Alex Haley Heritage Square sits on the slopes of Morningside Park, presenting a commanding view of historic Knoxville, the downtown business district and the Smoky Mountains. The focal point of this community-built space is the stunning 13-foot high bronze statue of author and Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Haley.

Haley was born in 1921 in New York and served in the Pacific theater during WWII. Following the war, he became the first chief journalist within the Coast Guard and retired in 1959. Retirement was short lived as he became the senior editor for Reader’s Digest Magazine. He followed this in working for Playboy Magazine, where he interviewed Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and many other notable people. He became well known for “The Autobiography of Malcolm X“ and “Roots”. In his later years he acquired a small farm in Clinton Tennessee (this is to the northwest of Knoxville) close to the Museum of Appalachia.

The book and show each were cultural phenomena, transforming public understanding of slavery and African American identity – and inspiring thousands to trace their own lineage.

But KCS (Knox County Schools) earlier in May pulled the novel from school shelves under Tennessee’s so-called Age-Appropriate Materials Act.

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The law also broadly prohibited titles if they were found to contain nudity, sexual abuse, sexual content or “excessive violence”.

A KCS spokesperson, Carly Harrington, confirmed the district’s decision to remove Roots from school library shelves under that law.

“As a district, we recognize the immense cultural and historical significance of Alex Haley’s Roots to our nation, to Tennessee, and particularly to the county seat of Knoxville,” Harrington said in a statement. “The decision made to remove Roots from school libraries is in no way a commentary on the literary or cultural value of the novel, but the result of adherence to state law.”

She said Roots had recently been elevated to the district’s review committee for consideration over a passage in the novel’s 84th chapter, which it determined was not “age appropriate” under Tennessee law. “Broader themes or historical significance of a work as a whole is not a consideration under the law,” Harrington added.