AROUND ROBIN PRODUCTION COMPANY - Key Persons
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley, also known as Alex Haley, was a famous American writer who not only won the Pulitzer Prize for literature but also the special 1976 Spingarn Medal. But it was his second most notable work Roots that marks his legacy. Alex was notable for portraying the struggle of African Americans in his writings.
Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York on August 11, 1921.
He spent his early years in Tennessee and began working as a journalist at an early age. Alex Haley was the eldest of three sons born to Simon Haley and Bertha George Haley. He had two siblings, George and Julius.
His father, Simon Haley was a college dean and his mother was a teacher. Haley was very proud of his father's struggle against racism in America.
Haley attended the Elizabeth Howell High School in Henning, Tennessee. The school is still in operation and was renamed Alex Haley High school in 1976.
After high school, he joined the Coast Guard and served during World War II (1939-45). His ship set sail for the Pacific Ocean to rescue hundreds of soldiers during World War II. When he was not in action, he said he endured boredom, but it was that boredom that motivated him to write. Inspired by his father's stories about their family's lineage, he began to write stories while serving in the military.
After twenty long years of service, he left the military in 1959 to pursue writing full time.
After retiring from the Coast Guard, Haley returned home to live with his family in Tennessee.
Alex Haley was married three times. His first marriage was to Nannie Branch on April 19, 1941. The marriage ended in divorce in 1964. He had two children with her.
Alex Haley won multiple awards throughout his life span including a Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy award, and several others.
Alex Haley received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his biography of Malcolm X.
He also earned an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Malcolm X.
Haley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Roots in 1977, which he shared with author William Styron.
He also received two other awards for Roots, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
His novel Roots became one of the most viewed programs in television history and won nine Emmy Awards as well as a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. The novel was adapted into a second miniseries in 2016.
Job Titles:
- Retirement, Health Issues, and Last Honors
- S Time in Congress
- Texas Representative
Jordan ran for Congress five months later as the Democratic nominee for Houston's 18th Congressional District. She was elected, making her the first African American woman from a Southern state to serve in the United States House of Representatives. With the help of her close advisor Lyndon B. Johnson, Jordan was assigned to critical positions, including the House Judiciary Committee.
On July 25 1974, Jordan made a 15-minute opening address to the Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearing for Richard Nixon. Her address was a passionate defense of the United States Constitution (which, she pointed out, did not initially include African Americans in its "We, the People") and the checks and balances it contains to prevent abuse of power. "I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, subversion and destruction of the Constitution," she declared.
The impeachment speech helped Nixon resign as a result of the Watergate scandal, and it gained Jordan global acclaim for her passion, knowledge and honesty. Two years later she was asked to deliver the keynote message at the 1976 Democratic National Convention; this was another first for an African American woman.
Jordan worked in Congress on women's rights legislation, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and co-sponsored a plan that would have rewarded housewives with Social Security payments based on their household responsibilities.
Jordan left Congress in 1979 to become a lecturer at University of Texas Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs. She rose to prominence as a public speaker and advocate, obtaining 25 honorary doctorates along the way. Her passionate opposition to George Bush's appointment of Robert Bork to the United States Supreme Court (who had previously opposed many civil rights issues) is recognized as one of her more powerful testimonies.
Jordan was wheelchair-bound by the time she was chosen to deliver the Democratic National Convention keynote message for the second time in 1992. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973. Until her death she kept her illnesses private, which eventually included diabetes and cancer.
In 1994, Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. Jordan died of leukemia-related pneumonia on January 17, 1996. She made history even during her funeral by being the first African American to be buried with presidents, senators and congressmen at the Texas State Cemetery.
Jordan taught law and established her own firm in Houston, Texas after graduating from law school.
Garvey established a chapter in Harlem of U.N.I.A to promote the nationalist concept of social, political, and economic independence for Black people. In 1918, he began to produce the Negro World newspaper to spread his message.
Although he had started off in a calmer voice, his tone gradually took a turn for a harsher sound where he quite blatantly spoke on the injustice of the treatment of Black people. He raised serious questions on democracy in the United States.
