Upon Will's death, Haley's parents returned to Tennessee where Simon procured work at Lane College. At the time of his birth, Haley's father, Simon, a World War I veteran, was a graduate student in agriculture at Cornell University, and his mother, Bertha, was a musician and teacher.įor the first years of his life, Haley, who was called Palmer during childhood, lived with his grandparents Cynthia and Will in Henning, Tennessee, while his father finished his studies. Haley was born Alexander Murray Palmer Haley on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York.

Nonetheless, Roots has remained a groundbreaking work in the public imagination.

Major controversy ensued, however, when Haley was accused of plagiarism and presenting historical and genealogical inaccuracies. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book was turned into a 1977 miniseries that became one of the most popular TV shows of all time. The following decade, Haley made history with his book Roots, chronicling his family line from Gambia to the enslaved-holding South. He eventually helmed a series of interviews for Playboy magazine and later co-authored The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Coast Guard for two decades before pursuing a career as a writer. This is history at its most compelling-from the Irish sod to the settlement of the South from the Trail of Tears to the battlefield at Manassas from the agonies of slavery to the tribulations of freedom-all rendered with the eye for telling detail and the sense of historical significance that readers have come to expect of Haley.Ī miniseries adaptation called Alex Haley’s Queen and starring Halle Berry, Danny Glover, Tim Daly, Ann-Margret and Ossie Davis aired on CBS on February 14, 1993.Alex Haley served in the U.S. His adolescent attraction to the beautiful and strongwilled slave named Easter blossoms into a powerful and lasting love, and from their passionate union comes Queen-the heroine of the tale, Alex Haley’s grandmother. James’s son, Jass Jackson, inherits the plantation just as the genteel, well-ordered antebellum world begins to crumble.

He establishes his grand plantation, The Forks of Cypress, in Alabama, while Andrew ascends to the White House, and the rumblings that will explode into the Civil War gather force. The two men become business partners and James Jackson makes his fortune. From there we travel with Jackson to Nashville, where he meets Andrew Jackson, the future president of the United States. The story begins in Ireland, where Haley’s white great-great-grandfather, James Jackson, Sr., is born. Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots, tells about his great-great-grandfather who came to Alabama from Ireland, married a slave and then fathered a daughter-Haley’s grandmother, Queen.

Queen by alex haley