Captain America Patches

Aboard the African Star

After working on the book for over a decade ago, Haley was arrested – and desperate

I love to go out into the ocean. You are really out there thinking of ways that you have not thought of before. The best that I possibly could do was written after the Digest helped me go to Africa and Europe, and I was not known and that I could just take my time and nobody was pressuring me. God, I do not know how long it took me. I was working slowly, slowly. When I had done all the research, nine years, working in between doing articles for other magazines, I was ready to write. I do not know where to go, did not know what to do. I knew I had a monumental task. And I'm on a cargo ship. I went from Long Beach, California, completely around South America and back to Long Beach. Was 91 days.

There's something about a ship. Usually I leave the cargo ships cargo ships. (I do not get caught in a liner. How can you write with 800 people dancing?) But cargo ships carry a maximum of 12 people, and they tend to be very quiet people.

I work my principal hours of about 10:30 pm until dawn. The world is yours right now. Most of all passengers are sleeping.

I had written from the birth of Kunta Kinte for his capture. And I had the habit of conversing with the character. I knew Kunta. I knew everything about Kunta. I knew he would do. What he had done. Everything. And so I would talk to him. And I had 've become so attached to him now that I knew I had to put it on the slave ship and bring it across the ocean. That's the next part of the book. And I really do not I could bring myself to write it.

I was in San Francisco. I wrote about 40 pages and blocks it. When you write well, there is a question much of what you mean, it's a matter of feeling. It feels like you want to feel? The feeling starts to get somewhere around on the rewrite room.

I wrote twice, about 40 pages and threw it away. And I realized that my discomfort was: I could not bring myself to feel I was up writing about Kunta Kinte in the slave ship and me in an apartment high-rise. I had to get closer to Kunta. I had finished my money in The Digest, and is so times over when I finished it I could not ask for anything more. I do not know where I got the money. I went to Africa. Put the word out that I wanted to have a ship coming from Africa to Florida. I just wanted to simulate the crossing.

I went down to Liberia, and I got on a cargo ship called appropriately enough the Star of Africa. She was carrying a partial cargo of raw rubber in bales. And I have as a passenger. I could not tell the captain or the mate I wanted to do because could allow me to do it.

But I found one that was maintained for only about a third of full load and there was a door to him with a metal staircase to the bottom of the basement. Downstairs they had a long piece of thick lumber in the rough. They called mats. It is used between the load to prevent changes in rough seas.

After dinner the first night, I made my way up to this expectation. I had a little pocket light. I took off my clothes for my clothes and lay down on my back to this piece of crawler. I imagined I'm Kunta Kinte. I was there and I got cold and colder. Nothing seemed to come but how ridiculous was that I was doing it. In the morning I had a terrible cold. I went back up. And the next night I'm there doing the same thing.

Well, the third night when I left the dinner table, I could not make me back down, they hold. I felt so miserable. I do not think I've never felt so bad. And instead of going in the basement, went to the stern of the ship. And I'm up there with my hands on the rail and looking down where the propellers are beating up the white foam. And in the foam are little bright phosphorescence green. At sea you see that a lot. And I'm there looking at her, and suddenly it seemed that all my problems just came over me. I had everyone I knew. All world was in my case. Why do not you finish this foolish thing? You should not be doing this first, writing about black genealogy. This is crazy.

I was completely unhappy. I do not feel like I have a friend in the world. And then a thought came to me that was surprising. It was not scary. It was just amazing. I thought, Hey, there's a cure for all this. You do not have to go through all this mess. All I had to do was walk the trail and drop into the sea.

After thought, I began to feel very good about it. I think it was half a second before falling into the sea. Fine, who would care for her. You do not owe anything to anyone. To hell with editors and publishers.

And I began to hear voices. They were not strident. They were just talking. And I somehow knew each of them. And they said things as: No, do not. No, you're doing the best they can. You just keep going.
And I knew exactly who they were. They were her grandmother, Chicken George, Kunta Kinte. They were my cousin, Georgia, who lived and died in Kansas City. Were all these people that I had been writing about. They were talking about me. It was like a dream.

I remember fighting myself loose from that rail, turning around, and I was like a crab scuttling over the hatch. And finally I made my way back to my little cabin and pitched down, head first, face first, belly first on the bunk and I cried dry. I cried more than I think I cried from I was four years.

It was midnight when I kind of got myself together. Then I arose, and was the feeling of having been assessed and have been tried and you was approved by all who came before. So go ahead. And then I went back down into the basement. I had a terrible head cold, flu-ish like. I had me a long yellow tablet and some pencils. This time I did not take my clothes off, like I was doing. I kept them because I was having a bad cold. I lay down on the piece of wood.

Now Kunta Kinte was lying on a shelf in position on the ship, the Lord Ligonier. She had left the Gambia River, July 5 1767. She left two months, three weeks, two days. Destination Annapolis, Maryland. And he was there. And others were there with him he knew. And what does he think?

What are some of the things they say? And when they come to me in the dark, I would write. And so I did every night, ten nights. From there to Florida. I remember quickly by the big, big Miami Airport. He flew back to San Francisco. It started with a doctor, and he kind of patch me up.

I sat down with the tablets long yellow and transcribed. And I started writing the chapter in Roots where Kunta Kinte crossed the ocean on a slave ship. That was probably the most emotional experience I had in the whole thing.

Come around about 1:30 in the morning, you're working from 10:30 h and decides that it will take a little break. Then you get up and walk to the platform. And you put your hand on the top rail foot on the bottom rail, and you look up. The first thing most impressive , man, you look up and there are heavenly objects as you never saw before. You will find planets to look at sea. And you begin to realize, you never saw before clean air. In some latitudes, even in West Africa, South America, the full moon night, there are times when you go into an illusion – If you could just stretch a little more you feel you could touch it. And you're out there amidst all Gods firmament and then stand and you feel through the soul of your shoe a fine vibration and you realize that the man at work. This is a huge turbine diesel, 35 feet deep driving under the waters of this ship as a small island across the water. Still there, now you start to hear a slight hiss. You realize it is in ship cutting resistance of the ocean. With all this going on, feeling these things the man and seeing the things of God, which is as near saints, as you'll ever get.

Edited from a lecture at the Reader's Digest, October 10, 1991, four months before the death of Alex Haley

Excerpted from the book by Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America's Roots by Alex Haley. Copyright © 2007 The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. Published by The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.; of April 2007; $ 17.95US; 978-0-7621-0885-5.

About the Author

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley (1921-1992) was an African American writer who was best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Roots. A writer of distinction and a contributing editor for Reader’s Digest, Haley’s first major work was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965.

Growing up, Haley had heard stories about his African ancestor, Kunta Kinte, and became interested in tracing his family to its deepest roots. It was Lila Acheson Wallace, cofounder of The Digest, who commissioned Haley to do the research that would create a groundbreaking article in the magazine. When Reader’s Digest published the first excerpts from Roots in our May and June 1974 issues, we said it was an epic work, “destined to become a classic of American literature.” That has proved to be an understatement.

In just five months after the book hit stores in 1976, more than one million hardcover copies were purchased. Since then, Roots has taken its place among the greatest bestsellers of all time as the number of copies has grown to over six million worldwide. Its impact on television was also historic: Some 130 million Americans watched at least part of the 12-hour drama, making it the highest-rated miniseries ever.

Roots changed the way we think about race in this country and profoundly affected the lives of many people, especially African Americans.

For more information, please visit www.rd.com/returnToRoots.do.

Remilia Scarlet (me) vs Superman (with AI patch)