Haley’s original book, and by extension the miniseries, was marred by poor scholarship and deception in pursuit of an admirable goal, what Haley saw as uncovering the journey of every black American whose history was destroyed by the transatlantic slave trade. Though Haley’s Pulitzer was not rescinded, it is now generally accepted that Roots is more historical fiction than history.

Nobile proclaimed Roots “the modern era’s most successful literary hoax,” a fraud enabled by Haley’s deception and the refusal of guilty white liberals to take on a cherished cultural symbol. There’s no concrete evidence that Kinte’s daughter Kizzy ever existed, and the biography Haley gave of his great-great-grandfather, the enslaved gamecock trainer Chicken George, contradicted basic historical facts. The slave known as Toby was likely not the same person as Kunta Kinte, who probably never existed as Haley wrote him. Nobile alleged persuasively that Haley had made up or altered important details, particularly his supposed discovery of an African ancestor named Kunta Kinte who was the first in his family to be enslaved. The next year, Village Voice reporter Philip Nobile would publish a detailed attack on Roots.

It was also a best-seller, moving millions of copies, and sparking a nationwide interest in black genealogy and the history of slavery.īut by the time of his death, all Haley had left was his reputation, already damaged by accusations of plagiarism, which would soon buckle under sustained assault. Roots - the book, published in 1976, and the blockbuster ABC miniseries in 1977 - was a groundbreaking work, an epic saga in which Haley claimed to have been the first and only person to have traced his family line from the first African slave brought to America. The celebrated author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots, two of the most widely read American books of the 20th century, was so deeply in debt that after he died of heart failure in 1992, his family auctioned his Pulitzer to pay his bills.

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