Alex Haley

At 70 years old, Alex Haley has this physical status:

Coast Guard career

Haley was enlisted as a mess attendant. Later, he was promoted to the third class in the rating of steward, being one of the few ratings open to blacks at that time. Haley learned the art of writing stories during his time in the Pacific theater of operations. During his enlistment, other sailors would often enlist him to write love letters to their girlfriends. He said that the biggest obstacle he and his crew encountered on their long journeys were not the Japanese forces but rather boredom.

Haley requested that the US Coast Guard honor him by moving into journalism following World War II. He had been rated as a writer first-class in 1949. He rose to chief petty officer later in life and held the position until his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1959. He was the first chief journalist in the Coast Guard, and the award had been specifically given to him in honor of his literary skills.

The Coast Guard Good Conduct Medal (with 1 silver and 1 bronze service medal), the American Defense Service Medal (with "Sea" clasp), the European War II Victory Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, and the Coast Guard Expert Marksmanship Medal were among the Coast Guard's prestigious awards and accolades. Ten years after he died, the Republic of Korea awarded him the War Service Medal. In July 1999, the US Coast Guard recommissioned the cutter formerly known as USS Edenton to Haley by renaming it as USCGC Alex Haley. The cutter now resides in Kodiak, Alaska.

Literary career

Haley began a new phase of his journalism career after resigning from the US Coast Guard. He then became a senior editor for Reader's Digest magazine. Haley wrote an essay about his brother George's struggle to thrive as one of the first black students at a Southern law school.

The first interview for Playboy magazine was conducted by Haley. In an interview with Haley, he opened a dialogue about his thoughts and feelings about his views and feelings on racism in an interview with Show Business Illustrated, another magazine started by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner that folded in early 1962. Haley completed the interview, and it appeared in Playboy's September 1962 issue. The interview set the tone for what would be a main feature of the magazine. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Playboy interview with Haley was the longest he's been granted to any publication.

Haley was involved in some of the magazine's most important interviews, including one with George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi Party's leader. After receiving the writer's word that he was not Jewish, he decided to speak with Haley. During the interview, Haley remained courteous, though Rockwell retained a handgun on the table throughout the game. (The interview was recreated in Roots: The Next Generations, with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell.) Muhammad Ali, who talked about changing his name from Cassius Clay, was also interviewed by Haley. In addition, Jack Ruby's defense counsel Melvin Belli, entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., football player Jim Brown, television host Johnny Carson, and music producer Quincy Jones appeared in several interviews.

Malcolm X's autobiography, published in 1965, was Haley's first book. It chronicles Malcolm X's life from street convict to national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam before his conversion to Sunni Islam. It also discusses Malcolm X's black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. In a New York suburb's Audubon Ballroom, Haley wrote an epilogue to the book summarizing Malcolm X's life and ending with his assassination.

Based on more than 50 in-depth interviews conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and 1965 assassination, Haley ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The two men first met in 1960 when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for Reader's Digest. When Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy, they met again.

Haley's first interviews for the autobiography were traumatic. Malcolm X spoke about Elijah Muhammad, the nation's leader, rather than discussing his own life; he became alarmed at Haley's reminder that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X. After several meetings, Haley begged Malcolm X to tell him something about his mother. Malcolm X was pulled back to retelling his life story in response to the question.

Since its 1965 debut, Malcolm X's Autobiography has been a best-seller. The New York Times announced that six million copies of the book had been sold by 1977. The Autobiography of Malcolm X was ranked by Time in 1998 as one of the top nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

In 1966, Haley received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Malcolm X's autobiography.

Haley's first screenplay, Super Fly T.N.T., was written in 1973. Ron O'Neal produced the film, and it was directed by him.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a book based on his family's roots, published in 1976 by Haley, which goes back to slavery days. It began with Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in the Gambia in 1767 and then moved to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave. Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and his book on the subject required twelve years of study, cross-continental travel, and writing. He went to Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and listened to a tribal historian (griot) tell the tale of Kinte's capture. The Lord Ligonier's ship, which he said carried his ancestor to the Americas, was also traced by Haley.

Haley said that the most emotional time of his life occurred on September 29, 1967, when his ancestor had arrived from Africa in chains only 200 years ago. In Annapolis' center, a memorial depicting Haley reading a tale to young children gathered at his feet has since been built.

Roots were eventually released in 37 languages. In 1977, Haley received a special Pulitzer Prize for her work. Roots was released by ABC in the same year as a classic television miniseries of the same name. The serial attracted a record-breaking 130 million viewers. Roots argued that black Americans have a long history and that not all of that history has been lost, as many believed. Its popularity has also sparked a renewed interest in genealogy among Americans.

Roots: The Next Generations, an ABC miniseries that continued the tale of Kunta Kinte's descendants, continued in 1979. It came at an end with Haley's ride to Juffure. Kristoff St. John, actor Damon Evans, and Tony Award winner James Earl Jones played Haley at various ages. A remake of the original miniseries appeared on television in 2016. Laurence Fishburne, a Tony Award-winning actor, portrayed Haley briefly.

Haley worked at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he began working on Roots. He loved spending time at the Savoy, a local bistro near Rome, where he would often spend time listening to the piano player. On a yellow legal tablet, there is a special table in honor of Haley at the Savoy, as well as a drawing of Haley writing Roots.

Roots were the subject of two lawsuits alleging plagiarism and copyright violation. Margaret Walker's case was dismissed, but Harold Courlander's appeal was successful. Courlander's book The African follows an African boy who is kidnapped by slave traders across the Atlantic Ocean and explores his attempts to keep alive his African roots on a plantation in America. Haley admitted that some passages from The African had made it into Roots, bringing the lawsuit out of court and paying Courlander $650,000.

Haley's study and conclusions in Roots have also been criticized by genealogists. The Gambian riot was not a true riot, and Kunta Kinte's tale seems to have been a case of circular reporting, in which Haley's own words were repeated back to him. None of the written records in Virginia and North Carolina match up with the Roots tale until after the Civil War. Any details of Haley's family history can be found in written records, but the most likely genealogy would be different than the one described in Roots.

Despite being the best-selling black author in the United States, Haley and his work have been barred from the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, despite his position as the United States' best-selling black author. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the anthology's general editors, has denied that the scandal surrounding Haley's work prompted his dismissal. Dr. Gates denied the doubts surrounding Haley's assertions about Roots, saying, "Most of us think it's highly unlikely that Alex discovered the village before his ancestors sprang." Roots are a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship.

Source

Awards and recognition

• In 1977, Haley earned The Pulitzer Prize for Roots: "The story of a black family from its origins in Africa through seven generations to the present day in America."
• In 1977 Haley received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, for his exhaustive research and literary skill combined in Roots.
• In 1977, Haley received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
• The food-service building at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center, Petaluma, California, was named Haley Hall in honor of the author.
• In 1999 the Coast Guard honored Haley by naming the cutter USCGC Alex Haley after him.
• The U.S. Coast Guard annually awards the Chief Journalist Alex Haley Award, which is named in honor of the writer as the Coast Guard's first chief journalist (the first Coast Guardsman in the rating of journalist to be advanced to the rate of chief petty officer). It rewards individual authors and photographers who have had articles or photographs communicating the Coast Guard story published in internal newsletters or external publications.
• In 2002 the Republic of Korea (South Korea) posthumously awarded Haley its Korean War Service Medal (created in 1951), which the U.S. government did not allow its service members to accept until 1999.