Life
Natural around Ithaca, New York, Haley grew up in the Southern U.S. & served in the Coast Guard on May Two dozen, 1939. He enlisted as the Seaman then became a third class Petty Officer in the rate of Mess Attendant, one of the simply enlisted designators open to African Americans at that instance.

Fallowing World War II, Haley was able to petition a Coast Guard to allow him to cross rate into a field of journalism, & by 1949 he had be the Number 1 Class Petty Officer in the rate of Journalist. He late advanced to the rank of Chief Petty Officer and held this grade until his retirement from a Coast Guard around 1959.

Alex Haley's awards & decorations from either a Coast Guard include a American Defense Service Medal (w/"Sea" clasp), American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Coast Guard Good Conduct Medal (w/1 silver and 1 bronze service star), Korean Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and the Coast Guard Expert Marksmanship Medal.

Haley is as well entitled to the Korean War Service Medal, but never received this decoration inside his life-time when it was retroactively issued decade years fallowing his dying.

When the retirement he became a senior editor for ''Reader's Digest. He is likewise noted for getting done many interviews for Playboy Magazine in the US: virtually all famously sustaining U.s. Nazi Person figurehead George Lincoln Rockwell. Around 1965 Haley wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X'', based on interviews conducted shortly before Malcolm's death (& sustaining an epilogue for fallowing it). A book was published around 1972 and had the brobdingnagian profits, existence late known as by Time magazine one of the tenner first nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Inside 1976 Haley published Roots, a fictionalized account of his personal's history, starting by having a story of Kunta Kinte, kidnapped in Gambia in 1767 to be sold as a slave in North America. Roots won a Pulitzer Prize and went on to turn into the popular television miniseries. the book & film were two successful, reaching a record-breaking 130 milliin viewers while it was serialized on television. Roots emphasized that African Americans likewise have a yearn history & that non tons of that history is misplaced, when numbers of believed. Its popularity sparked an increased public interest inside genealogy, as well.

In the late 1980s, Haley began working on the second historical novel according to another branch of his personal, traced across his grandma Queen - a girl of a melanize buckle down woman & her whiten master. Haley died prior to he can complete a story; at his asking, it was finished by David Stevens and was published as ''Alex Haley's Queen. It was later mass produced into the motion-picture show around 1993.

Plagiarism Controversy
Alex Haley researched Roots for Twelve years; a Roots'' TV series adaptation aired in 1977. the equivalent month, Haley won a Pulitzer Prize for a book and the Spingarn Medal as well. Haley's fame was marred by plagiarism charges, and when the test, he was permitted to settle out-of-court for $650,000, getting admitted that he copied big passages of Roots from either A African by Harold Courlander. Within 1988 Margaret Walker also sued him, claiming Roots violated the right of first publication for her novel Jubilee. A experience was dismissed per court. Reportedly he paid her the civil judgement of $650,000 for plagiarism.

Haley's function is controversial for more reasons. He has been accused of fictionalising confessedly stories around two his book Roots & A Autobiography Of Malcolm X. 10's personal & members of The Nation of Islam accused Haley of changing selected parts of his story.

Within 1999, the U.S. Coast Guard honored Haley by naming a cutter Alex Haley after him.

Books
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) A Different Kind of Christmas (1988) ''Alex Haley's Queen: The Story of an American Family'' (1993) (completed by David Stevens after Haley's death) ''Mama Flora's Family'' (1998) (completed by David Stevens after Haley's death)