February 10, 1992
Alex Haley, author of Roots (1976), dies of a
heart attack at age 70 in Seattle.
Roots, which portrayed four generations of an African
American family based on Haley's own family, became a TV miniseries in 1977.
The eight-part series was aired on consecutive nights and became the most
watched show in TV history. Some 130 million people-nearly half the country's
population at the time--watched the last episode of the show. Haley's books led
to an increased interest in the study of black history and heritage.Born in Ithaca, New York,
Haley grew up in Henning, Tennessee, where he listened to family stories told
by his maternal grandmother. A mediocre student at Alcorn Agricultural and
Mechanical College and at Elizabeth City Teachers College, Haley later spent
two decades with the U.S. Coast Guard as a journalist, writing adventure
stories to take the edge off his boredom. When he retired, he moved back to New
York to pursue a writing career. He interviewed trumpeter Miles Davis and
political activist Malcolm X for Playboy in the 1960s and later
collaborated with the Black Muslim spokesman to write The Autobiography of
Malcolm X (1965), an acclaimed work that fueled the black-power movement in
America and was cited extensively in institutions of higher learning.
Haley then started his
best-known work, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, published in
1976. The blend of fact and fiction, drawn largely from stories recited by
Haley's grandmother, chronicles seven generations of Haley's family history,
from the enslavement of his ancestors to his own quest to trace his family
tree. To write the mostly nonfiction work, Haley pored over records in the
National Archives and went by safari to the African village of Juffure to meet
with an oral historian (Haley later donated money to that village for a new
mosque). In the early 1970s, he and his brothers founded the Kinte Foundation,
named for Haley's ancestor Kunta Kinte, to collect and preserve African
American genealogy records.
Haley
received special citations from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award
committees in 1977 for Roots, which sold more than a million copies in one
year. It was translated into 26 languages. Later in his life, Haley wrote a
biography of Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the break-in at the
Watergate Hotel that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency.
February 12, 2002
The six stars on NBC's Friends
signed a deal for $24 million each for the ninth and final season of the
series.
February 10, 1992
Alex Haley, author of Roots (1976), dies of a
heart attack at age 70 in Seattle.
Born in Ithaca, New York,
Haley grew up in Henning, Tennessee, where he listened to family stories told
by his maternal grandmother. A mediocre student at Alcorn Agricultural and
Mechanical College and at Elizabeth City Teachers College, Haley later spent
two decades with the U.S. Coast Guard as a journalist, writing adventure
stories to take the edge off his boredom. When he retired, he moved back to New
York to pursue a writing career. He interviewed trumpeter Miles Davis and
political activist Malcolm X for Playboy in the 1960s and later
collaborated with the Black Muslim spokesman to write The Autobiography of
Malcolm X (1965), an acclaimed work that fueled the black-power movement in
America and was cited extensively in institutions of higher learning.
Haley then started his
best-known work, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, published in
1976. The blend of fact and fiction, drawn largely from stories recited by
Haley's grandmother, chronicles seven generations of Haley's family history,
from the enslavement of his ancestors to his own quest to trace his family
tree. To write the mostly nonfiction work, Haley pored over records in the
National Archives and went by safari to the African village of Juffure to meet
with an oral historian (Haley later donated money to that village for a new
mosque). In the early 1970s, he and his brothers founded the Kinte Foundation,
named for Haley's ancestor Kunta Kinte, to collect and preserve African
American genealogy records.
Haley
received special citations from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award
committees in 1977 for Roots, which sold more than a million copies in one
year. It was translated into 26 languages. Later in his life, Haley wrote a
biography of Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the break-in at the
Watergate Hotel that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency.
February 12, 2002
The six stars on NBC's Friends
signed a deal for $24 million each for the ninth and final season of the
series.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Stay Tuned
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