“He made the perspective of originating in that world very real,” says Kunene, a UCLA professor of African literature and a member of the African National Congress. “Whatever the accuracy of the actual research, American historians owe a debt of gratitude to him for galvanizing interest in the academic world-and in the broader public, which we academics seldom manage to speak to effectively.”įor Mazisi Kunene, who has been in exile from his native South Africa for 32 years, Haley made the grim historic connections between Africa and America palpable. “The whole idea of blacks having this family history was a very important cultural contribution,” he adds. “Having said that,” Foner stresses, “Haley is very well respected (among historians) for having stimulated interest (in academia) in black genealogy and history and the heritage of African-Americans. In general, Foner says, historians tend to regard “Roots” as a work of fiction and doubt that Haley located his particular ancestor. Miller’s comments on Haley and history are echoed by Eric Foner, a visiting professor at UCLA who has written extensively on slavery, the Civil War and the Reconstruction period, including the widely acclaimed “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution.” Indeed, Miller and others were struck by the fact that Haley died in the month that is part of his legacy. Ethelbert Miller, director of the African-American Resource Center at Howard University in Washington.Īnd, Miller adds, “a considerable amount of credit” should go to Haley for raising the profile of Black History Month, observed in February. “I think that what Haley did was put the black family in the center of the history of this country,” says E. Myrlie Evers, widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, says Haley’s contributions to interracial understanding “are almost immeasurable,” adding that anyone reading his books “would be forever influenced in their thinking and their level of consciousness.” In person, Haley was impressive, he says, recalling a vivid memory of Haley lecturing to one of his college classes in the late 1960s: “It was one of the best classes I ever attended.”īeyond literature, Haley’s impact is both sociological and historical, others say. “Clearly, Haley is in some sense responsible for that, because ‘Roots’ puts the hyphen there,” he explains.

By sparking pride in black American roots, Johnson believes, Haley played a role in the growing preference for the term African-American.

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