Historical accuracy. Haley called his novel “fiction” and acknowledged most of the dialogue and incidents were fictional. However, he claimed to have traced his family lineage back to Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now The Gambia.

Roots is the most important scripted program in broadcast network history. It aired across eight consecutive nights in January 1977 — a go-for-broke gesture by ABC, which made the mini-series out of a sense of social obligation and wanted to “burn off” the entire run quickly in a mostly dead programming month.

“The evidence of copying from ‘The African’ in both the novel and the television dramatization of ‘Roots’ is clear and irrefutable,” Wood said in court. Haley, who died in 1992, said he did not plagiarize. But he admitted that some sections of “Roots” appeared to have originally appeared in “The African.”

Jan

A long-waited revenge in a cup of water Afterwards, Kizzy continues to live with her son’s family until they are sold off to another plantation at Alamance County before she dies in spring of 1861, two months before her son, Chicken George, returned and received his freedom from Massa Lea.

Is Roots a true story? Initially, Roots was promoted as “faction”, appearing in the non-fiction section of many bookshops: obviously dialogue and many of the small incidents were made up, but Haley was at pains to explain that the core story was all true.

Alex Haley

Deficiency of calcium affects the leaves, buds, stem and roots. The leaves become small and distorted. Development of buds is inhibited. The stem and roots die.

Alcorn State University

70 years (1921–1992)

Knoxville

September 1977 (Myra Lewis)

Haley’s painstaking research was aided by the presence of family records. He was helped because his own family became relatively prosperous, with one relative emerging from slavery as the owner of a lumber business, willed to his grandfather by a white employer who died without heirs. Haley died in 1992.

Cynthia Babica Murray Palmervia Bertha George Haley

William Edward Palmervia Bertha George Haley