27, 1963.

24. MM, MX, 232.

25. McCauley, 68.

Chapter 4: The Fearsome Black Demagogue

1. See books by Paul R. Reynolds: The Writer and His Markets (New York: Doubleday, 1959), The Writing and Selling of Non-Fiction (New York: Doubleday, 1963), and The Middle Man: The Adventures of a Literary Agent (New York: William Morrow, 1972); New York Times, June 11, 1988; PR to AH, April 8, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 13; AH to PR, April 9, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

2. New York Times, February 11, 1978; Handler, Introduction to AMX, xxvi.

3. Reynolds, Middle Man, 199–200; AMX, 463; MM, MX, 248.

4. MM, MX, 247; PR TO AH, June 26, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

5. PR to AH, May 14, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

6. MX to PR, June 3, 1963; AH to PR, June 3, 1963; PR to AH, June 4, 1963; AH TO PR, June 27, 1963, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

7. PR to AH, July 3, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

8. AH to PR, September 5, 1963, October 3, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

9. Russell J. Rickford, Betty Shabazz: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X (Napierville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2003), 80, 152; Betty Shabazz, interview by AR, January 27, 1989, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 6.

10. AMX, 394-95; AH to MX, September 25, 1963, MXC-S, folder 3, box 6.

11. AMX, 396.

12. Ibid., 396–398.

13. Ibid., Handler introduction, xxvii.

14. Ibid., Epilogue, 406.

15. MM, MX, 238; New York Times, May 12 and 19, June 4 and 25, July 28, 1963.

16. AH to PR, June 27, 1963; AH to Wolcott Gibbs Jr., October 10, 1963, both in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

17. PR to AH, September 18, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14; James F. Dwyer to Wolcott Gibbs, Jr., September 16, 1963, KMP.

18. PR to AH, October 1, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

19. AH to PR, October 10, 1963, AHP, 1888, box 44, folder 14.

20. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 116, 126, 127, 132, 133, 169, 170, 204, and 227 in the 1903 edition, which can be found at several web locations, including: https://archive.org/details/cu31924024920492 and http://web.archive.org/web/20081004090243/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html; W. E. B. Du Bois, The World of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Quotation Sourcebook, ed. Meyer Weinberg (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), 208; George Bornstein, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Jews: Ethics, Editing, and The Souls of Black,” Textual Cultures 1(Spring 2006): 64–74.

21. AH to Wolcott Gibbs, Jr., October 27, 1963, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

22. AH to PR, September 22, 1963; AH to Wolcott Gibbs, Jr. September 25, 1963; AH memos to McCormick, Gibbs, and Reynolds, November 11, 14, 1963, and January 6, 1964; AH to Wolcott Gibbs, Jr., October 27, 1963, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

23. AH to Wolcott Gibbs, Jr. October 11, 1963; AH Memo to McCormick, Gibbs, Reynolds November 14, 1963, both in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

24. PR to AH, December 12, 1963 AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

25. MM, MX, 26–32, 260.

26. PR to AH, December 4, 1963; PR to AH, December 12, 1963; AH memo to McCormick, Gibbs, and Reynolds, December 12, 1963, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

27. AMX, 411–13.

28. MM, MX, 283–84.

29. AMX, 416–18.

30. AH to PR, December 11, 1963; AH memos to McCormick, Gibbs, and Reynolds, January 19 and March 21, 1964; AH to PR, March 26, 1964, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14; AH to PR, February 6, 1964, KMP.

31. AH memo to McCormick, Gibbs, and Reynolds, February 18,1964, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 24; AH memos to McCormick, Gibbs, and Reynolds, February 10,1964; March 21,1964; and March 25, 1964, all in KMP.

32. New York Times, March 9, 1964.

33. MM, MX, 301–303.

34. Davis quoted in MM, MX, 324.

35. AMX, 418.

36. PR to AH, May 14, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14; AMX, 419.

Chapter 5: Marked Man

1. AMX, 338-339, New York Times, May 8, 1964.

2. AMX, 420.

3. MM, MX, 352.

4. MM, MX, 178–179, 200.

5. McCormick to John Appleton, May 13, 1964, KMP; PR to AH, May 14, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14; AH to Ken, Tony and Paul, June 14, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

6. AH to MX, June 21, 1964, MXC-S, box 3, folder 6.

7. AH to PR, June 21 and July 8, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

8. ”Search for Roots” manuscript, 2nd draft, January 18, 1979, n.p., AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 3; PR to AH, July 9, February 5, 1964; AH to PR, January 28, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

9. PR to AH, June 23 and July 9, 1964; AH to PR, July 14, 1964, both in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

10. New York Times, March 1, 1964.

11. New York Times, September 21, 1964.

12. AH to Phoebe [PR secretary], November 7, 1964, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

13. Ken McCormick testimony, Alexander v. Haley, 915–16, ARC, MS 2032, box 6; Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1977.

