Editing Alex Haley (section)

===Plagiarism lawsuits and other criticism===

[[File:Henning Alex Haley Historic Marker.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Historical marker in front of Alex Haley's boyhood home at Henning, Tennessee in 2007]]

{{See also|Harold Courlander#Roots and plagiarism}}
{{See also|Roots: The Saga of an American Family#Historical accuracy}}

''Roots'' faced two lawsuits that charged plagiarism and copyright infringement. The lawsuit brought by [[Margaret Walker]] was dismissed, but [[Harold Courlander]]'s suit was successful. Courlander's novel ''The African'' describes an African boy who is captured by slave traders, follows him across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and describes his attempts to hold on to his African traditions on a plantation in America. Haley admitted that some passages from ''The African'' had made it into ''Roots'', settling the case out of court in 1978 and paying Courlander $650,000 ({{Inflation|US|650000|1978|fmt=eq}}).<ref>{{cite news | author=Stanford, Phil | title=Roots and Grafts on the Haley Story | work=The Washington Star | page=F.1 | date=April 8, 1979}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/15/archives/roots-plagiarism-suit-is-settled-roots-plagiarism-suit-is-settled.html |title='Roots' Plagiarism Suit Is Settled |first=Arnold H. |last=Lubasch |date=December 15, 1978 |work=The New York Times |access-date=January 29, 2018 |archive-date=February 14, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180214001858/http://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/15/archives/roots-plagiarism-suit-is-settled-roots-plagiarism-suit-is-settled.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In his biography of Haley, the academic Robert J. Norrell uses court transcripts and eyewitness testimony to show the judge in this trial, Nixon-appointee [[Robert Joseph Ward|Robert Ward]], not only lacked experience but was hostile to the defendant. According to an anonymous source, Judge Ward made it clear he thought Haley incapable of writing ''Roots'' at all.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Norrell |first=Robert J. |title=Alex Haley and the books that changed a nation |date=2015 |publisher=St. Martin's Press |isbn=978-1-137-27960-6 |location=New York}}</ref>

Genealogists have also disputed Haley's research and conclusions in ''Roots''. The Gambian ''griot'' turned out not to be a real ''griot'', and the story of Kunta Kinte appears to have been a case of [[circular reporting]], in which Haley's own words were repeated back to him.<ref name=ottaway1977>{{cite news|last1=Ottaway|first1=Mark|title=Tangled Roots|agency=The Sunday Times|date=April 10, 1977|pages=17, 21}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">MacDonald, Edgar. "A Twig Atop Running Water – Griot History," ''Virginia Genealogical Society Newsletter'', July/August 1991</ref> None of the written records in Virginia and North Carolina line up with the ''Roots'' story until after the Civil War. Some elements of Haley's family story can be found in the written records, but with a different genealogy than what he described in ''Roots''.<ref name="mills1984">{{cite journal|last1=Mills|first1=Elizabeth Shown|last2=Mills|first2=Gary B.|title=The Genealogist's Assessment of Alex Haley's Roots|journal=National Genealogical Society Quarterly|date=March 1984|volume=72|issue=1}}</ref>

Haley and his work have been excluded from the ''Norton Anthology of African-American Literature'', despite his status as the United States' best-selling black author. [[Harvard University]] professor [[Henry Louis Gates Jr.]], one of the anthology's general editors, has denied that the controversies surrounding Haley's works are the reason for this exclusion. In 1998, Gates acknowledged the doubts surrounding Haley's claims about ''Roots'', saying, "Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. ''Roots'' is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship."<ref>{{cite news|last=Beam |first=Alex |title=The Prize Fight Over Alex Haley's Tangled 'Roots' |newspaper=The Boston Globe |date=October 30, 1998}}</ref>

In 2023, [[Jonathan Eig]] suggested that Haley had made a number of fabrications in his 1965 ''[[Playboy]]'' interview with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], including embellishing his criticisms of Malcolm X.<ref name="WashingtonPost">{{cite news |last=Brockell |first=Gillian |title=MLK's famous criticism of Malcolm X was a 'fraud,' author finds |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/05/10/mlk-malcolm-x-playboy-alex-haley/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=May 10, 2023 |access-date=May 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230510150456/https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/05/10/mlk-malcolm-x-playboy-alex-haley/ |archive-date=May 10, 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>