Talk:Alex Haley/Archive 1

Archive 1

Sensationalism?

The sentence, "Rockwell held Haley at gunpoint during the interview." is a bit disingenuous and sensationalistic. I want to change that to something that reflects the facts of the interview, having recently read the full transcript of it, but I want to post this to explain why in detail I have changed it.

I am not changing it to make Mr. Rockwell more palatable or appealing. Wanted that to be clear to my fellow editors.

Some lines from the article written by Haley himself:

"Then, with the burly guard standing at attention about halfway between us, he took out a pearl-handled revolver, placed it pointedly on the arm of his chair, sat back and spoke for the first time: 'I'm ready if you are.' Without any further pleasantries, I turned on my machine."

So, yes there was a gun present, not pointed or used in a threatening manner. Continuing, the transcript begins:

HALEY: Before we begin, Commander, I wonder if you'd mind telling me why you're keeping that pistol there at your elbow, and this armed bodyguard between us.

ROCKWELL: Just a precaution. You may not be aware of the fact that I have received literally thousands of threats against my life. Most of them are from cranks, but some of them haven't been; there are bullet holes all over the out side of this building. Just last week, two gallon jugs of flaming gasoline were flung against the house right under my window. I keep this gun within reach and a guard beside me during interviews because I've been attacked too many times to take any chances. I haven't yet been jumped by an impostor, but it wasn't long ago that 17 guys claiming to be from a university came here to "interview" me; nothing untoward happened, but we later found out they were armed and planned to tear down the flag, burn the joint and beat me up. Only the fact that we were ready for that kind of rough stuff kept it from happening.

We've never yet had to hurt anybody, but only because I think they all know we're ready to fight anytime. If you're who you claim to be, you have nothing to fear.

HALEY: I don't.

So we see here standard practice for Rockwell, understandly as his ideology is not the most popular in history. And we see Alex Haley expressing no fear, rather courageously I might say, during the interview nor did he feel threatened as his response indicates.

So, is "held at gunpoint" accurate? This implies having your mobility denied you by force of arms. This is not the case here. Alex Haley left when ready safe and sound. I encourage editors to read the transcript, do a google search.

I hope this explains my changes.

Joey 17:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Publication date of Malcolm X biography?

This article says it was published in 1972, while The Autobiography of Malcolm X gives a publication date of 1965. Please advise. AxelBoldt 17:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

clean up needed

That large paragraph in the Plagiarism Controversy section needs to be cleaned up: it's a mess. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.32.60.96 (talk • contribs).

It feels like it was copied and pasted from an article or a book, so it could be a copyright violation, and it cites some interviews and other texts without specific references, so if the anonymous user who dropped it here wrote it, it could be original research. Also, the anonymous users deleted the list of works from the text, so I'm going to revert the article to the previous version and I'll move the paragraph here, at least for a while. GhePeU 19:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree this needs to be cleaned up. The part at the end even asking a question to the reader is just embarrassing and not neutral at all.

Text posted by anonymous user User:89.48.183.255:

The African American community found its representative voice with the appearance of Roots especially on television. Eventually the narration offered a view on slavery from a perspective which was perceived by the black people within the country as unquestionable truth and history. Its focus on their heritage, their contribution to America’s history, and their presentation as a nation gave black people a new identity. In particular in a time of racial discrimination of the 70’s its plot had an immense impact on the self-perception and self-confidence of many black Americans. “Mr. Haley gave African Americans a renewed sense of themselves, an understanding of their historical journey, a refreshed sense of pride in their heritage.” However, the popularity of Roots was not only a blessing for its author. Two writers sued Haley for plagiarism shortly after the publication of the world famous novel. Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander pressed charges against Haley in 1977. The black author of Jubilee available in 1966, “a novel about black people in Georgia during the Civil War era”, lost her suit due to lack of evidence, though. At the same time, another writer of a “relatively unknown slavery novel The African” had been suing Haley for the same reasons. The African by Harold Courlander, a 70 years old white writer from Md?, showes astonishing similarities in sequences of happenings as well as in expressions with Haley’s book. So for example:

The African: “How do I do this thing? Do it by being a no-good, lazy, shiftless, head scratchin’ nigger, that’s how.”

Roots: “Reckon since you been born I been actin like de no-good, lazy, shiftless, head-scratchin’ nigger white folks says us is.”

