Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 28, 1994                   TAG: 9404280230
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: KNOXVILLE, TENN.                                 LENGTH: Short

ALEX HALEY'S WIDOW WINS RIGHT TO WRITE

``It's a glorious day, is what it is,'' Myran Haley said after the verdict. Completion of both works would be ``a dream come true,'' she said.

Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ``Roots: The Saga of an American Family,'' died in 1992. He was 70.

He left three books unfinished: ``Queen,'' which was later published and turned into a TV miniseries; ``Henning,'' an autobiography; and ``Madame C.J. Walker,'' about the first African-American woman to become a millionaire.

Myran Haley, his literary collaborator, argued that a 1991 contract gave her a third of Haley's estate and the right to conclude the books' unfinished chapters.

The executors of Haley's estate, led by his brother George Haley, had argued the contract was unenforceable because Haley signed it under duress. The contract was signed after Haley sued for divorce from her husband of 15 years, but the couple was still married when he died.

- Associated Press