14. Robert Penn Warren, “Malcolm X: Mission and Meaning,” Yale Review 56 (December 1966): 167.

15. Saturday Evening Post, September 12, 1964; AMX, 426.

16. New York Times, September 8 and October 11,1964; Saturday Evening Post, September 12, 1964.

17. New York Times, October 4 and November 8, 1964.

18. AMX, 426–27.

19. Ibid., 428–29.

20. Ibid., 430; Russell J. Rickford, Betty Shabazz: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X (Napierville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2003), 298.

21. New York Times, February 22, 1965; AMX, 433.

22. AMX, 431.

23. AH to PR, November 15, 1964; PR to AH, January 28, 1965; AH to PR, February 8, 1965; PR to AH, February 9, 1965, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

24. AH to PR, February 21, 1965, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 14.

25. John Doar to the Director, FBI, February 24, 1965, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/pdf/aag.pdf.

26. Lisa Drew to author, May 9, 2014.

27. AMX, 459–62.

28. New York Times, February 22–27, 1965.

29. AH to PR, February 21, 27, 1965, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 13.

30. PR to AH, March 11, 1965; Timothy Seldes to PR, March 15, 1965; Ed Kuhn to PR, March 22, 1965; James N. Perkins to Malcolm Reiss, March 26, 1965, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 15.

31. Malcolm Reiss to Percy Sutton, April 14, 1965, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 15.

32. ”Search for Roots” manuscript, 2nd draft; PR to AH, May 11, 1965, AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 15.

33. PR to AH, May 11, 1965; PR to AH, July 7, 1965; AH to PR, July 9, 1965, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 44, folder 15.

34. AMX, 463.

35. New York Times, November 5, 1965; Washington Post, November 14, 1965; Warren, “Malcolm X: Mission and Meaning,” 164; New York Review of Books, November 11, 1965.

36. ”What They’re Reading,” Change in Higher Education 1 (May–June 1969): 9.

37. Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 1969; Atlanta Daily World, January 22, 1970.

38. MM, MX, 466; A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X, ed. Jared A. Ball and Todd Steven Burroughs (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2012); V. P. Franklin, “Introduction: Reflections on the Legacy of Malcolm X,” Journal of African American History 98 (Fall 2013): 562–64; The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X, ed. Robert Terrill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

39. Burroughs, “Doda: Objectivity vs. Memory,” in A Lie of Reinvention; David Remnick, “The Making and Remaking of Malcolm X,” New Yorker, April 25, 2011.

40. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay (New York: Norton, 1997), 1860–1876; Robert E. Terrill, “Introduction,” The Cambridge Companion to Malcolm X, ed. Robert E. Terrill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3.

41. Carol Ohmann, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X: A Revolutionary Use of the Franklin Tradition,” American Quarterly 22 (Summer 1970): 133; Robert B. Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

42. The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (International Publishers, 1968), 12.

Chapter 6: Before This Anger

1. ”Origins of Roots” manuscript, AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 28; AH to PR, January 30, 1965, AHP, MS 1888, box 3, folder 10.

2. ”Origins of Roots” manuscript.

3. AH to PR, January 30, 1965, AHP, MS 1888, box 3, folder 10.

4. ”Origins of Roots” manuscript.

5. Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: The Problem in Americqn Institution and Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 82, 88.

6. ”My Search for Roots—A Writer Goes Back to Africa,” Tuesday Magazine, a supplement to the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, October 12, 1965.

7. McCauley, 113–114; “Origins of Roots” manuscript.

8. New York Times, September 26, 1976; “Origins of Roots” manuscript.

9. Karel Arnaut and Hein Vanhee, “History Facing the Present: An Interview with Jan Vansina,” H-AFRICA, November 1, 2001, http://www.h-net.org/~africa/africaforum/VansinaInterview.htm; Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1965), 186.

10. AH to “Jim,” February 17, 1966, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 25; AH to Lucy Kroll, Jill D’Argent, Ollie Swann, and James Earl Jones, December 18, 1967; AH to PR, December 19, 1967; PR to AH, December 22, 1967, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

11. Malcolm Reiss to Betty Shabazz, June 17, 1966, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

12. Playboy, April 1966.

13. Playboy, December 1966.

14. AH to PR, August 8, 1966, AHP, MS 1888, box 3, folder 10; Ebou Manga, interview by AR, May 13, 1989, in ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 15.

15. AH to PR, October 24, 1966, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1; AH to PR, October 18, 1966, AHP, MS 1888, box 3, folder 10.

16. New York Times, January 27 and July 9, 1967; May 13 and October 5, 1969; January 27 and August 16, 1970; AH to PR, October 29, 1966, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

17. McCauley, 112.

18. ”Origins of Roots” manuscript; Haley notes on “Encounter with Africa,” AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 38.

19. ”Gambia,” AHP, MS 1888, box 29, folder 1.

