Alex Haley

Alex Haley (1921–1992) was an American writer best known for Roots: The Saga of an American Family, published in 1976. The saga, tracing his ancestry from an enslaved African named Kunta Kinte to the author's own family in the American South, electrified the world and its television adaptation became the most-watched event in American broadcast history.

Haley had earlier co-written The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, establishing himself as a major figure in Black American letters. Roots, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and translated into dozens of languages, reoriented how millions of Americans understood slavery, genealogy and national identity.