21. Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family is fiction
When Roots and the mini-series it inspired were presented to the American people beginning with the book’s publication in 1976 it was generally received as a work of historical research into a true African American lineage from Africa to modern America. Subsequent research by genealogists and historians revealed the book to be entirely fiction prior to the period of the Civil War, and largely unsubstantiated by fact in the years following it. The book was originally identified as a novel, became historical truth in the minds of the public which read it or watched the televised portrayals, and finally became identified by historians as what it originally was, a work of historical fiction. In 1978 a lawsuit against Haley for plagiarism in the book was settled out of court, with Haley admitting portions of Roots were plagiarized.