Alexander Palmer Halley (August 11th 1921 - February 10th 1992) is a writer Afro-American. He is known in particular thanks to his collaboration with the Autobiography of Malcolm X and his book Racines ( Roots: The Saga off year American Family ).
Biography
Born with Ithaca in 1921, Alex Halley lived his the first five years with his two young brothers with Henning, Tennessee, in an Afro-American family having also Irish origins and Cherokee. His/her father Simon Alexander Halley was a professor of agriculture and fought during the 1st world war.In 1939 Halley engages in the Cost guard. It takes part then in the operations of the Guerre of the Pacific, period during which it acquires the taste of the writing. At the end of the Second world war it is transferred to its request in the service " journalisme" of Cost guard. It remains there until its retirement in 1959, following which it starts its career of writer.
The magazine Play Servant boy
In 1962, Halley carries out an interview of Miles Davis for the magazine Playboy , where the evocation by the jazzman of its feelings on the Racisme give the tone of what will become the leading line of the magazine.During the Sixties, Halley carries out a great number of interview of which one of Martin Luther King (more long that this one gave), or that of the leader of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell, which accepted the interview only after Halley had certified to him not to be Juif. Among the other people interviewed one counts Cassius Clay (which evoked its future name change in Mohammed Ali), the lawyer of Jack Ruby, Sammy Davis Jr, Jim Brown, Johnny Carson, Quincy Jones, etc
Malcom X
One of the most famous interviews of Alex Halley is that of Malcom X, preceding its collaboration with the autobiography by the activist. Later, Halley anonymously wrote the Autobiographie of Malcom X , published in 1965, and based on interviews carried out little before the death of Malcom X.
The book was a great success and was quoted by Time magazine like one of the ten greater tests of the 20th century.
Roots
In 1976, Alex Halley publishes Roots: The Saga off year American Family (the title is translated into French by Racines ), a novel based on the history of its own family, and which starts with the history of Kunta Kinte, removed in Gambia in 1767 to be sold like slave in America.
Halley affirms being the descendant with the seventh generation of Kunta Kinté, and worked, on the basis of family history transmitted from generation to generation, during twelve years with his novel between research, voyages and writing. He in particular went in the village of Jufureh, in Gambia, village of birth of Kunta Kinté, where he met a Griot which told him the history of the removal of Kunta. He also recalled the course of the Lord Ligonier , the ship of which he thinks that he transported his ancestor towards America.
Halley tells that one of the moments more moving by its life was its visit (on September 29th, 1967) of Annapolis, in the Maryland, at the place even where 200 years earlier its ancestor unloaded.
Racines was an immense success and is translated into 37 languages. IT gained the Prix Pulitzer, was adapted in televised series (1977), and was a record of audience with 130 million televiewers. It was also at the origin of an renewed interest for the Généalogie with the the United States.
Discusses surrounding its works
If 1977 were the year of the dedication for Halley, accepted in addition to the Pulitzer Price the Spingarn medal of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement off Colored People), its notoriety was tarnished since 1978 by charges of plagiarism. With resulting from his lawsuit, Halley accepted an arrangement by amicable agreement and poured 650.000 dollars with Harold Courlander of which he admitted to have begun again broad passages of his book The African in Racines . Halley affirmed that its appropriation of the litigious passages had not been intentional. In 1988 Margareth Walker continued it in his turn showing Racines to violate the royalties of his novel Jubilee . Its complaint was rejected by the court.
Works
- The Autobiography off Malcolm X (1965)
- Roots: The Saga off year American Family (1976)
- has off Different Kind Christmas (1988)
- Queen: The Story off year American Family (1993)
- Mama Flora' S Family (1998)
Sources
Simple: Alex Halley