After retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard, Haley began another phase of his career in journalism. He eventually became a senior editor for ''
Reader's Digest'' magazine. Haley wrote an article for the magazine about his brother George's struggles to succeed as one of the first black students at a Southern law school.
Playboy magazine Haley conducted the first interview for
Playboy magazine. Haley elicited candid comments from jazz musician
Miles Davis about his thoughts and feelings on racism in an interview he had started, but not finished, for
Show Business Illustrated, another magazine created by
Playboy founder
Hugh Hefner that folded in early 1962. Haley completed the interview and it appeared in
Playboy's September 1962 issue. That interview set the tone for what became a significant feature of the magazine. Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s
Playboy Interview with Haley was the longest he ever granted to any publication. Throughout the 1960s, Haley was responsible for some of the magazine's most notable interviews, including one with
George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the
American Nazi Party. He agreed to meet with Haley only after gaining assurance from the writer that he was not Jewish. Haley remained professional during the interview, although Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout it. (The interview was recreated in
Roots: The Next Generations, with
James Earl Jones as Haley and
Marlon Brando as Rockwell.) Haley also interviewed
Muhammad Ali, who spoke about changing his name from Cassius Clay. Other interviews include
Jack Ruby's defense attorney
Melvin Belli, entertainer
Sammy Davis Jr., football player
Jim Brown, TV host
Johnny Carson, and music producer
Quincy Jones.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X '', first edition (1965)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, was Haley's first book. It describes the trajectory of Malcolm X's life from street criminal to national spokesman for the
Nation of Islam to his conversion to
Sunni Islam. It also outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of
black pride,
black nationalism, and
pan-Africanism. Haley wrote an epilogue to the book summarizing the end of Malcolm X's life, including
his assassination in New York's
Audubon Ballroom. Haley
ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and Malcolm X's February 1965 assassination. The two men had first met in 1960 when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for ''Reader's Digest
. They met again when Haley interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy''.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been a consistent best-seller since its 1965 publication.
The New York Times reported that six million copies of the book had sold by 1977. In 1998,
Time magazine ranked
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of the 10 most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. In 1966, Haley received the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for
The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Super Fly T.N.T. In 1973, Haley wrote his only screenplay,
Super Fly T.N.T. The film starred and was directed by
Ron O'Neal.
Roots '', first edition (1976) In 1976, Haley published
Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based on his family's history, going back to slavery days. It started with the story of
Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in
The Gambia in 1767 and transported to the
Province of Maryland to be sold as a
slave. Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and his work on the novel involved twelve years of research, intercontinental travel, and writing. He went to the village of
Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and listened to a tribal historian (
griot) tell the story of Kinte's capture. Haley stated that the most emotional moment of his life occurred on September 29, 1967, when he stood at the site in
Annapolis, Maryland, where his ancestor had arrived from Africa in chains exactly 200 years before. A memorial depicting Haley reading a story to young children gathered at his feet has since been erected in the center of Annapolis.
Roots was eventually published in 37 languages. Haley won a
special Pulitzer Prize for the work in 1977. The same year,
Roots was adapted as a popular
television miniseries of the same name by
ABC. The serial reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers.
Roots emphasized that black Americans have a long history and that not all of that history is necessarily lost, as many believed. Its popularity also sparked a greatly increased public interest in
genealogy.
Plagiarism lawsuits and other criticism Roots faced two lawsuits that charged plagiarism and copyright infringement. The lawsuit brought by
Margaret Walker was dismissed, but
Harold Courlander's suit was successful. Courlander's novel
The African describes an African boy who is captured by slave traders, follows him across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and describes his attempts to hold on to his African traditions on a plantation in America. Haley admitted that some passages from
The African had made it into
Roots, settling the case out of court in 1978 and paying Courlander $650,000 (). In his biography of Haley, the academic Robert J. Norrell uses court transcripts and eyewitness testimony to show the judge in this trial, Nixon-appointee
Robert Ward, not only lacked experience but was hostile to the defendant. According to an anonymous source, Judge Ward made it clear he thought Haley incapable of writing
Roots at all. Genealogists have also disputed Haley's research and conclusions in
Roots. The Gambian
griot turned out not to be a real
griot, and the story of Kunta Kinte appears to have been a case of
circular reporting, in which Haley's own words were repeated back to him. None of the written records in Virginia and North Carolina line up with the
Roots story until after the Civil War. Some elements of Haley's family story can be found in the written records, but with a different genealogy than what he described in
Roots. Haley and his work have been excluded from the
Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, despite his status as the United States' best-selling black author.
Harvard University professor
Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the anthology's general editors, has denied that the controversies surrounding Haley's works are the reason for this exclusion. In 1998, Gates acknowledged the doubts surrounding Haley's claims about
Roots, saying, "Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang.
Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship." In 2023,
Jonathan Eig suggested that Haley had made a number of fabrications in his 1965
Playboy interview with
Martin Luther King Jr., including embellishing his criticisms of Malcolm X. ==Later life and death==