with the Lea and Murray families in the post-Civil War records. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a friend of Haley's, but, years after Haley's death, Gates acknowledged doubts about the author's claims: Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship. It was an important event because it captured everyone's imagination. Gates later hosted the TV series African American Lives and Finding Your Roots, which used DNA testing to corroborate family histories and genealogies. Haley wrote another novel, about his paternal grandmother Queen [Jackson] Haley, but died before he could finish it. It was published posthumously as Queen: The Story of an American Family. Subsequent DNA testing of Alex Haley's nephew Chris Haley revealed that Alec Haley, Alex's paternal grandfather and Queen Haley's husband, was most likely descended from Scottish ancestors via William Harwell Baugh, an overseer of an Alabama slave plantation.Texas Research Ramblers Volume XXIX Number 1 Spring 2014 accessed September 13, 2018 Related scholarship Gerber, David A. "Haley's Roots and Our Own: An Inquiry Into the Nature of a Popular Phenomenon", Journal of Ethnic Studies 5.3 (Fall 1977): 87–111. Hudson, Michelle. "The Effect of 'Roots' and the Bicentennial on Genealogical Interest among Patrons of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History," Journal of Mississippi History 1991 53(4): 321–336 Mills, Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills. "Roots and the New 'Faction': A Legitimate Tool for CLIO?", Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 89 (January 1981): 3–26. PDF at Historic Pathways . Ryan, Tim A. Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008. Skaggs, Merrill Maguire. "Roots: A New Black Myth", Southern Quarterly 17. 1 (Fall 1978): 42–50. Taylor, Helen. "'The Griot from Tennessee': The Saga of Alex Haley's Roots", Critical Quarterly 37.2 (Summer 1995): 46–62. Wright, Donald R. "Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants," History of Africa 8 (1981): 205–217. Television and audio adaptationsRoots''' was a television miniseries airing over eight consecutive nights in January 1977. ABC network television executives chose to "dump" the series into a string of airings rather than space out the broadcasts because they were uncertain how the public would respond to the controversial, racially charged themes of the show. The series garnered enormous ratings and became an overnight