Kunta Kinte

Kunta Kinte (also known as Toby Waller) (c.1750-c.1822) is a character in the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Haley claimed that Kunta Kinte was based on one of his ancestors: a Gambian man who was born in 1750, enslaved and taken to America and who died in 1822. Haley said that his account of Kunta Kinte's life in Roots was a mixture of fact and fiction. However, doubts on the claimed factual aspects arose when it was discovered that Haley had plagiarized Kunta Kinte's story from another author's work.

Kunta Kinte's life story also figured in Roots, a TV miniseries based on the book. The character in the miniseries was portrayed as a teenager by LeVar Burton and as an adult by John Amos.

Historical accuracy

Haley claimed that his sources for the origins of Kinte were oral family tradition and a man he found in The Gambia named Kebba Kanga Fofana, who claimed knowledge of the Kintes. He described them as a family in which the men were blacksmiths, descended from a marabout named Kairaba Kunta Kinte, originally from Mauritania. Haley quoted Fofana as telling him: "About the time the king's soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, went away from this village to chop wood and was never seen again."

Kunta Kinte (album)

Kunta Kinte is the 13th album released by rapper, Keak da Sneak.

Reception

Track listing

References