In 1995, Edenton won the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Award for the Atlantic Fleet.

The conversion from a salvage ship to a Coast Guard cutter involved the removal of the stern towing machine, forward crane, and A-frame, and the installation of a flight deck, retractable hangar, and air-search radar.

The cutter was named after author and journalist Alex Haley, the first chief journalist of the Coast Guard, the first African-American to reach the rank of chief petty officer, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

In the 2007 novel Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event by James H. Cobb, Alex Haley is the ship that takes the heroes out to the island where a Tu-4 laden with anthrax crashed during the Cold War.

[3] In the 2016 novel Goliath by Shawn Corridan & Gary Waid, Alex Haley and USCGC Dauntless are the two Coast Guard cutters that respond to the fire aboard and subsequent stranding of a Russian ULCC.