Archive for Publishing

Writing “Roots”

In 1976, a couple years after I got started in Genealogy, Alex Haley wrote a book called “Roots.” Soon this book was turned into the first Mini-Series on television. For a week in 1977, millions of viewers glued themselves to their televisions and a bowl of popcorn and watched this slave saga unfold from the jungles of Africa to the plantations of Virginia.

It was a smash hit! It spawned a sequel, it made Alex Haley famous overnight!

And it was all based on a flawed Genealogy, poor research techniques and plagiarism.

It was fiction.

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