Kunta Kinte
Kunta Kinte is a character in the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Haley said that his account of Kunta’s life in Roots is a mixture of fact and fiction, to an unknown extent. According to Haley, Kunta 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. In the original 1977 TV miniseries Roots, the character was portrayed as a teenager by LeVar Burton and as an adult by John Amos.
About Kunta Kinte in brief
Kunta Kinte is a character in the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Haley said that his account of Kunta’s life in Roots is a mixture of fact and fiction, to an unknown extent. According to Haley, Kunta Kintse 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. In the original 1977 TV miniseries Roots, the character was portrayed as a teenager by LeVar Burton and as an adult by John Amos. He is portrayed by Malachi Kirby in the 2016 remake of the same name, Roots: The Gift.
Kunta was born circa 1750 in the Mandinka village of Jufureh, in the Gambia. He was raised in a Muslim family. One day in 1767, four men chased him, surrounded him, and took him captive. He and others were put on the slave ship the Lord Ligonier for a four-month Middle Passage voyage to North America. He survived the trip to Maryland and was sold to John Waller, a Virginia plantation owner in Spotsylvania County, who renamed him Toby. He rejected the name imposed upon him by his owners and refused to speak to others.
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This page is based on the article Kunta Kinte published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