Haley responded to this accusation that a head scratchin, lazy nigger is “just a cliché of black life” white people have, and that he had never read Courlander’s book until 1977. Although Haley denied having copied any parts of Roots knowingly he lost this suit. Admitting that it might have been possible that some excerpts of The African had found its way into his book as that some of his helpers while the research for Roots gave him handwritten materials, he apologized by Mr. Courlander and settled down for a payment.

In 1977 another incident moved the admirers of Haley’s work. Mark Ottaway questioned in an article of The Sunday Times of London the as fact portrayed content of Roots. While his investigations on the truthful substance of Roots, Ottaway had discovered that “there appeared to be no factual bases for Mr. Haley’s conclusion that he had actually traced his genealogy back to Kunta Kinte in the village of Juffure, Gambia, and that Kunta Kinte had been captured by slavers in 1767.” The article questioned the reliability of the griot, Haley’s research in the shipping records of the Lloyd’s company, and his misinterpretation of the British colonial documents of that time. Haley, though, never said that his book was not fictionalized at all. He confirmed in his book that the entire story was based on the oral tradition of either his own family or on that what he had heard in Africa. In his book you can find the quotation:

Since I wasn’t yet around when most of the story occurred, by far most of the dialogue and most of the incidents are of necessity a novelized amalgam of what I know took place together with what my researching led me to plausibly feel took place.

Furthermore, Haley called his work neither a fact nor a fiction. He coined the phrase “faction” which intention it is to combine both of the two ingredients into one successfully written story.

Fact or Fiction

“The Sunday Times of London article contended that the success of Mr. Haley’s work was based on its presentation as fact.” Weather this was the reason for its worldwide popularity or weather for its symbolic meaning for the African Americans that caused the great acceptance among its audience is hard to say. Controversial discussions evolved among historians on that issue. Mark Ottaway’s accusations had achieved to put a shadow over Haley’s clean reputation as a reliable history writer, though. “A fraud’s a fraud” answered Professor Woodward of Yale to this question. His colleague, Professor Edmund S. Morgan of Yale, on the other hand said that “errors about the location of the village are not very important – nobody will deny there was a slave trade.” Despite of to what extent Alex Haley had to fill his research with readable content in order to create a connection between the two continents, most historians agreed that his narrative was truthful. Slave trade, rape, and other atrocities had been caused to the black population of America by the hands of white folks over centuries. This is a fact that cannot be overseen by anybody. As Professor Fogel commented toward a reporter of The New York Times in 1977: “Publisher and author had erred in ‘going along with’ a description of the book as a kind of history, but it would be wrong ‘to diminish the book’ by pointing out that there were many errors.”

Blanking

Please stop blanking large parts of this page with no discussion. Sonria 21:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

1767 United States

I've changed the reference to Kinti being taken to the United States in 1767. It read oddly as the United States didn't exists until 1776. Apepper 20:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

======

10/5/07, edits from 68.217.138.202 -- Nobile's V.V. article is commonly mis-cited on the Internet as "Alex Haley's Hoax"; however, the correct title is "Uncovering Roots." The author's name and publication date are correct as listed. I have corrected the title and added the page numbers for the article. My source for this information is a reprint of the article from microfilm which I bought from NYPL Express (http://www.nypl.org/express/) some time ago. Obviously, whoever inserted the original citation had never even seen the actual article, but was blindly copying information off some web page.

BIRTHPLACE

So, was he born in Ithaca or in Rock Hill? The sidebar thing says rock hill. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.84.231.213 (talk) 04:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

He was actually born in Ithaca, NY. His father was finishing his degree in agriculture, while his mother, was studying at the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. But 6 weeks after his birth his mother and father brought Alex to Henning, Tn. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamishas2003 (talk • contribs) 20:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism of Alex Haley article

It seems like everyday this article is vandalized by unregistered users and I, or someone else who happens to watch this page, must spend five to ten minutes cleaning up someones mess. I watch this article because he was a fellow retired Coast Guardsman and others watch the article for other reasons. I would rather be spending what limited time I have to devote to Wikipedia writing and improving articles rather than hauling out the garbage every day. Isn't there something that can be done about the repeated vandalism to this article? I am strongly for manditory registration before editing. I have about 30 minutes a day that I feel like I can devote to WP, and 10 of it is spent doing something that should not have to be done. Can editing of this article be semi-protected? Cuprum17 (talk) 00:49, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Profiles in Courage

Does someone have a citation for the claim that Haley ghost wrote Profiles in Courage? All the evidence I've seen say it was the work of Theodore Sorenson. 67.165.41.137 (talk) 02:11, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Removing a paragraph about Autobiography of Malcolm X

