What You Might Not Know About Alex Haley and Roots
Pulitzer Winner Accused of Plagiarism — Twice
The Publication of Roots
Forty-five years ago, August 17, 1976, Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley was published by Doubleday and shot straight into the hearts of the people. It was a good story, well-told, that spent more than 46 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and for more than five months, held the coveted number one slot.
Roots won a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 1977, and the novel won the National Book Award Special Citation for History that same year.
Alex Haley’s Roots took hold partly because ABC purchased the rights for a mini-series, out of a sense of “social obligation.” The network created and produced eight separate consecutive episodes that held the American public’s attention in January of 1977.
It was the mini-series, not the book, that caused my husband to hold our infant daughter up to the moon, declaring her name, “Katie Elizabeth,” in a quasi-parody of the scene where Kunte Kinte’s father held him up to the sky, offering a universe of possibilities. (Most kids know the gist of this scene from Disney’s Lion King.)
