Talk:Alex Haley

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Contents

[edit] Blanking

Please stop blanking large parts of this page with no discussion. Sonria 21:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comments

I have just seen a Discovery program saying Alex was born in 1921, not 1925


PD photo of him in the coast guard at [1]

[edit] race

while alex was primarly African shouldn't we mention his White and Cherokee backround?yes yes pease understand

[edit] Plagerism

"The case was dismissed by the court. Reportedly he paid her a civil judgement of $650,000 for plagiarism." This doesn't make sense. If it was dismissed, it judged against her.


I think you might have misread this section. The case with Ms. Walker was dismissed, and she didn't get anything. It was actually the case with Harold Courlander, where they setteled out of court and he recieved $650,000. It was said that Alex took a 100 word segement from his book The African.--Let's build each other up! 20:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamishas2003 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Sensationalism?

The sentence, "Rockwell held Haley at gunpoint during the interview." is a bit disingenuous and sensationalistic. I want to change that to something that reflects the facts of the interview, having recently read the full transcript of it, but I want to post this to explain why in detail I have changed it.

I am not changing it to make Mr. Rockwell more palatable or appealing. Wanted that to be clear to my fellow editors.

Some lines from the article written by Haley himself:

"Then, with the burly guard standing at attention about halfway between us, he took out a pearl-handled revolver, placed it pointedly on the arm of his chair, sat back and spoke for the first time: 'I'm ready if you are.' Without any further pleasantries, I turned on my machine."

So, yes there was a gun present, not pointed or used in a threatening manner. Continuing, the transcript begins:

HALEY: Before we begin, Commander, I wonder if you'd mind telling me why you're keeping that pistol there at your elbow, and this armed bodyguard between us.

ROCKWELL: Just a precaution. You may not be aware of the fact that I have received literally thousands of threats against my life. Most of them are from cranks, but some of them haven't been; there are bullet holes all over the out side of this building. Just last week, two gallon jugs of flaming gasoline were flung against the house right under my window. I keep this gun within reach and a guard beside me during interviews because I've been attacked too many times to take any chances. I haven't yet been jumped by an impostor, but it wasn't long ago that 17 guys claiming to be from a university came here to "interview" me; nothing untoward happened, but we later found out they were armed and planned to tear down the flag, burn the joint and beat me up. Only the fact that we were ready for that kind of rough stuff kept it from happening.

We've never yet had to hurt anybody, but only because I think they all know we're ready to fight anytime. If you're who you claim to be, you have nothing to fear.

HALEY: I don't.


So we see here standard practice for Rockwell, understandly as his ideology is not the most popular in history. And we see Alex Haley expressing no fear, rather courageously I might say, during the interview nor did he feel threatened as his response indicates.

So, is "held at gunpoint" accurate? This implies having your mobility denied you by force of arms. This is not the case here. Alex Haley left when ready safe and sound. I encourage editors to read the transcript, do a google search.

I hope this explains my changes.

Joey 17:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Publication date of Malcolm X biography?

This article says it was published in 1972, while The Autobiography of Malcolm X gives a publication date of 1965. Please advise. AxelBoldt 17:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] clean up needed

That large paragraph in the Plagiarism Controversy section needs to be cleaned up: it's a mess. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.32.60.96 (talk • contribs).

It feels like it was copied and pasted from an article or a book, so it could be a copyright violation, and it cites some interviews and other texts without specific references, so if the anonymous user who dropped it here wrote it, it could be original research. Also, the anonymous users deleted the list of works from the text, so I'm going to revert the article to the previous version and I'll move the paragraph here, at least for a while. GhePeU 19:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree this needs to be cleaned up. The part at the end even asking a question to the reader is just embarrassing and not neutral at all.

Text posted by anonymous user User:89.48.183.255:

