Alex Haley’s Works Should Remain Intact

The plight of our fellow citizens in Florida, Louisiana and Hawaii provides an excellent analogy for what is now brewing in East Tennessee, the results of which will scatter hither and yon yet other precious landmarks of this fragile world: Alex Haley’s estate, which is to be auctioned later this week (reported Sunday and in Calendar, Sept. 8).

The untimely death of Haley in February (African-American History Month) devastated me. During the last dozen years, he had become a surrogate father to me and a source of professional inspiration. We became fast friends when he moved from Los Angeles to the foothills of East Tennessee--the locus of my interests on the social history of black people in Appalachia.

During this time, I became captivated not only by the pristine setting where he carved out the Haley Farm/Retreat, but I was also smitten more by the message of his life: “Find the Good and Praise It.”

I sat under the canopy of his spirit countless times and came to know a man, who having transcended race, was simply loving, caring, giving and humble: a man whose impact on others was measured not only by the classical writings that mark his place in history but by his quality of spirit. He clearly “cared less” about material possessions, although he had what many of us could never buy!

That the Haley estate is now poised to “deal with the tangible legacy that Alex left, including the farm . . . and most of Alex’s other possessions” devastates me more than his death. While I don’t care to know the “internality of things” (why was Alex broke?), I am overwhelmed by my powerlessness to interrupt or obstruct the privatization of his manuscripts, papers, memorabilia, collections, awards and other contributions to the non-material culture of America and the world.

Among the manuscripts to be auctioned are four sections of text that did not make it into the “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” letters shared between Haley and others who’ve made a difference in our collective cultural lives: from Malcolm X to George Lincoln Rockwell.

Soon, Haley’s “tangible” possessions will be the property of anonymous high bidders, who then will have in their parlors what will become little more than objects of idle ownership and brag.

“Oh that? That’s the derby worn by Chicken George in ‘Roots’! “ The same thing happened to Omoro and Binte Kinte’s son, Kunte. “Wonderful, isn’t it dahlin! We acquired Haley’s Pulitzer Prize at the auction . . . a most unique steal! Columbia University tells us that it has no recollection of a Pulitzer Prize ever being sold!”

“And that . . . well, our lawyer is negotiating a film script from Alex Haley’s letters to 20 students whose education he sponsored . . . it’s a great story!”

Alex Haley enriched and endeared himself to a generation of Americans. His love of family (the family of humankind) is both the tangible and intangible legacy being let for bid this week.

It is my hope that some of the people associated with Alex’s work (“Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”)--entertainers, writers, producers, wealthy individuals, corporations or universities--would intercede and preserve Haley’s works intact so that there will be free and open access to that which Haley gave so freely: the significance and uniqueness of the human soul and its aspirations.

Such cultural products belong in the National Afro-American Museum, National Archives or the Smithsonian Institution. Alex Haley was an American institution. We all should want that for Alex Haley and ourselves. Hurricane Auction Alex is one we can prevent.