Curators of black museums do not value crude jokes about the scattering of Roots and Malcolm X materials.
Roots was a monumentally important book because it ushered in "a new body of scholarship that looks at enslaved people as subjects, not objects, and recognizes them as agents of history and culture," explains Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center, a New York institute that specializes in African-American culture. It also prompted millions of Americans to look at their "personal histories and ethnic and racial traditions."
Once Alex Haley demonstrated that he could trace his family roots, says Dodson, "others who had been afraid of going too far back because of the embarrassment and shame that many African Americans felt over slavery got the courage" to look into their pasts.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Alex Haley himself preferred over Roots, told the story of a leader, considered by many to be as pivotal in African-American history as his contemporary, Martin Luther King Jr. The book "has been and will remain a classic text," says Dodson. "But again, it is more than that. If offers a sense of the possible. With Malcolm's life, you're able to see no matter how low you go, if you apply yourself, you can rise again and reach unimagined heights. Malcolm transformed himself in prison, and this can be seen as a metaphor for people trapped in the streets today. The book had a tremendous impact on people across gender, class and racial lines."
Like many black institutions, the Schomburg could not afford to buy the entire literary legacy. And it would have been impossible, in any case, because of the way the auction was set up.
"His personal papers were not offered for sale as a complete entity, but rather were broken into lots that did not maintain the intellectual integrity of the whole," says Dodson. Because the auction was silent, only the auctioneer knows the names of purchasers. And he cannot divulge the buyers' names because of privacy laws.
Dodson says he tried to persuade George at least to keep the literary treasure intact for one bidder. "I talked to George Haley about it before the auction, but he is capable of being very unaffected by things in the emotional sense."
The decision pained Haley's children, Ann and William. William was already raw from taking care of the funeral plans, from consoling his own children. "Your grandfather loved you very much," he remembers telling his little son. "He would have liked to spend more time with you."
William and Ann sacrificed their father to his adoring public, and then, upon his death, they had to sacrifice his artifacts to his estate.
"We were not offered as much as a pocket handkerchief," says Ann. "My brother had to buy my father's car. The estate could have afforded to give that to my brother."
It is clear to Ann Haley "that Uncle George could care less about us."
Both William and Ann now must cope with the fact that his literary legacy has been dispersed. What it means, in a sense, is that part of their sacrifice was for nothing. But they are both stoic, and have resigned themselves to the concept that the things that were sold were just things, that their father contributed more to the world than "things."
Ann Haley has little hope that she or anyone else in the family will get any of the approximately $2 million that will remain when the estate is probated. "If I get 25 cents, that's fine. If I get nothing, that's fine," says Ann Haley.
Julius Haley, Alex's brother, says he doubts that anyone will inherit money. "It will go to the lawyers."
Ann Haley no longer reads the legal documents that are mailed to her. "I have to put this behind me and go on with my life. You must know that what my father created nobody can ever buy. His children will come together to go forward and perpetuate what he began."
My Haley, too, feels she has to perpetuate what her husband began. That is why she is fighting the estate to recover three uncompleted works that she claims she is entitled to finish. There is not a single step in the struggle that is without pain.
It was hurtful to My when William, in claiming his father's body in Seattle, elected to list his mother, Nannie, as the "surviving spouse." She cannot help but wonder if the relationship with Alex's family would have been less strained had they all not been unwittingly forced into separate segments of Alex Haley's life. She remembers, for instance, that she learned about a Haley family reunion from an article in People magazine. When asked why she wasn't invited, she recalls Alex saying it was just something he was "roped into."
My's absence from the family reunion perplexes William. So does just about everything else about his father's relationship with My, whom his father never mentioned. "My literally was the invisible woman," says William.
She was invisible because she was not allowed to be visible, is how My sees things. Each time she'd ask to meet Alex's brothers and sister and children, he would act annoyed, she says.
