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Content warning: This description mentions sexual assault. Alex Haley (1921 1992) was an African American author, known for his bestselling 1976 semi-genealogical book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots follows the story of Kunta Kinte, a young Mandinka man in 18th-century Gambia who is sold into enslavement, and of his descendants in the US. The historical novel was based upon Haley s genealogical research into his family history; Kunta Kinte is ostensibly Haley s ancestor on his mother s side. At the time of his death in 1992, Haley had been working with Australian writer David Stevens on a novel about his father s side of the family. The novel was published in 1993 as Queen: The Story of an American Family. Offered here is a collection of Haley s own notes that, based on the subject matter, were likely used in the writing of Queen. The notes discuss Haley s grandparents Alec Haley and Queen Jackson the latter being the book s namesake and their son, Alex s father, Simon Haley. Simon Haley was a professor of agriculture, and most of his son s notes about him concern his struggle to obtain an education. The elder Haley worked as a Pullman porter and attended Lane College, an HBCU in Tennessee; he was on the brink of having to drop out when "one night [he] delivered hot milk to [an] insomniac industrialist who, finding Dad was a student, financially helped him enter A&T at Greensboro." Haley s notes on Alec and Queen are disturbing and sometimes graphic. Both were children of sexual assault between enslaved African American women and white men. Alec s father was Haley plantation overseer William Baugh and Queen s was James Jackson, the owner of Jackson plantation; Haley describes how Alec s mother, Viney, was sold away from her family "for stubbornly resisting [the] overseer s further advances". Haley describes a scene that occurred when Queen was 18 after a "white woman said she d sassed her" and a mob "had gathered to catch" her: "Queen Haley tells white mob she s as white as they, and why her father raped her mother … and they cannot bear the intolerable reproach … and try [to] rape or kill her." These events, and witnessing another lynch mob, have permanent effects on Queen s psyche, which Haley s notes illustrate with anecdotes: Queen "looking out of windows all those lights, they re after me -- ", running off and "crawl[ing] under [the] bed", and even disappearing for an entire day and being found hiding "in a deep ravine". However, Queen apparently plays the relationship between Jackson and Queen s mother Easter as a forbidden love affair. Of interest to scholars of reconstruction narratives and African American nonfiction novels and historical fiction. Typed pages fragile with damage; others near fine. Overall excellent. Thirty-one pages: three typed pages with editorial marks measuring 8 ½ x 11 inches; twenty-eight pages of handwritten notes measuring 6 ½ x 8 ½ and smaller.
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