TODAY IN BLACK HISTORY: Legendary Author Alex Haley Dies

What originally started out as just an interest in his own genealogy, became a publication from which millions of African-American suddenly called their own story. American biographer, scriptwriter, author Alex Haley wrote the book “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” not even realizing he was writing his own chapter in Black History.

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Haley once commented that he never felt his novel was history but more so a study of myth-making. Published in 1976, covering his ancestry back to Africa spanning over seven American generations, the book was later made into a television mini-series and sparked a conversation for searching our own ancestry.

On February 10th, 1992 the Pulitzer Prize-winning author died of cardiac arrest.