Alex Haley’s quasi-autobiographical and semifictional book Roots, marketed as nonfiction by its publisher, earned him a Pulitzer Prize and raised his status as a writer and model of the value of genealogical research. In 1978, writer Harold Courlander sued Haley for plagiarizing parts of his 1967 novel The African. In later years, Haley faced other charges of falsification of his research. The importance of his landmark work survived, however, and its lasting significance has overshadowed the controversy.
The publication of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family in the U.S. bicentennial year of 1976 was a landmark event. The book’s publisher, Doubleday, planned what was, for an African American author, an unprecedented initial print run of 200,000 copies, but that printing quickly sold out. In its first year, Roots would sell more than one million copies, leading to Haley’s receipt of a special Pulitzer Prize. Twenty-five years later, the book had sold more than eight million copies in twenty-eight countries and had been translated into thirty-three languages.
Haley called Roots “faction,” or a mix of fact and fiction, and later referred to the work as symbolic history, but Doubleday had marketed the book as straight nonfiction, which only worsened the controversy. In 1978, novelist and anthropologist Harold Courlander sued Haley for having plagiarized passages from his novel The African (1967). After a five-week trial, Haley and Courlander settled out of court, with Haley publicly acknowledging his debt to Courlander (claiming research assistants had given him material from the novel without fully citing its source) and paying him $650,000. The incredible success of Roots, first as a book and then, in January, 1977, a twelve-hour television miniseries, seems to have eased the scorn of the plagiarism scandal. Haley’s fabrications seem forgotten in the light of the longevity and popularity of Roots.
Roots the miniseries had been a broadcasting sensation, breaking viewership records as it was watched closely by more than 130 million people over eight successive nights (January 23-30). The story clearly had touched a chord in the American consciousness, not only among African Americans but also among Americans of every ethnicity and race. The story dramatized the violence against one group of Americans by another, and it had viewers learning about an ethnic history not known by many. For the book, Haley claimed that he had traced seven generations of his family, from the coast of Gambia in West Africa—where his distant ancestor,
This case was only the first of a series of revelations about the questionable research methods used to write Roots. In 1988, novelist Margaret Walker
The charges against Haley, however, had less effect than critics expected. The book had become a staple in college courses during the late 1970’s, and although fewer courses after the controversy listed Roots as required reading, this dip was mostly likely due to the publication of other related works—books that were sparked in part by Roots. Before the arrival of Roots—the book and the television miniseries—most Americans knew African history only through such caricatures as the Tarzan films and knew of slave life through works such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s melodramatic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Following Roots, black history became an even greater focus of study in colleges and universities nationwide, leading to the further creation of a stream of ethnic history and literature that would flow from writers of all races and ethnicities into the twenty-first century. Related narratives included Toni Morrison
Some scholars have dismissed Haley’s work as something other than historical research;
The effect of the charges against Haley was less severe than experts predicted. Most critics have come to realize that the scandal was caused, in part, by the publisher’s marketing of Roots as a nonfiction work. Readers naturally expected that “nonfiction” meant “not fictionalized,” as are works of history. In retrospect, it is clear that Roots is closer to being a novel, or an autobiographical novel, because so much of its narrative was reconstructed from oral cultures. Had Doubleday advertised Roots as a work of fiction, the controversy would have been negligible. Likewise, if Roots had been marketed more strictly as a memoir, it might have been granted greater latitude as well. In the end, Roots, and even Haley’s reputation, has outlasted the 1978 scandal. The book is a work of imaginative power that filled a crucial gap in U.S. history when it was published. Whether a novel, “faction,” memoir, historical fiction, or straight nonfiction, it tells a necessary story that continues to intrigue.
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Bundles, A’Lelia. “Looking Back at the Roots Phenomenon.” Black Issues Book Review 3 (July/August, 2001): 12-15. Pays tribute to Haley for his contributions to African American literature and oral history, and compares other works on African history. -
Courlander, Harold. The African. New York: Crown Books, 1967. Courlander, who sued Haley for plagiarism, prefigures the story of Kunta Kinte in his novel about a twelve-year-old boy’s capture and horrific sea voyage to the United States and his attempts to hold onto or re-create his African background in the New World. -
Mills, Gary B., and Elizabeth Shown. “The Genealogist’s Assessment of Alex Haley’s Roots.” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 72 (March, 1984): 35-49. The authors, who visited archives in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, reveal evidence to challenge both the chronology and the character identification of Roots. -
Nobile, Philip. “Uncovering Roots.” Village Voice, February 23, 1993. Nobile followed the court cases, studied the manuscripts of Roots, and interviewed a number of people connected with the book to conclude it was a fabrication. -
Osagie, Iyunolu. “Routed Passages: Narrative Memory and Identity in Alex Haley’s Roots.” CLA Journal 47 (June, 2004): 391-408. Examines the themes of the book, including collective memory and identity formation. -
Rasmussen, R. Kent.“’Roots’: A Growing Thicket of Controversy.” Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1977, p. V1. Op-ed article by a historian of Africa challenging Haley’s research methods, particularly his alleged reliance on the evidence of a Gambian griot. -
Taylor, Helen.“’The Griot from Tennessee’: The Saga of Alex Haley’s Roots.” Critical Quarterly 37 (June, 1995): 46-62. Comprehensive scholarly coverage of the controversy, plus a balanced assessment of the lasting impact of Roots.
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