Word: haleys
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Roots, Haley...
Some Americans are old hands at it. Spurred on by Alex Haley's book, others took it up, and now it seems that just about everyone is searching for his roots. "Climbing All Over the Family Trees," this week's Essay by Senior Writer Stefan Kanfer, tells some of the reasons why. "White Roots: Looking for Great-Grandpa" in the Living section tells how to do it-with specific instructions for the beginner. Its author, Senior Writer Michael Demarest, believes passionately in what he calls the "joy of genealogy." But then, to trace the 14 generations...
...Alex Haley, against stupendous odds, pursued his Roots two centuries back to darkest Gambia. For 130 million Americans glued to the eight-part Haley-Kinte TV chronicle in January, it was a transit through time and tears more gripping than Upstairs, Downstairs or any Stanley Kubrick fantasy. Says Michael Tepper, editor of Genealogical Publishing Co. in Baltimore: "Roots has shown that what seemed remote and mysterious is in fact knowable and within our grasp. It has awakened a smoldering awareness of facts we only thought were unknowable...
...recent months. The New York Public Library, with one of the world's largest genealogical libraries, reported an increase in attendance in the month following Roots of 37% over February 1976. At the National Archives, the gray stone temple on Washington's Constitution Avenue, where Haley found his inspiration, mail inquiries about genealogical services have averaged 2,344 weekly since the broadcasts, v. 758 for the week before...
Democracy makes every man forget his ancestors. So thought De Tocqueville, the observer who for more than a century trapped the American character in his shrewd apercus. That character is too mutable to stay contained. Today it is frantically climbing family trees. After Haley's comet, not only blacks but all ethnic groups saw themselves whole, traceable across oceans and centuries to the remotest ancestral village (see LIVING...