Tennessee Vacation and Travel Ideas for Literary Tours
Alex Haley House
200 South Church Street
Henning, TN 38041
Website: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/literary_tour/26207
Email: - none listed
Phone: (901) 738-2240
Alex Haley (1921 - 1992) is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which was published in 1976 and was the basis for a highly successful television miniseries the following year. Roots was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Spingarn Medal, an annual award by the NAACP to an African American for outstanding achievement. Haley became an author after a twenty-year service with the Coast Guard, from which he retired in 1959. He distinguished himself as a writer with a series of notable interviews for Playboy magazine. His subjects included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali, Miles Davis, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Haley ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). His epic Roots, which was based loosely on his own family's history, was the result of ten years of research, travel, and writing.
The house was the first site in Tennessee dedicated to an African-American. It was here that young Alex developed his storytelling chops as he listened to his family recount tales of Kunte Kinte and Queenie. Photographs and memorabilia are on display as well as original furnishings of the Haley family. The front porch is the centerpiece of the home since Alex sat on this porch and listened to the family stories.The Alex Haley House in Henning, Tennessee, is a ten-room bungalow built between 1918 and 1921 by Will E. Palmer, Haley's grandfather. The house has been restored to look much as it would have during Haley's childhood, and includes furnishings that belonged to Haley's family along with photographs and other family memorabilia. As a child, Haley enjoyed listening to family stories about his ancestry on the front porch of this home, and in a sense the house is the birthplace of Roots, as well as Haley's childhood home.
Haley is also remembered with a statue in Knoxville, Tennessee. For more information see , visit: http://www.discoveret.org/aaaa/Haley1.html, or call: (423) 215-2090.
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Halliburton Memorial Tower
Rhodes College
Memphis, TN
Website: http://www.rhodes.edu/NewsCenter/RhodesMagazine/Winter2003/CampusNews/College-Celebrates-40th-Anniversary-of-Halliburton-Tower.cfm
Email: - none listed
Phone: (901) 843-3000
Richard Halliburton (1900 - 1939) was an adventurer, athlete, journalist and author of six best-selling novels during the 1920s and 1930s. Much of his writing documents his own adventures, from making the first recorded winter ascent of Mount Fuji to swimming the length of the Panama Canal after registering as a ship and paying a toll of 36 cents based on his weight of 140 pounds. He was presumed dead in 1939 when a ship he was piloting across the Pacific Ocean disappeared during a typhoon. Many modern readers find the racial attitudes expressed in Halliburton's writings offensive, and today he is considered a rather obscure writer. However his books continue to be of interest from a documentary perspective. Titles to his credit include New Worlds for Conquer (1929), and The Glorious Adventure (1927).
Halliburton, who was born in Memphis, is remembered at Rhodes College with a 140-foot Gothic-style bell tower that was built with a gift from his family. Rhodes College, which was founded in 1848, is distinguished by its collegiate Gothic architecture in the tradition of Princeton University. The tower was designed by H. Clinton Parrent, and was constructed in 1962. Barret Library on the Rhodes College campus houses the Richard Halliburton Collection, which contains manuscripts and artifacts relating to the author, including Halliburton's last letter to his parents and film footage of his boat the Sea Dragon, the Chinese boat which was hit by a typhoon in 1939, resulting in the death of Halliburton and his crew.
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Alex Haley Statue
1600 Dandridge Avenue
Morningside Park
Knoxville, TN
Website: http://www.knoxville.org/history-heritage/alex-haley-statue--haley-heritage-square/?PHPSESSID=bce50cb3b8f52f3a791d2e10c55fcec4
Email: uquada@aol.com
Phone: (423) 215-2090
Alex Haley (1921 - 1992) is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which was published in 1976 and was the basis for a highly successful television miniseries the following year. Roots was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Spingarn Medal, an annual award by the NAACP to an African American for outstanding achievement. Haley became an author after a twenty-year service with the Coast Guard, from which he retired in 1959. He distinguished himself as a writer with a series of notable interviews for Playboy magazine, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali, Miles Davis, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Haley ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). His epic Roots, which was based loosely on his own family's history, was the result of ten years of research, travel, and writing.
Knoxville honors Alex Haley with a larger-than-life sculpture of the author adjacent to a children's playground. Haley appears to be telling a story to the visitors of the park by the way his hand gestures and the look of interest in his face.
Also of interest to Haley fans is the Alex Haley House in Henning, Tennessee. For more information, see , visit: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/literary_tour/26207, or call: (901) 738-2240.
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