On April 19, 1977, author and historian Alex Haley received a special Pulitzer Prize for his groundbreaking work “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.” The book, published in 1976, traced Haley’s ancestry back to Kunta Kinte, an African man kidnapped into slavery, and told the generational story of his descendants in America. Roots became a cultural phenomenon, inspiring a major television miniseries watched by over 130 million viewers. Haley’s work brought the horrors of slavery and the resilience of Black families into the American consciousness, sparking interest in genealogy and redefining historical storytelling through a Black lens.
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