ROOTED IN ANNAPOLIS
On his 100th birthday, the family of ‘Roots’ author given keys to the city
family of Alex Haley received the keys to the city of Annapolis Saturday, as his 100th birthday was celebrated at a waterside memorial for the author and his African ancestors.
Haley wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book and Emmy, Golden Globe and Peabody award-winning television series “Roots, the Saga of an American Family.” Years of genealogical research led Haley to the information that he was the seventh generation descendent of Kunta Kinte, a man kidnapped in Gambia, enslaved and sold at City Dock in Annapolis.
Haley shared that story and his heritage with the world. After his death in 1992 a memorial was built at City Dock, where the ship carrying Kinte landed. A sculpture of Haley faces East, as three children listen to him talk.
“The oral stories that we hear — the one that led Alex to his roots — are the stories that we need to have patience to listen to,” oral interpreter Scotti Preston said Saturday.
Historian Janice Hayes-Williams said a marker to indicate the site’s history as a port in the slave trade will be erected in a couple months. In 2019, UNESCO designated Annapolis as a Place of Memory in its Slave Route
Project.
“That’s how we got here. This is how I got here,” Hayes-Williams said.
Hayes-Williams said Haley’s work was just the beginning to teaching about and understanding the triangular trade. She said she has had her DNA sequenced, technology that was not available to Haley 40 years ago.
She said she was able to trace her family back to a ship carrying enslaved people that landed in Annapolis. She said she is
largely from Benin, Cameroon and Nigeria in Africa.
Haley died in 1992, and would have turned 100 on Aug. 11.
Alex Haley’s nephew and the Director of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland at the Maryland State Archives Chris Haley spoke about the value his uncle put on family and heritage.
“In his interactions with the loftiest of public officials or the meekest of private figures, he hoped and sought to get at the truth,” Chris Haley said.
Members of the U.S. Coast Guard were on hand Saturday, homage to Haley’s 20 years of service in the branch.
Mayor Gavin Buckley proclaimed Aug. 11 Alex Haley Day in the city.
“He was a trailblazer of the written word,” Buckley said.
Alex Haley prompted the creation of the “journalist” rating in the Coast Guard, which now falls under Public Affairs.
Buckley said Haley rolled up his sleeves decades ago and traced his family history back to City Dock. Today people come from all over the world to see the statue at City Dock, Buckley said, and to reflect on the stories Haley revealed in his writings.
“Alex Haley’s ties to Annapolis are rooted in the most barbaric chapter of the American story. It was a story that needed to be told, and he was the one to tell it,” Buckley said.
Haley also co-authored the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
“The keys to this city have always been our history and our culture,” Del. Shaneka Henson, D-Annapolis, said, thanking Haley’s family.
“He was able to put a face on this city that wasn’t just Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, but was my ancestors and your ancestors contributing to what Annapolis is today,” she said.
Convener of the Caucus of African-American Leaders Carl Snowden, who helped create the memorial built after Haley’s death, said “Roots” is a story of human resistance.
He said of all the things Haley stands for, the ability to love stands out to him, despite the country’s history of racism.
“Despite all of the trials and tribulations we proudly say we are Americans,” Snowden said.