Posted: under "DID YOU KNOW".
Tags: African, African-American, audience, awards, blacks, country, courage, faith, family, future, generation, heart, history, memorial, nation, Pullitzer Prize, quotes, television
“Faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future.” — Martin
Luther King Jr.
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By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com
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Before Henry Louis Gates mesmerized black Americans with his PBS specials tracing the history of African-American lives, a magazine writer and author galvanized African-Americans into a search for their own roots.
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On Jan. 23, 1977, the miniseries “Roots,” adapted from a book of the same name by Alex Haley, debuted. The series, which ran for eight consecutive evenings, was watched by more than 130 million viewers. At the time, it was the biggest audience for any program since the invention of television.
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The historical narrative traced the story of one of Haley’s African ancestors, a slave named Kunta Kinte, and six generations that followed him in the American south.
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The book and the television show unleashed a wave of genealogical research among African-Americans, and in 1979, a sequel, “Roots: The Next Generations,” picked up where the first series ended, following the family from the post-Civil War era to Haley’s search for his roots.
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Haley said he developed his writing skills in the U.S. Coast Guard, retiring in 1959 as its chief journalist. He went on to become a magazine writer and interviewer and was – before the landmark book – probably best known as the ghost writer of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in 1965.
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He then spent 12 years researching and writing “Roots,” which was praised even before its publication as a work destined to become a classic. It won a National Book Award and a special Pulitzer Prize, sold more than 1 million copies and has been taught in countless college and university classrooms.
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In 2002, a Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial was dedicated at the City Dock in downtown Annapolis, Maryland. It is the only monument in the country recognizing the name and date of arrival of an enslaved African.
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Haley, who moved back to his family’s home state of Tennessee in 1987, began working on another historical novel based on another branch of his family. He died in Seattle in 1992 of a heart attack, leaving the story of his grandmother Queen, the daughter of a slave and a white master, unfinished.
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The story was completed by director, writer and producer David Stevens and was published as Alex Haley’s Queen, which was made in a movie in 1993.
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