The plagiarism section has the following paragraph in it:

"Haley has been accused of fictionalizing true stories in both his book Roots and The Autobiography Of Malcolm X. Malcolm X's family and members of The Nation of Islam accused Haley of changing selected parts of his story. He left out three chapters from the Autobiography which have only been seen by several people. These chapters reportedly expand on the two organizations that Malcolm had created, and offered more evidence into the role the FBI and CIA possibly had in his death. This information was made public on Pacifica Network's "Democracy Now . "

The only citation provided for any of this is that of a radio interview with a Professor Manning Marable. However, in reading the transcript of the interview I note that:

1) He says nothing at all about Malcolm X's family or the NOI asserting that Haley "changed selected parts" of Malcolm's story; and
2) Although he does mention that there are three missing chapters from the autobiography, seen by only a select few, he says nothing whatsoever about those chapters offering evidence of CIA and/or FBI involvement in the assassination. The professor himself talks about the possibility of FBI involvement; but he does not say that there's anything about that in Haley's missing chapters.

As such, I'm removing the paragraph. If someone can provide better citations for the assertions in the paragraph, please do so when adding it back. 12.155.58.181 (talk) 01:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

References

Follow-up to the above. I found this additional interview with the professor. I suspect that whoever wrote the part about the CIA/FBI in the above paragraph may have read this and misinterpreted what he or she read. The professor is saying not that the three chapters reveal evidence of FBI involvement, but that the three chapters delve into Malcolm's new world (post-Mecca) world view and plans to form a broadly united Black front. The professor then offers his own interpretation that this world view and such plans, as illustrated in the three chapters, would have been threatening to the FBI and NYPD, thus giving them additional motive to want him eliminated. A reasonable hypothesis, but the salient point here is that the view that what's in the chapters speaks to the possibility of government involvement is an indirect position coming from the professor, not anything coming directly from the actual content of the missing chapters themselves. 12.155.58.181 (talk) 01:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Dubious

Alex Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy; the interview was published in May 1963. Afterward, the two men began a collaboration on Malcolm X's autobiography, which continued until his assassination in February 1965. Haley didn't write a memoir of Malcolm X for Playboy in 1965, unless that phrase is intended to mean that Haley wrote an obituary of Malcolm X for the magazine. Perhaps Playboy published an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in late 1965? In any event, the article needs clarification and a source. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 05:00, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Co-author versus Collaborator

All sources I have give Haley a co-author credit on the Malcom X book, so I changed collaborator to co-author. I can't find any sources that use the term collaborator, some editions even list him as the first author. If anyone thinks this usage is contentious lets discuss.--GabeMc (talk) 01:56, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Evidently you didn't look very hard, because the New York Times article cited at the end of the sentence[1] says exactly that. Amazon, on the other hand, doesn't say anything about being co-author, and it isn't a reliable source in any event. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Is Google a reliable source? --GabeMc (talk) 03:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Malik you are correct, the NY Times article that includes the book as one of his writings does in fact use the term "collaborator". -- GabeMc (talk) 03:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Is the NY Times online a RS? --GabeMc (talk) 03:05, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you for real? Books that are reliable sources are no less reliable because they are accessed through Google Books. And yes, The New York Times is considered a reliable source. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:08, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

On September 20th 1970 the New York Times called Haley the co-author of the Autobiography. "At a luncheon yesterday afternoon, Alex Haley, co-author of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," related how he traced This own family lineage from his native..." http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C13F73D5416768FDDA90A94D1405B808BF1D3&scp=6&sq=alex%20haley%20co-author&st=cse

I don't know what you're going on about. The article says he's the co-author. All I did was remove your link to Amazon, because that's not a reliable source. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:22, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

"Elijah Muhammad"

I would consider this a minor edit, but upon reading about previous contentious issues on this page, I decided to write an explanation to change the spelling of Elijah Muhammad in this article. I was able to find nno evidence anywhere that his name was ever spelled "Muhammed," as it was in this article, except as a typo. Thanks. StephenFHammer (talk) 21:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I wrote that section and I screwed up the spelling. Thanks for fixing it. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 22:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Hostility

Why is this wiki article so hostile towards Haley? He was just a dumb aass neegro dont read this.T his article has a distinct negative approach towards Alex Haley. Aren't Wikipedia articles supposed to be neutral? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.102.202.10 (talk) 02:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Redundancy needs fixing: accusations of copying are covered in both the "Roots" section and the "Other Criticisms" section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.181.239.185 (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Toby