By 1919, Garvey and his friends established the shipping business "Black Star Line" a maritime firm that would develop trade and commerce between Africans in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Canada and Africa. It was done under the supervision of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which had grown to over four million members by then.
Job Titles:
- Harvard University Professor
Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates has also acknowledged the doubts about Haley's claims about roots.
Fannie Lou Hamer was born Fann Lou Townsend on 6th October 1917 to Ella and James Lee Townsend. Her parents were sharecroppers from Montgomery County, Mississippi who moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi to work on W.D Marlow's plantation. Sharecropping involves leasing agricultural land to a tenant in return for a share of the profits. As a majority of African Americans did not own any land, a lot of Black Americans were involved in sharecropping to make ends meet. It was an affordable option in an era when employment and economics opportunities were limited for the Black community. She was the youngest of 20 children and began working in the cotton fields with her parents when she was just 6 years old. She was hit by polio and limped for the rest of her life. At one point, things started improving for her family and they invested in livestock. However, some of the animals were poisoned and the culprit was never caught. Throughout her life she suspected that it was done by a white supremacist who could not tolerate that "we were getting' somewhere."
George Jackson was murdered by mindless, carbine-toting San Quentin guards because he refused, he resisted, and he helped to teach his fellow prisoners that there was hope through struggle. And now in San Quentin - in San Quentin's Adjustment Center, which is a euphemistic term for the worst of the worst in prison - there are six more brothers who are facing charges of murder stemming from that day when George was killed. There was Fleeta Drumgo, who as a Soledad Brother was recently acquitted from similar frame-up charges. There are Hugo Pinell, Larry Spain, Luis Talamantez, David Johnson, and Willie Tate.
As I was saved and freed by the people so we must save and free these beautiful, struggling brothers. [applause] We must save them. And we must also save and free Ruchell Magee. And Wesley Robert Wells, who has spent over forty years of his life in California's prison system because he refused to submit, because he was a man. We must save, right here in southern California, Gary Lawton. And Geronimo Ortega, and Ricardo Chavez. And all of our sisters and brothers who must live with and struggle together against the terrible realities of captivity.
George W. Haley (July 18, 1940 - March 10, 2001), who became a lawyer and writer; he worked on the PBS series Eyes on the Prize with his father, and authored the book The Rebel: John Singleton Mosby and The Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley.
Haley's research about Roots was always disputed by genealogists. Another author ,Harold Courlander, filed a lawsuit against Haley in Federal District Court. Where he accused him of copying phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style, and plot from his novel, The African.
Harriet Tubman was born on March 1822 in Araminta Rose. She was a political activist and abolitionist based in the United States. Harriet Green and Ben Rose, her parents, were enslaved. She was born into slavery as well before she escaped. She exploited an anti-slavery activist network to preserve certain houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she worked as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, she was an activist in the women's suffrage campaign.
Tubman's maternal grandmother came to the United States on a slave ship from Africa. As with many enslaved persons in the United States, neither the precise year nor the location of her birth is known, although Kate Larson lists the year as 1822 and other historians identify the year of her birth as 1820, but there is also a possibility that it was a year or two later. She was informed as a child that she resembled an Ashanti person because of her personality, but there is no evidence to support or refute this claim.
Despite her years of labor, Tubman was never paid on a regular basis. She performed a variety of jobs to help her aging parents and pay the expenses. Nelson Charles Davis, a farmer, was one of the persons Harriet met. He began working as a bricklayer in Auburn. He fell in love with Harriet despite the fact that he was 22 years her junior. They married on March 18, 1869, at the Central Presbyterian church. In 1874, they adopted a newborn girl named Gertie and raised her as a family. Nelson, however, died on October 14, 1888, as a result of tuberculosis.
Harriet's friends and supporters contributed a lot of money to help her out. Sarah Bradford, one of her fans, produced a book entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. It was published in 1869 and earned Harriet about $1200. A white woman once questioned her in her later years if she believed women should have the vote, and she said, "I suffered enough to believe it."
