Anne Romaine was a Southern folksinger, author, activist, and historian. Born Dorothy Anne Cooke in 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia, she grew up in North Carolina and attended Queen's College in Charlotte. Following time spent in Mexico on mission work, she returned to the United States and earned her masters degree in history from the University of Virginia. It was here she met civil rights activist Howard Romaine, whom she married in 1965. The couple relocated to Atlanta and had one daughter together, Rita Marie. Romaine later worked at the Alex Haley House in Henning, Tenn. During this time she met Haley and began working on his biography. Additionally she served as cofounder, along with Bernice Johnson Reagon, of the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project. Romaine died in 1995 after complications with a ruptured appendix.

Alex Murray Palmer Haley (1921-1992) was an author, member of the U. S. Coast Guard, and journalist. He was born to a college professor and grammar schoolteacher and grew up in Henning, Tenn. Haley graduated from high school at the age of 15 and attended college from 1937 to 1939, when he joined the U. S. Coast Guard as a messman. He rose to the rank of Chief Journalist, a position created for Haley. After retiring from the Coast Guard in 1959 and publishing several articles in newspapers and magazines, such as Reader's Digest and Playboy, Haley published, with great success, The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1964. However, his greatest achievement came with the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. For this work, he received a Pulitzer Prize, many other awards, and several honorary degrees. He briefly taught at the University of Tennessee and lived his last days on a farm in Clinton, Tenn. In Henning, Tenn., Haley was buried at his boyhood home, which is now the Alex Haley State Historic Site.