Screenplay writer Bill Blinder claims he coined the name Toby, insisting on this name as recognizably demeaning and had an animated argument about this with Haley, who wished to use the bonafide name identified in his researches. Thus "Toby" is an utter and acknowledged work of fiction and geneologist should note this well. Blinder says this in his interview available at www.emmytvlegends.org/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.151.34.143 (talk) 02:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Plagerism

"The case was dismissed by the court. Reportedly he paid her a civil judgement of $650,000 for plagiarism." This doesn't make sense. If it was dismissed, it judged against her.

I think you might have misread this section. The case with Ms. Walker was dismissed, and she didn't get anything. It was actually the case with Harold Courlander, where they setteled out of court and he recieved $650,000. It was said that Alex took a 100 word segement from his book The African.--Let's build each other up! 20:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamishas2003 (talk • contribs)

There are paragraphs of text in the "Roots" section about plagiarism which are duplicated in the "Other criticism" section. What is the purpose of presenting the same material twice in the article? Which section should it be in? Should there be a section dedicated to the plagiarism, and another one to "presenting fiction as history" in the "Roots"section. Edison (talk) 20:50, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Other books by Haley not mentioned

I just wonder why no mention is made of the other books he wrote. I can remember Airport and Wheels but there was more. Airport also became a major movie. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.160.22.8 (talk) 07:58, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

You're confusing Alex Haley (the subject of this article) with Arthur Hailey. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 13:24, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

"The activist"

In the summary of an edit I made to this article today, I wrote: 'I think referring to Malcolm X (or any subject) with substitutions like "the activist" is inappropriate editorializing.'

DocRushing replied, in another edit summary: "Inappropriate editorializing" to refer to Malcolm X as an activist? Hmmm".

I thought I should clarify this. I don't mean to suggest that claiming that Malcom X is an activist is either inappropriate or editorializing. Instead, I dislike using anything other than names or pronouns to refer to people in Wikipedia articles. For example, until I edited it, the Yeezus article used to refer to Kanye West in several places as "the rapper". I'm not disputing West is a rapper, but this to me feels like crass prose writing, obviously trying to avoid repeating "West" or "him" or "he" too many times in a sentence. It makes things too colourful and poetic and self-consciously prose-y and non-neutral. I also think it's a bit cheesy. More than anything, it's unnecessary, and usually only means the sentence needs to be rewritten. Popcornduff (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, variety in terminology helps us to avoid monotonous repetition.

Yes, some writers sometimes overuse that technique, and sometimes their work appears forced or exaggerated.

However, I see that you've said absolutely that you "dislike using anything other than names or pronouns to refer to people in Wikipedia articles".

That personal preference of yours denies yourself the use of a helpful tool, and it reduces the resources available to you in your writing.

It's OK for you to do it that way in your own work.

But please refrain from imposing your own preferences and limitations onto other users and their work.

Cheers!

Doc – DocRushing (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC).

I think it's rather loaded and unfair to accuse me of "imposing my own preferences on others"; I'm sure you've made many edits ("imposed your preferences") that others have disagreed with too. Assume good faith!

I think Wikipedia articles should be written as simply and unambiguously as possible. I feel using substitutions has an unencyclopaedic "editorial" tone, and it's unnecessary because the sentence can always be rewritten to no detriment. (I don't think the sentence as it stands in this article is any worse off.) Popcornduff (talk) 00:31, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

comments

I have just seen a Discovery program saying Alex was born in 1921, not 1925

PD photo of him in the coast guard at [2]

race

while alex was primarly African shouldn't we mention his White and Cherokee backround?yes yes pease understand

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Main Article Picture

I think a change to a more later picture of the subject is warranted. The Coast Guard Picture can be used in one of the sections. TheTBirdusThoracis (talk) 05:26, 27 May 2018 (UTC) TheTBirdusThoracis (talk) 05:26, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't care for that picture either, but Wikipedia has very strict rules about the use of "non-free" images. That's the only "free" image of Haley that we have right now, so unless you can find a better image that's not subject to copyright, we have to choose between a bad picture and no picture. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 13:12, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Genealogist category?

Alex Haley should be removed from the category of being a genealogist as Roots was a fictional novel, and he made up his genealogy to sell a book/promote a TV film.100.34.201.47 (talk) 14:58, 7 July 2019 (UTC)