A respected writer, Alex Haley (1921–1992) won international acclaim for Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976). It did “more than recapture the history of his own family.” Rather, it reclaimed the African ancestry, slavery experience, and emancipation of African Americans.

The book was seminal. Some critics believe Haley blurred the line between fact and fiction in tracing Kunta Kinte and his descendants from Africa to freedom. Nevertheless, he earned the Pulitzer Prize Committee's Special Citation for literary achievement (1977). That year more than 90 million viewed a twelve-hour Roots television miniseries, depicting violent racial images, even as Roots vitalized African American genealogy. Scholars still question its historical accuracy.