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Alex Haley, "Roots", and Kunta Kinte. [1]
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Date: 2023-08-19
“We Are Not Our Ancestors” sure raised some interesting points. I would like you to wonder for a moment on what happens when an African American visits a place from which huge numbers of slaves were shipped. That person, for me, was Alex Haley, the author of “Roots” which you may know became a popular TV series that followed the life of Kunta Kinte, a young Gambian man who was taken as a slave to the United States.
I was already familiar with “Roots” when I arrived in The Gambia, where I spent nearly a year of my life, so it isn’t surprising that I decided to search for evidence of Haley’s time in The Gambia and what it had meant to the locals. I first travelled to Slave Island to investigate the horrors of the time and gain context and respect. And what I found filled me with horror.
Inside the cell was pitch darkness. Chains and manacles still hung from the crumbling stone walls. Later I broke away from the tourists and wandered the shoreline, where I discovered a human femur and other evidence. Chilled to the core I decided to visit Kunta Kinte village to learn about his background first-hand.
At the village, I was delighted to encounter the Griot, the tribe’s verbal historian, whose job is to remember their history and relate it on request, an amazing feat.
Kunta Kinte Village, The Gambia. © Clive Warner.
I sat down with him and, over a simple meal, he related to me the story of Kunta Kinte, and then he told me the story of how Alex Haley had come to him, likewise. And he had told Alex Haley the same story as he had told me.
Haley took the story, wrote his book, and then it was made into a TV series. He became a rich man.
The Griot told me all this with no hint of regret or disgust. But he also said this:
“Mr Haley became a rich man because of our history. But we never saw him again. He never returned to The Gambia, and we never gained a single dollar from what he did.”
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