Queen: the story of an American family

Queen: the story of an American family

Queen: the story of an American family by Alex Haley and David Stevens is a partly factual historical novel which has served to bring back to the consciousness of many White Americans the plight of the Children of the Plantation - the offspring of black slave women and their white masters, who rarely acknowledged the children, who were legally their slaves.

The noted author Alex Haley (1921-1992) was the grandson of Queen, the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughter of James Jackson and his black slave woman, Easter. Although the novel alters many historical details to the extent that it cannot be treated as history, the basic outline - including the premise of James Jackson's paternity to Queen - has been accepted as fact by Jackson's white descendants. The novel recounts Queen's anguished early years as a slave girl, longing to know who her father was, and how it gradually dawned on her that he was none other than her master. After the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 and the subsequent abolition of slavery, Queen was cast out. James Jackson would not acknowledge her as his daughter, afraid of compromising the inheritance of his legitimate children and goaded by his wife, who despised Queen. After many adventures, she married a reasonably successful former slave by the name of Haley, and had three sons by him.

Alex Haley was unable to finish writing 'Queen' before he died, and it was completed by David Stevens. He left behind many boxes of research notes and a 700-page outline of the story, but David says he was mainly guided by the many, long conversations he had with Alex.