Title: Anne Romaine Collection of Alex Haley

Date/Date Range :   1920s-1990s [bulk 1980s-1990s]

Extent: 4.0 linear feet

Abstract:

This collections contains the research material of Anne Romaine for her unfinished biography of Alex Haley. The majority is interview audiotapes and transcripts, articles by or about Alex Haley, Roots , or his childhood home in Henning, Tenn., and his years in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Call number: MS-2828

Repository: University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN

Aquisition Information:

Collection is property of the UT Special Collections Library

Access Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Copyright:

The copyright interests in this collection remain with the creator. For more information, contact the Special Collections Library.

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of Item], Anne Romaine Collection of Alex Haley, MS-2828. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Special Collections Library.

Collection contains three series in three boxes: Interviews, Articles, and Other Materials.

Anne Romaine, a well-known Southern folksinger and wife of civil rights activist Howard Romaine, was the official biographer of Alex Haley. She met Haley while she worked for the Haley House Museum in Henning, Tennessee. Romaine received her masters in history from University of Virginia and completed all the course work on a Ph. D. at Vanderbilt. Romaine was, also, cofounder (with Bernice Johnson Reagon) and director of the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project and the producer of a PBS cultural series. In 1995, Anne Romaine went to the emergency room in pain, but when not treated within what she considered sufficient time, she went home. Her appendix burst, causing peritonitis and death. Her biography of Haley was uncompleted.

Alex Murray Palmer Haley (1921-1992) was an author, member of the U.S. Coast Guard, and journalist. He was born to a college professor and grammar schoolteacher and grew up in Henning, Tennessee. Haley graduated from high school at the age of 15 and attended college from 1937 to 1939, when he joined the U.S. Coast Guard as a messman. He rose to the rank of Chief Journalist, a position created for Haley. After retiring from the Coast Guard in 1959 and publishing several articles in newspapers and magazines, such as Reader's Digest and Playboy , Haley published, with great success, The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1964. However, his greatest achievement came with the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family . For this work, he received a Pulitzer Prize, many other awards, and several honorary degrees. He briefly taught at the University of Tennessee and lived his last days on a farm in Clinton, TN. In Henning, TN, Haley was buried at his boyhood home, which is now the Alex Haley State Historic Site.

This collections contains the research material of Anne Romaine for her unfinished biography of Alex Haley. The majority is interview audiotapes and transcripts, articles by or about Alex Haley, Roots , or his childhood home in Henning, TN, and his years in the U.S. Coast Guard.

See also MS-2032: The Anne Romaine Collection, 1977-1995, MS-2055: Anne Romaine Collection, and MS-1888: The Alexander Murray Palmer Haley Papers, 1870-1991.

• Romaine, Anne, 1942-1995.
• Haley, Alex. Roots.
• Haley, Alex, 1921-1992.
• African American authors -- Haley, Alex.