20. AH to Maurice Ragsdale, December 14, 1966, AHP MS 1888, box 3, folder 10.

21. KM to PR, January 12, 1967; PR to KM, January 16, 1967; KM to PR, January 18, 1967; AH to PR, March 5, 1967, all in AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

22. PR to AH, March 8, 1967, in AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

23. AH to PR, March 9, 1967, in AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

24. PR to AH, March 10 and April 10, May 16 and April 25, 1967, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1; Lawrence Hughes to John Hawkins, May 15, 1974, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 27.

25. AH notes, AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 26; John Gunther, Inside Africa (New York: Harper’s, 1955), 744–45.

26. AH to Edward Sowe, March 16, 1967, AHP, MS 1888, box 3, folder 10.

27. Haley notes on “Encounter with Africa.”.

28. Ibid.

29. AH to PR, April 23, 1967, in AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1; Jan Vansina to AH, April 29, 1967, AHP, MS 1888, box 3, folder 10.

30. Manuscript of AH in Africa, May 1967, p. 515, in AHP, MS 1888, box 34, folder 33.

31. Ibid.

Chapter 7: The American Griot

1. AH to PR, May 27, 28, June 16, August 5, 1967; PR to AH, May 29, July 11, September 29, 1967; PR to AH, 1967, AHP MS 1888, box 45, folder 1.

2. AH, Roots (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 682–83.

3. Ibid., 684–85.

4. Ibid., 672–73.

5. Haley direct examination, Courlander v. Haley, ARC, MS 2828, box 6, folders 16–17; Publisher’s Weekly, September 6, 1976.

6. McCauley, 141.

7. AH to PR, December 27, 1967, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 1; Lucy Kroll to Oliver Swan, December 14, 1967, AHP, Ms 1888, box 45, folder 1; New York Times, March 8, 1968.

8. Haley direct testimony, Alexander v. Haley, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; Playboy, January 1977.

9. Anne Romaine interview with Louis Blau, August 9, 1989, ARC, MS 2032, box 2, folder 25.

10. Richard Marius, “Alexander Murray Palmer Haley,” Tennessee Encyclopedia, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=586; New York Times, June 27, 1976; Helen Taylor, “The Griot from Tennessee: The saga of Alex Haley’s Roots,Critical Quarterly 37 (1996): 57.

11. New York Times, June 27, 1976; “Roots II,” autobiographical narrative, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12.

12. Roots II,” autobiographical narrative, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12; William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 78; Newsweek, February 10, 1969; Peniel Joseph, “Dashikis and Democracy: Black Studies, Student Activism, and the Black Power Movement,” Journal of African-American History 88 (Spring 2003): 182–2003; New York Times, June 9, 1968.

13. Newsweek, May 6, 1968; U.S. News and World Report, February 24, 1969.

14. Washington Post, June 6, 1968, December 8, 1971; Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1972; Hartford Courant, April 4, 1969, February 21, 1973.

15. Lost Angeles Times, May 25, 1969; Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 13, 1969; Washington Post, January 6, December 8, 1971; Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1972.

16. AH to PR, February 15, 1971, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; Ken McCormick affidavit, December 30, 1991, KMP.

17. ”Lecture on Roots,” AHP, MS 1888, box 30, folder 18.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1972.

21. Roots II” file, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12; Charles Thomas Galbraith quoted Haley, reported in Philip Nobile, Village Voice, 1993.

22. AH to Helen B. Wilkins, September 13, 1969, AHP, MS 1888, box 21, folder 11; AH to PR, August 8, 1969; AH to “Mrs. Williams” [Reynolds agency], March 27, 1970, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; J. Martin Carovano to Paul Reynolds, October 9, 1974, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 27; “Roots II,” autobiographical narrative, AHP, MS 1888, box 38, folder 12.

23. AH to Hillel Black, March 5, 1969; AH to Lawrence Hughes, July 29, 1969, Hillel Black to AH, July 31, 1972, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; AH to PR, August 24, 1969, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; “Fisher-edited copy,” AHP, MS 1888, box 25, folder 4.

24. AH to PR, September 16, 1970; KM to PR, September 21, 1970; AH to PR, November 28, 1970, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; AH to PR, May 20, 1971; PR to George Sims, July 2, 1971, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3.

25. AH to PR, June 19, May 20, 1971, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3; PR to AH, April 30, 1971, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2.

26. AH to PR, May 18, 1971, ARC, MS 2032, box 3, folder 25; McCauley, 148.

27. Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1973.

28. Personal Video Interviews Given by and Given to Alex Haley, Alex Haley website, http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_video_interviews.htm; Christian Science Monitor, April 24, 1972; “My Furthest-Back Person—‘The African,’” New York Times July 16, 1972.

29. PR to AH, August 7, 1972, AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 2; AH to PR, October 5, 1972; PR to AH, August 7, 1972; PR to Rubin Clickman, May 29, 1973 AHP, MS 1888, box 45, folder 3.

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 Interpretation 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.