Kunta Kinte (or Kunta Kante) is the central character of the first half of the novel The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, and of the mini-series Roots, based on the book. Roots is now accepted as being around half fictitious and half factual, and much of the book's material is allegedly borrowed from a book called The African by Hal 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.

The young character was portrayed by The Next Generation star LeVar Burton, then, as a young man by Thalmus Rasulala and the older by John Amos in a groundbreaking TV miniseries.

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. 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.

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. 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 chop wood, he was attacked by four white men who knocked him out 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 and burned with an iron. He and others are put on a slave ship for a nightmarish three month journey to America.

Out of 140 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 and has a daughter named Kizzy. Unfortunately, Kizzy is sold away and Kunta spends his last years in perpetual sorrow.

Kunta Kinte's lineage through Alex Haley

Omoro Kinte was the son of Kairaba Kunta Kinte and a woman named Yaisa (Kairabe Kunta Kinte also had two sons by a woman named Sireng named Janneh and Saloum Kinte). Omoro married a woman named Binta Kebba Kinte and their children include Kunta, Lamin, Suwadu and Madi Kinte. Kizzy Kinte is the daughter of Kunta Kinte and a slave woman named Bell. Kizzy Kinte gave birth to the rape child of her owner (Tom Lee), George 'Chicken George' Lea. Chicken George married a slave woman named Matilda and had a dozen children, including Tom Murray. Tom Murray married a slave woman named Irene Holt and they had two daughters named Elizabeth and Cynthia Murray. Cynthia Murray married a man named Will Palmer and their only child was Bertha George Palmer. Bertha George married a man named Simon Alexander Haley, and their three children together include George, Julius and Alex Haley . Alex Haley married (and later divorced) a woman named Nannie Branch and they had a daughter named Lydia Anne and a son named William Alexander. After divorcing his first wife, Alex Haley married a woman named Juliette Collins and they had a daughter named Cynthia Gertrude.

Characters in written fiction | Fictional slaves

Kunta Kinte | Kunta Kinte