Kunta Kinte
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kunta Kinte (or Kunta Kunte) is the central character of the first half of the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, and of the television mini-series Roots, based on the book. Roots is now accepted as being a mixture of both fact and fiction, and much of the book's material is allegedly borrowed from a book called The African by Harold Courlander. Kunta Kinte was a Mandinka. Kunta was captured and imported to Annapolis, Maryland, and later sold to a plantation owner in Spotsylvania County, Virginia near the present-day rural community of Partlow.
In the miniseries, the young character was portrayed by LeVar Burton, and the older by John Amos.
There is a memorial to Kunta Kinte in Annapolis, Maryland. It is the only monument in the world to bear the name of an actual enslaved African, apart from the Bussa statue in Barbados. It depicts Alex Haley, book on his lap, telling his family's story to three children. In a notorious incident, the Kunta Kinte plaque was stolen within 48 hours after its installation in 1981, allegedly by the Ku Klux Klan. The plaque was never recovered, but it was replaced within two months.
[edit] Plot summary
Haley's novel begins with Kunta's birth in the village of Juffure in The Gambia of West Africa in 1750. Kunta is the first of four sons of the Mandinka warrior Omoro and his wife Binta Kebba. Haley describes Kunta's strict upbringing and the rigors of manhood training he undergoes.
One day in 1767, when the young warrior left his village to find wood to make a drum, he was attacked by four black men who surrounded him and took him captive. The most horrifying part of Haley's novel is where he describes this event. Kunta awakens to find himself blindfolded, gagged, bound and prisoner of the white men. Haley describes how they humiliate the young warrior by stripping him naked and probing him in every orifice. Haley even describes how Kunta is sexually assaulted [citation needed] and burned with an iron. He and others are put on a slave ship for a nightmarish three month journey to America.
Out of 170 Africans, Kunta is one of only 97 who survive the crossing. After arrival in Maryland he is sold to a plantation owner who renames him "Toby," much to his dismay. During the remainder of his life Kunta never gives up his dreams of freedom and trying to escape, even after part of his foot is chopped off. He eventually marries another slave named Bell Waller and has a daughter named Kizzy. Unfortunately, Kizzy is later sold away when she is discovered to have written a fake travelling pass for a young slave boy.
