Alex Haley (30 page)

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.