Harriet's seizures, headaches, and suffering from her childhood drama debilitated her as she grew older. In the 1890s, she underwent brain surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. She couldn't sleep because of the discomfort. She requested the doctor to perform an operation to which he agreed. In her words, the doctor,
Julius T. Haley was Haley's second child. He was(born January 11, 1942), a professor in California at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles.
His second marriage was to Juliette Collins on January 9, 1964. They divorced in 1972. This second marriage to JulietteCollins lasted 6 years.
The name of Haley's third wife was Myran Lewis. They were married on October 28, 1977. Haley and Myran were together until Haley's death on February 10, 1992. They had one child together named Cynthia Palmer Haley (born August 5, 1978).
Malchus Garvey, his father, was a stonemason, and Sarah Richards, his mother, was a domestic worker and the daughter of peasant farmers. Previously Malchus had six children with two other partners prior to Sarah.
Job Titles:
- S Death
- S Early Life
- UNIA 's Founder
Malchus Garvey, his father, was a stonemason, and Sarah Richards, his mother, was a domestic worker and the daughter of peasant farmers. Previously Malchus had six children with two other partners prior to Sarah.
Marcus Garvey was the youngest of four children born to him by Sarah, two of whom died in early childhood. But these two children weren't the only losses for Malchus as he lost children from the previous marriage as well and only two of his children lived a full life.
When Marcus moved to the island nation's capital Kingston, he attended school in Jamaica just to the age of 14. He worked there as a trainee in a print business. Later he stated that he encountered racism in Jamaica in grade school notably from white teachers.
Garvey became interested in Kingston's print trades union while serving in the printing business. This work paved the way for his advocacy later on.
Garvey spent time in Central America and had a family before making the journey to London in 1912.During his stay in the UK, he pursued his professional studies and joined the University of London's Birkbeck College as a student. He chose the field of law and philosophy as his areas of education.
He also conducted debates at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London, which is still a popular place for public debate, and worked for a Pan-Africanism newspaper.
Garvey did not stay either in the US or Jamaica in the latter part of his life and returned to London in 1935 to spend the rest of his life there. He continued to work until a series of strokes resulted in his death on June 10, 1940 at the age of 52 in London. He was buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic cemetery in Kensal Green, London due to travel restrictions during World War II.
His remains were unearthed and transported to Jamaica on November 13 th, 1964 when the government declared him the country's first national hero and re-interred him at a shrine at the National Heroes Park in Kingston, Jamaica.
Mary Church Terrell, born in 1863, was the daughter of Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers and had mixed racial ancestry. While both her parents were freed slaves, her father went on to become one of the first African American millionaires in the south and also founded the first Black owned bank in Memphis, Tennessee. Through his bank, he extended credit to Black Americans so they could establish businesses, buy homes and lead better lives. He also used his wealth to develop parks, auditoriums and other facilities for the African American community. Her parents were prominent members of the Black elite of Memphis during the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War.
Robin Hamilton is an Emmy-award winning television host, producer and moderator for town halls and forums. She is founder and principal of the ARound Robin Production Company, where she creates videos for non-profits to help with fundraising, marketing and messaging.
Ms. Hamilton has worked for network affiliates around the country, including Florida, New York, and Massachusetts.
Working at the intersection of media and policy, Ms. Hamilton's work is guided by the principle of providing information that can promote transformation.
Her company has produced three documentary films. This Little Light of Mine: The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer was released in 2015 and chronicles the life of famed civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. The film has screened across the country and is used for voting drive initiatives and civics classes in schools. Her second documentary, Dignity and Defiance: A Portrait of Mary Church Terrell, was awarded a DC Humanities Grant and released in 2017. Our Alexandria, her third documentary, was awarded a Virginia Humanities Grant and won Best Documentary Short for the DC Independent Film Festival in 2020.
Her fourth film, Odessa's Reign, profiles the life of a female gangster in the 1950s in Washington, D.C. The film earned Robin her fourth Emmy.
In 2016, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Myanmar to create a communications campaign between local citizen organizations and the Burmese government.
She received two master's degrees, one from New York University, with a concentration in broadcast journalism, and a second in public administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, with a focus on public policy and media.