The African American community found its representative voice with the appearance of Roots especially on television. Eventually the narration offered a view on slavery from a perspective which was perceived by the black people within the country as unquestionable truth and history. Its focus on their heritage, their contribution to America’s history, and their presentation as a nation gave black people a new identity. In particular in a time of racial discrimination of the 70’s its plot had an immense impact on the self-perception and self-confidence of many black Americans. “Mr. Haley gave African Americans a renewed sense of themselves, an understanding of their historical journey, a refreshed sense of pride in their heritage.” However, the popularity of Roots was not only a blessing for its author. Two writers sued Haley for plagiarism shortly after the publication of the world famous novel. Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander pressed charges against Haley in 1977. The black author of Jubilee available in 1966, “a novel about black people in Georgia during the Civil War era”, lost her suit due to lack of evidence, though. At the same time, another writer of a “relatively unknown slavery novel The African” had been suing Haley for the same reasons. The African by Harold Courlander, a 70 years old white writer from Md?, showes astonishing similarities in sequences of happenings as well as in expressions with Haley’s book. So for example:
The African: “How do I do this thing? Do it by being a no-good, lazy, shiftless, head scratchin’ nigger, that’s how.”
Roots: “Reckon since you been born I been actin like de no-good, lazy, shiftless, head-scratchin’ nigger white folks says us is.”
Haley responded to this accusation that a head scratchin, lazy nigger is “just a cliché of black life” white people have, and that he had never read Courlander’s book until 1977. Although Haley denied having copied any parts of Roots knowingly he lost this suit. Admitting that it might have been possible that some excerpts of The African had found its way into his book as that some of his helpers while the research for Roots gave him handwritten materials, he apologized by Mr. Courlander and settled down for a payment.
In 1977 another incident moved the admirers of Haley’s work. Mark Ottaway questioned in an article of The Sunday Times of London the as fact portrayed content of Roots. While his investigations on the truthful substance of Roots, Ottaway had discovered that “there appeared to be no factual bases for Mr. Haley’s conclusion that he had actually traced his genealogy back to Kunta Kinte in the village of Juffure, Gambia, and that Kunta Kinte had been captured by slavers in 1767.” The article questioned the reliability of the griot, Haley’s research in the shipping records of the Lloyd’s company, and his misinterpretation of the British colonial documents of that time. Haley, though, never said that his book was not fictionalized at all. He confirmed in his book that the entire story was based on the oral tradition of either his own family or on that what he had heard in Africa. In his book you can find the quotation:
Since I wasn’t yet around when most of the story occurred, by far most of the dialogue and most of the incidents are of necessity a novelized amalgam of what I know took place together with what my researching led me to plausibly feel took place.
Furthermore, Haley called his work neither a fact nor a fiction. He coined the phrase “faction” which intention it is to combine both of the two ingredients into one successfully written story.
Fact or Fiction
“The Sunday Times of London article contended that the success of Mr. Haley’s work was based on its presentation as fact.” Weather this was the reason for its worldwide popularity or weather for its symbolic meaning for the African Americans that caused the great acceptance among its audience is hard to say. Controversial discussions evolved among historians on that issue. Mark Ottaway’s accusations had achieved to put a shadow over Haley’s clean reputation as a reliable history writer, though. “A fraud’s a fraud” answered Professor Woodward of Yale to this question. His colleague, Professor Edmund S. Morgan of Yale, on the other hand said that “errors about the location of the village are not very important – nobody will deny there was a slave trade.” Despite of to what extent Alex Haley had to fill his research with readable content in order to create a connection between the two continents, most historians agreed that his narrative was truthful. Slave trade, rape, and other atrocities had been caused to the black population of America by the hands of white folks over centuries. This is a fact that cannot be overseen by anybody. As Professor Fogel commented toward a reporter of The New York Times in 1977: “Publisher and author had erred in ‘going along with’ a description of the book as a kind of history, but it would be wrong ‘to diminish the book’ by pointing out that there were many errors.”

[edit] 1767 United States

I've changed the reference to Kinti being taken to the United States in 1767. It read oddly as the United States didn't exists until 1776. Apepper 20:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ======

10/5/07, edits from 68.217.138.202 -- Nobile's V.V. article is commonly mis-cited on the Internet as "Alex Haley's Hoax"; however, the correct title is "Uncovering Roots." The author's name and publication date are correct as listed. I have corrected the title and added the page numbers for the article. My source for this information is a reprint of the article from microfilm which I bought from NYPL Express (http://www.nypl.org/express/) some time ago. Obviously, whoever inserted the original citation had never even seen the actual article, but was blindly copying information off some web page.

[edit] BIRTHPLACE

So, was he born in Ithaca or in Rock Hill? The sidebar thing says rock hill. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.84.231.213 (talk) 04:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


He was actually born in Ithaca, NY. His father was finishing his degree in agriculture, while his mother, was studying at the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. But 6 weeks after his birth his mother and father brought Alex to Henning, Tn. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamishas2003 (talk • contribs) 20:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)