Was Alex Haley's "Roots" really a fraud ?

Question

Why was he accused of plagarism ?

Why do you think it was ?

Answer 1

It's like a tennis match - back and forth. Apparently, if you type in Alex Haley's Hoax, you'll get more info than you need. Here's what one individual said on a site:

Well, I'm back ... and very disgusted. This whole accusation of plagiarism and fraud motivated me to buy and read the book, "The African" by Harold Courlander. I know the "Roots" story very well, having read the book several times as a young adult, and recently revisited the entire TV miniseries. THERE IS NO SIMILARITY AT ALL IN THE PLOT, EVENTS, CHARACTERS, SCENES AND WHATEVER BETWEEN "THE AFRICAN" AND "ROOTS." I did find one little thing: the words, "We are one village." Those words and the philosophy they carried with them sustained Courlander's character throughout his book. The words, "We are one village" were echoed by a character in the original story of Kunta Kinte's transport to America. However, the "village" theme wasn't carried through consistently in Alex Haley's book. How this guy managed to pilfer $650,000 from Haley based on an accusation of plagiarism is totally beyond me. If in doubt about this, just go read Courlander's book. It is very good, but it is no WAY like the Kunta Kinte story. IMHO, the plagiarism charge is totally bogus and it ought to be exposed for what it is, not repeated on reputable websites.
Posted by: LJB | 01/21/2005 at 03:53 PM

And then there was this: Roots is a great story, and I hope this discussion doesn't take away from that. It's just that Alex Haley oversold it as being "a true story". And that was a disservice to everybody.

In another sense, you can say the story is true, in the way authors can usually say more in a novel because they won't be sued, which would be the case if they told a "true story".

Posted by: Tom McMahon | 09/15/2004 at 06:14 PM

And here's from another:
http://www.nypost.com/cgi-bin/printfriendly.pl

Historical experts who checked Haley's genealogical research discovered that, as one put it, "Haley got everything wrong in his pre-Civil War lineage and none of his
plantation ancestors existed; 182 pages have no basis in fact."

A 1997 BBC documentary expose of Haley's work has been banned by U.S. television networks.

Yet the uniqueness of "Roots" is that it was presented as factual history, albeit with fictional embellishments. Haley himself stressed that the details came from his family's oral history and had been corroborated by outside documents.

So after all that, I don't know what to think. It is a fictional account based in fact? It is one heck of a story and I think it did a lot when it initially came out.

Answer 2

According to my research on the subject, parts of it were true and parts were not. Haley himself described the book as "faction."

While I have not yet read Courlander's "The African," I have read a scholarly article about the Haley claims. As it turns out, there was indeed a slave named "Toby" at the said Virginia plantation, but the date for his existance was a few years off from Haley's claims. I checked ancestry.com and there was indeed a Tom and Irene Murray in Tennessee in the 1870s. As for the claims of the African griot being a faker, I'm not so sure about that, having not seen the primary sources, but what I have listed above proves that Haley was at least correct in saying the book was 'faction" (part fact and part fiction).

Answer 3

The book Roots, excerpted in Reader's Digest in 1974 and heralded for several years, was finally published in the fall of 1976 with very wide publicity and reviews. In January 1977, ABC-TV produced a 12-hour series based on the book, which set records for the number of viewers. With cover stories, book reviews, and interviews with Haley in scores of magazines and m any newspaper articles, the book became the number one national best-seller, sold in the millions, and was published as a paperback in 1977. Roots became a phenomenon. It was serialized in the New York Post and the Long Island Press. Instructional packages, lesson plans based on Roots and other books about Roots for schools were published along with records and tapes by Haley.

Haley's book stimulated interest in Africa and in black genealogy. The United States Senate passed a resolution paying tribute to Haley and comparing Roots to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe in the 1850s. The book received m any awards, including the National Book Award for 1976 special citation of merit in history and a special Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for making an important contribution to the literature of slavery. Roots was not without its critics, however. A 1977 lawsuit brought by Margaret Walker charged that Roots plagiarized her novel Jubilee. Another author, Harold Courlander also filed a suit charging that Roots plagiarized his novel The African. Courlander received a settlement after several passages in Roots were found to be almost verbatim from The African. Haley claimed that researchers helping him had given him this material without citing the source.

http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/haley_a.htm
http://www.news.ku.edu/2003/03N/AprilNews/April2/walker.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family

Answer 4

I don't know but I would like to.

Answer 5

Oh yeah man, you can make those anywhere. You may not be able to use the Yankees logo, but calling that punk out is correct

Answer 6

The African Harold Courlander

Answer 7

Sure! Absolute Lies