first eighteen weeks of 1977, before falling to number three on May 8. It did not fall off of the list entirely until August 7. By then, the list had featured it for forty-six weeks. Together, the success of the novel and its 1977 television adaptation sparked an explosion of interest in the fields of genealogy and researching family histories.(1977, February 19). "'Roots' Boosts Interest In LDS Genealogy Units", The Deseret News Haley earned a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1977 for Roots. The television miniseries garnered many awards, including nine Emmys and a Peabody. Plagiarism In the spring of 1977, Haley was charged with plagiarism in separate lawsuits by Harold Courlander and Margaret Walker Alexander. Courlander, an anthropologist, charged Roots was copied from his novel The African (1967). Walker claimed Haley had plagiarized from her Civil War-era novel Jubilee (1966). Legal proceedings in each case were concluded late in 1978. Courlander's suit was settled out of court for $650,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) and an acknowledgment from Haley that certain passages within Roots were copied from The African. The court dismissed Walker's case, which, in comparing the content of Roots with that of Jubilee, found "no actionable similarities exist between the works".(1978, September 22). "Suit against Alex Haley is dismissed", United Press International. Historical accuracy Haley called his novel "faction" and acknowledged most of the dialogue and incidents were fictional. However, he claimed to have traced his family lineage back to Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what is now The Gambia. Haley also suggested his portrayal of life and figures among the slaves and masters in Virginia and North Carolina were based on facts which he had confirmed through historical documents. In the concluding chapter of Roots, Alex Haley wrote: However, some historians and genealogists suggested Haley did not rely on factual evidence as closely as he represented, claiming there are serious errors with Haley's family history and historical descriptions in the period preceding the Civil War. Africa In April 1977, the (London) Sunday Times published an article titled "Tangled Roots" by Mark Ottaway. It challenged the book's account of Kunta Kinte and Haley's African ancestry. Ottaway found that the only African confirmation of Haley's family history came from Kebba Kanga Fofana, a griot in Juffure. However, Fofana was not a genuine griot, and the head of the Gambian National Archives