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Two weeks after finishing the Malcolm X manuscript, Haley wandered into the National Archives Building in Washington. The family history, told and retold by his grandma, still intrigued him. "The Kinte story, which had been passed down by many generations of slaves, was not elaborate. It was really very simple. But it was the story around which whole generations coalesced. It kept us together. It made us proud of who we were and from where we had come." Haley asked a clerk in the microfilm room for the 1870 census records of Alamance County, N.C., where his forebears had lived. As he recalls the day, "It became sort of a mystical experience, turning those reels of film." But after a couple of eye-straining hours, he got up to leave. "As I walked out through the genealogical reading room, I noticed sort of peripherally that unlike the usual library scene where people are lolling around, here the people were intently bent over the books and tables. The thought popped into my head that these people were trying to find out who they were. I turned around and went back into the microfilm room."
About an hour later, Haley discovered what he wanted. "Suddenly I found myself looking down: Tom Murray, Occupation—blacksmith,' and beneath him, 'Irene, M—for Mulatto,' and their children. The youngest was Elizabeth, age six. And that really grabbed me. That was Aunt Liz. I used to sit on her front porch and play with her long gray hair. The experience galvanized me. Grandma's words became real. It wasn't that I had not believed her. You just didn't not believe Grandma. But there was something about the fact that what Grandma had been talking about was right there on U.S. Government records in the National Archives, along with the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and everything else."
Haley's twelve years of research and writing on Roots had begun. In retrospect, Haley firmly believes it was more than his own perseverance that got the book finished. "However this sounds," he says, "it was one of those things that God in his infinite wisdom and in his time and way decided should happen. I feel I'm a conduit through which this is happening. It was just something that was meant to be. I say this because there were so many things that had to happen over which I had no control. And if any one thing hadn't happened, then this could not have come together."
Success Model. Just as he forthrightly ponders the possibility of divine guidance, Haley is unabashedly thrilled with the riches that Roots has brought him. "It really startles me that the last thing I think of now is money." Though he plans only to buy a new stereo, a TV and a video-tape machine (to watch reruns of the series, among other things), Haley says, "The success in money terms is beyond imagination."
There is another reward too that pleases Haley: black children see him as a model for success. One stiff-braided little girl, brought with her class to meet Haley at a Los Angeles bookstore, said matter of factly, "I'm going to write a bigger book than you." Replied Haley: "Come on, honey, and do it."