Alex Haley plagiarized parts of his book Roots from a book written by a white author named Harold Courlander, who wrote The African. Courlander sued Haley in federal court and won a settlement reportedly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Alex Haley also omitted and altered several chapters in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He made these changes only after Malcolm X’s assassination, reportedly because he disagreed with Malcolm X’s views on racial separation. One of the chapters that was removed was titled “Negro.” Haley took creative license with the book after Malcolm X’s death and did not receive approval from Malcolm X’s estate to make those changes.
Comedian and activist Dick Gregory, who was mentioned in the book, stated that he never told Malcolm X that Elijah Muhammad was sleeping around or getting women pregnant. Gregory said that Alex Haley added that claim himself and that it did not come from Malcolm X. Gregory believed Haley was a federal informant because of his background in Naval Intelligence and felt that Haley disliked Malcolm X’s views toward racists.
Betty Shabazz also stated that Alex Haley falsely wrote in the book that Malcolm X trusted only four people. She said this was not true and that Malcolm trusted only her. She further stated that Haley did not include Malcolm X’s original words expressing his belief that the Nation of Islam, in coordination with the government, was coming after him.
Here is the missing chapter “The negro” written by Malcom X
“The Negro by Malcolm X: The Western world, the American society, with the song of Christianity providing the white man with the illusion that what he has done to the black man is right, is as sick as Babylon. And the black man here in this wilderness, the so-called Negro, is as sick as them all.
The black man here in this world is the only race of people that tries to get social, civic, and economic equality by back and forth. The black man here is his nation’s only large minority that has gone for wander years, has the biggest train on social welfare, has the forever ghetto dweller, the forever most underemployed, the forever most un-unified race. The black man here, man for man, is the forever biggest consumer at the same time that he is the biggest non-producer. And when you have got that combination, you have got, automatically, a man that’s somebody else has got to produce and provide for.
For the so-called Negro here is a perfect parasite image. The black man takes under the delusion that he is progressing because he is riding on the back of the fat three-stomached cow that is white America.”
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