Alex Haley, noted black historian, whose 1976 book "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" made an unusual contribution to scholarship as well as humanity, passed away this week of a heart attack. The book won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1977, and the TV series based on the book was the most successful mini-series in television history.
More than just history, Haley's book unlocked a wave of public enthusiasm for family history and genealogical research, particularly among African-Americans, whose ancestral records have always been meager.Haley spent 12 years on three continents pouring over plantation files and census reports in more than 50 libraries and public records offices, unscrambling the crabbed handwriting of 1,023 ships' records to trace his African past to Kunta Kinte, a 17-year-old Mandika tribesman kidnaped on the banks of the Gambia River in 1767 and put aboard the slave ship Lord Ligonier, bound for Annapolis, Md.
Until "Roots," Haley's reputation was a modest one of a magazine writer who received hundreds of rejection slips over a period of eight years before he sold his first article - tribute to the virtue of persistence.
It was not until the age of 55 that he shot to fame and fortune as the first American of African slave descent to delineate that descent with precision.
Haley was a gentle, quiet man, described by some who interviewed him as unpretentious. He was in much demand on college campuses, including Utah. Brigham Young University conferred an honorary doctorate on him in 1977 for "generating more interest in genealogy than any other event in American history, making it the third most popular hobby in the country."
In 1980, as principal speaker at the World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City, Haley praised the LDS Church for its devotion to family records, and said that had he known of the LDS Family History Library he could have saved two years of genea-logical research.
Haley's best seller was considered a triumph of faith, creativity and scholarship, a unique contribution to American history and an invaluable reaffirmation of the black heritage. He will be severely missed, but his monumental legacy is secure.