The original book was a lie. Alex Haley later admitted that he'd made up a lot of it while passing it off as fact. Is this new version just enhancing the lie?
Also, a good bit of, "Roots", was plagiarized from a book titled,
"The African", authored by, Harold Courlander, (who ironically was Caucasian).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Courlander#Roots_and_the_issue_of_plagiarism
Roots and the issue of plagiarism[edit]
Courlander wrote seven novels, his most famous being The African, published in 1967. The novel was the story of a slave's capture in Africa, his experiences aboard a slave ship, and his struggle to retain his native culture in a hostile new world. In 1978, Courlander filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging that Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had copied 81 passages from his novel.[3] Courlander's pre-trial memorandum in the copyright infringement lawsuit claimed:
"Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African. Without The African, Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr. Haley could have written Roots without The African.... Mr. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character."[4]
The lawsuit did not allege that The African's plot was copied in its entirety, as the two novels differ in many plot points. Courlander's novel depicts a successful revolt on the slave ship, a shipwreck on the French island of Saint-Domingue, a fugitive life as escaped slaves, recapture by French troops, and then transport to New Orleans in 1802. Haley's novel begins before the American Revolution, depicts disease striking down the slaves before they could revolt, and shows the ship arriving successfully in the British colony of Maryland. The copying in Roots was in the form of specific ideas and passages. For example, strikingly similar language is used to describe an infestation of lice on the slave ship:[5]
Courlander, The African
To the damp sick foulness in the belly of the ship there came to be added another torture—lice. ... They crawled on the face and drank at the corners of the eyes. ... If the fingers caught the predator, it was killed between the fingernails.[6]:23
Haley, Roots
But the lice preferred to bite him on the face, and they would suck at the liquids in the corners of [bleep]'s eyes, or the snot draining from his nostrils. He would squirm his body, with his fingers darting and pinching to crush any lice that he might trap between his nails.[7]:226
In his Expert Witness Report submitted to federal court, Professor of English Michael Wood of Columbia University stated:
"The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive. ... Roots... plainly uses The African as a model: as something to be copied at some times, and at other times to be modified, but always it seems, to be consulted. ... Roots takes from The African phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot. Roots finds in The African essential elements for its depiction of such things as a slave's thoughts of escape, the psychology of an old slave, the habits of mind of the hero, and the whole sense of life on an infamous slave ship. Such things are the life of a novel; and when they appear in Roots, they are the life of someone else's novel."[8]
During a five-week trial in federal district court, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period."[9] Passages from The African were found stapled to a manuscript page from Roots. However, Alex Haley maintained throughout the trial that he had not even heard of The African until the year after Roots was published, and speculated that someone else had given him the photocopied passages. After the trial, Joseph Bruchac, an instructor in black and African history at Skidmore College, stated that he had recommended Courlander's novel to Haley when he visited Skidmore in 1970. Bruchac remembered driving home three miles to fetch his own copy of The African and give it to Haley, who promised to read it "on the plane."[5]
Courlander and Haley settled the case out of court for $650,000 and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, Roots." [5]
