Alex Haley House Museum, Tennessee, United States

5NSouth 5:00 PM Nov 28, 2021

Excellent Museum on a great author
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Alex Haley at this exhibit. It was great hearing the documentary before going on the tour of his childhood home. Definitely recommend this for anyone who visits Memphis even though his home is 45 minutes north.

5Taylor B 5:00 PM Apr 19, 2017

Retrace "Roots" at Alex Haley's museum
First, you have to find Henning, Tennessee, a small town of a few hundred souls located 50 miles northeast of Memphis on US Highway 51. Appropriately, US Highway 51 was the major south-north thoroughfare in the 1920s and 1930s as blacks moved from Mississippi and Louisiana to Chicago and Detroit. Henning is the boyhood home of acclaimed author Alex Haley, who wrote the 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots has been translated into over 30 languages and in 1977 was adapted for an eight-part television series which became one of the most popular programs in television history. Located at 200 South Church Street, the 10-room bungalow was constructed in 1918 and 1919 by Will E. Palmer, Haley's maternal grandfather. From 1921 to 1929 and during some subsequent summers, Haley lived in the house with his grandparents. The front porch was often the place where young Alex heard the oral accounts of family history that inspired him to write about his ancestry. The house has been restored to model the home as it was when Haley was born in 1921. Some of the 1919 furniture which decorates the house belonged to the Haley family. The restored house is open to the public as a museum featuring Haley's work, childhood memorabilia, family artifacts and references to the people who inspired his characters in Roots. The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Visitors can also see Alex Haley's grave site on the front lawn of the home. The Interpretative Center, which opened in 2010, houses exhibits that provide an overview of Haley's literary career, from his early days as a journalist in the Coast Guard through his struggles as a free-lancer to his ultimate success with Roots, a book Haley spent 12 years researching and writing. Additional exhibits educate visitors about other Haley writing projects, including a series of magazine interviews and his collaboration with Civil Rights leader Malcolm X, which resulted in the acclaimed book The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. It is a marvelous journey, retracing "Roots" and recalling the stories of Kunta Kinte, Kizzy and Chicken George. Alex Haley truly was one of the great story-tellers of American literature.