I blogged about Alex Haley’s Scots’ roots in very early March. Now I see that USA Today is again reporting on his Scottish roots. And of course, his nephew Chris Haley, has those same roots, so he’s having quite a time with it. Following is a teaser:
When Alex Haley’s your uncle, people assume you know everything there is to know about your roots. But Roots, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book whose veracity has been challenged over the years, deals mainly with Alex Haley’s mother’s family.
Thanks to technology that became available after the author’s death in 1992, nephew Chris Haley recently uncovered a new branch of his family tree that extends not from Africa but from Scotland, through Alex Haley’s father’s family. And it appears to confirm part of the Haley family history recounted in the novel Queen.
Chris Haley, 46, the son of Alex Haley’s brother, Julius, directs research for the study of the legacy of slavery for the state of Maryland. “When I was very young, my grandmother gave me a copy of A Pictorial History of the Negro in America,” says Haley, a native of Washington, D.C., who’s also an actor, singer, writer and radio show host. “That cemented in me a passion for black history.”
Read the full article in the April 6, 2009 edition of USAToday.com.
