Alex Haley honored on 100th birthday
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Remembering his 100th birthday, Maryland’s capital city gave honors this weekend to the late author Alex Haley and his extended family, citing his research that led to a greater understanding by all Americans about slavery’s legacy.
Haley’s family received keys to the city of Annapolis in a gathering Saturday, the Capital Gazette reported.
As the writer of “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” an award-winning book and television series in the 1970s, Haley completed genealogical research that led him to discover he was a descendant of Kunta Kinte, a man kidnapped in Africa, enslaved and sold at City Dock in Annapolis.
Haley died in 1992 and would have turned 100 on Aug. 11. Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley proclaimed Aug. 11 as Alex Haley Day in the city.
A memorial built at City Dock after Haley’s death includes a sculpture of Haley and three children listening to him. A marker to indicate the dock’s history as a port in the slave trade will be erected in a couple of months, local historian Janice Hayes- Williams said.
