Adam Henig - Alex Haleys Roots: An Authors Odyssey

Neither man uttered a word. Inside his suite at the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City, actor Warren Beatty looked over at his fifty-five-year-old friend, Alex Haley. The two-hour television premiere of Roots, adapted from Haleys best-selling book, had just ended. The credits were rolling.

Did you have any idea, any dream of all this? Beatty asked.

If I had, Id have typed a whole lot faster, the writer quipped in his deep baritone Southern drawl.

Beatty, who had met Haley a few years earlier through their film agent, remarked prophetically, Your life will never be the same again.

The following evening at Lincoln Centers Avery Fisher Hall, Haley was scheduled to deliver a talk on the same stage on which the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed. Before the doors opened, Haley stepped onto the stage to survey the three-thousand-seat auditorium. It wasnt the first time hed spoken at a venue of this size, but this one was certainly the most impressive. Though the audiences and venues changed, the topic never did.

Haleys talk was always about his work-in-progress, a genealogical account spanning more than two centuries. The story began with Haleys great-great-great-great-grandfather, Kunta Kinte, a West African captured by slave traders. It followed Kunta Kintes life in bondage and the lives of his descendants. Based on stories Haley had first heard from his grandmother as a youngster on her front porch in Henning, Tennessee, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, would take twelve years, two editors, and a failed marriage to complete.

What inspired Haley to pen a book about his ancestry took hold during his early years as a freelance writer. In 1959, after serving two decades in the US Coast Guardthe latter half spent as the coast guards chief journalistHaley had relocated to Greenwich Village, a popular destination at the time for struggling artists, musicians, and, of course, writers. Barely able to afford three meals a day, the five-foot-nine, pudgy thirty-eight-year-old at first struggled. No longer living on a military salary nor able to draw from his pension (his first wife, whom he was separated from, and their two children were living off of it), Haley had reached a low point. One evening, he took stock of his entire net worth, as he later put it, two cans of sardines and eighteen cents.

Ever the optimist, Haley was determined to make a name for himself. With the aid of an established writer (James Baldwin), a supportive editor (Readers Digests Fulton Oursler, Jr.), and a savvy literary agent (Paul R. Reynolds), the ex-coast guardsman honed his skills and eventually went from a second-rate journalist to one of the leading black writers for popular magazines such as Readers Digest, Playboy, Saturday Evening Post, and

Haleys big break came when he coauthored the best-selling 1965 memoir, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Though Haley had little sympathy for Malcolm Xs radical ideas, the author recognized how these ideas were shaped by the tragic legacy of American slavery, a story yet to be told properly to the mainstream. What finally convinced Haley to take on the task came during an assignment for Playboy in London.

During the turbulent sixties, the mens magazine hired Haley as a freelancer. His job was to interview celebrities for the popular Interview feature. Having already interviewed Malcolm X, Miles Davis, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., his latest subject was British actress Julie Christie. Visiting Christie outside of London on the set of Darling, Haley had no luck luring the film star away. Instead, he passed the time at the renowned British Museum, where he encountered the two-thousand-year-old Rosetta Stone. Mesmerized, he discovered that the stone he was hovering over had unlocked the past to ancient Egypt. It was at that moment, Alex Haley recalled, the journey of discovering his roots began.