The Pulitzer Prize that Alex Haley won for "Roots" sold for $50,000 Saturday at an estate auction held to pay off debts the late author left behind.
A friend of the writer bought the prize to donate to Haley's boyhood home museum in Henning, Tenn., where Haley is buried, estate attorney Paul Coleman said. George Jewett of San Francisco made the winning bid by telephone."I think that's what we wanted to happen and it did happen," said George Haley, the author's brother and administrator of his estate.
The sale was part of the three-day auction to satisfy about $1.5 million in debts Haley left at his death in February of a heart attack.
Auctioneer Kimball Sterling said it was the first Pulitzer to be sold. Pulitzers have been awarded by Columbia University since 1917.
Haley received his Pulitzer in 1977 for fiction for "Roots: The Saga of an American Family," an international best seller that later became a television miniseries seen by 130 million viewers.
The Jewett Family Foundation made two other purchases it will donate to the Henning museum. It bought two wooden African masks and a glass frame containing two unopened sardine cans and 18 cents - all that Haley told people he had before the success of "Roots."
The masks sold for $2,000. The sardines for $10,000.
Negotiations were continuing over the sale of Haley's 125-acre farm in Norris, 20 miles north of Knoxville. Coleman said offers exceeded the $950,000 needed to pay off the mortgage.
The attorney estimated the auction had sold more than $800,000 worth of other property - enough to satisfy debts that forced the auction.
Some were upset the auction was held at all, saying items of the revered writer were priceless and should go to a museum.
As it turned out, much will go to museums. The Tennessee State Museum, which runs the Henning museum, bought Haley's director's chair from "Roots" for $2,000; the hat worn by the Chicken George character in the miniseries for $2,500; a fiddle Haley had as a boy for $3,500; and various awards, keys to cities and other memora-bilia.
The best buy probably was a $10 box of miscellaneous office supplies. It contained two pairs of Haley's glasses.
Valarie Kinkade, curator of the U.S. Coast Guard Museum in New London, Conn., made the discovery and shared the prize with the Tennessee State Museum - each getting one pair of glasses.