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12 Years A Slave just having won the Best Picture Oscar
I was drawn back to Alex Haley and Roots. This 1977 television biopic appeared an influencial, blockbuster to me at the time.
In retrospect this mainstream production would surely have been a controlled thing.
Blatantly.
The author was Alex Haley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Haleyhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Alex_haley_US_coast_guard.png
We see this ex-coast guard had made his mark already, before the 1976 smash hit Roots:
” Haley conducted the first interview for Playboy magazine. The interview, with Miles Davis, appeared in the September 1962 issue. In the interview, Davis candidly spoke about his thoughts and feelings on racism, and it was that interview which set the tone for what became a significant feature of the magazine. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Playboy Interview with Haley was the longest he ever granted to any publication. Throughout the 1960s, Haley was responsible for some of the magazine’s most notable interviews, including an interview with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, who agreed to meet with Haley only after Haley, in a phone conversation, assured him that he was not Jewish. Haley remained calm and professional during the interview, even though Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout it (The interview was recreated in Roots: The Next Generations ”
An inluencial guy already then? A trusted black voice in the mainstream? A controlled one?
‘in 1976, Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based on his family’s history, starting with the story of Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in the Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave. Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and Haley’s work on the novel involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing. He went to the village of Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and which is still in existence, and listened to a tribal historian tell the story of Kinte’s capture.[1] Haley also traced the records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which he said carried his ancestor to America.’ – quote from Winkypedia
This book became an international all-time best seller and a round the world hit tv series in 1977.
Thing is…it looks like he lied…
” in 1978, Harold Courlander, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging that Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had copied 81 passages from his novel, The African.[15] Courlander’s pre-trial memorandum in the copyright infringement lawsuit stated: “Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African. Without The African, Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr. Haley could have written Roots without the African … Mr. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character.”[16]
In his expert witness report submitted to the federal court in support of Courlander’s claim, professor of English Michael Wood of Columbia University, stated:
The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive … Roots … plainly uses The African as a model: as something to be copied at some times, and at other times to be modified, but always it seems, to be consulted … Roots takes from The African phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot. Roots finds in The African essential elements for its depiction of such things as a slave’s thoughts of escape, the psychology of an old slave, the habits of mind of the hero, and the whole sense of life on an infamous slave ship. Such things are the life of a novel; and when they appear in Roots, they are the life of someone else’s novel.[17]
After a five-week trial in the federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that “Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book Roots.”[18]
During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated: “Copying there is, period.”[19] In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward said that Haley had “perpetrated a hoax on the public”.To date, Haley’s work remains a notable exclusion from the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, despite Haley’s status as history’s best-selling African-American author. Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the anthology’s general editors, has denied that the controversies surrounding Haley’s works are the reason for this exclusion. Nonetheless, Dr. Gates has acknowledged the doubts surrounding Haley’s claims about Roots, saying, “Most of us feel it’s highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship.”
Tidy end to the op. Discredit it and diminish any worth it did have and take the money. Name a ship after ‘im.
”Late in his life, Haley had acquired a small farm in Norris, Tennessee, adjacent to the Museum of Appalachia, with the intent of making it his home. After his death, the property was sold to the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), which calls it the “Alex Haley Farm” and uses it as a national training center and retreat site. An abandoned barn on the farm property was rebuilt as a traditional cantilevered barn, using a design by architect Maya Lin. The building now serves as a library for the CDF.”
The Children’s Defense fund? Oh, they must be honest. I wonder what sort of library they’ve got? Converted the old barn.
Anyway here’s The US Alex Haley – a ship named after a plagiarist who shaped my understanding of history as a child.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USCGC_Alex_Haley.jpgDalTampra
An interesting point I took from this article was the fact that although Haley settled for $650,000, an admittance of guilt, it doesn’t seem to have mattered that much. He was still considered a ‘hero’ by many and was even quoted at Obama’s inauguration.
So we see an ex-coast guard. The African American mainstream scribe, popping up at the very start of Rolling Stone interviewing iconic Black figures in notable exclusives.
He looks sponsored to me.
Then Roots – the award winning literary and televisual sensation.
The book and tv series that educated millions of people about slavery and US history…
turns out to be…well…a lie.
I wonder what misdirection there was in that book…what economy of truth…what spin?
Roots – Haley received a Pulitzer Prize for his book, and the TV series won several major awards.
the book is considered a publishing and cultural sensation.
The state of Tennessee put a historical marker by Haley’s childhood home in Henning, noting the influence he had as an author because of Roots.Haley also coauthored “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” – Spike Lee made a film about it.
I wouldn’t trust that either.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/01/21/Alex-Haley-Lance-Armstrong-Of-Literature
DalTampra
In 1952 the Coast Guard created for him the rank of chief journalist
…at age 31, having been made a journalist in 1949. Through merit, it would seem.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0811.htmlHe could certainly write….in fact he couldn’t stop writing…this is quite interesting:
http://www.uscg.mil/history/people/Alex_HaleyBio.aspI was totally hooked on Roots when it first aired. But as usual we were probably being lied to and this whole plagiarism debate is a red herring. Maybe Roots’ whole raison d’être was simply to lend salience to the accepted narrative that African- Americans were brought to Africa in slave ships?
Whatever reality is, it's not that.
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