Kunta Kinte
Kunta Kinte (also spelled Kunta Kinteh ) is the name of a character in Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots . As Haley believed to have found out through his own research, Kinte is said to have been the ancestor of a family of American slaves , of which Haley himself was descended.
description
According to Haleys, Kinte was born around 1750 and came from the village of Juffure in what is now the West African state of Gambia , whose inhabitants, who belong to the Mandinka people , were Muslim .
Kunta Kinte was kidnapped by slave hunters and brought to the then British colony of Maryland on July 5, 1767 on the slave ship Lord Ligonier . A plantation owner bought Kinte at an auction in Annapolis . As a result of his recalcitrant behavior and two attempts to escape, the African, who among other things refused to accept the slave name Toby , had been mistreated several times by his new masters. After the second attempt to escape, the front part of his foot was chopped off to prevent him from escaping in the future. According to Haley, Kunta Kinte died in 1810.
Although many of the events described by Haley are historically verifiable, the historicity of the person Kunta Kinte himself is not certain.
The character was also the subject of the TV series Roots (1977) and Roots (2016)
reception
- On February 6, 2011, James Island was renamed Kunta Kinteh Island .
- The French rapper Médine released a song of the same name on his album Arabian Panther .
- The title of the song King Kunta on the album To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar refers to Kunta Kinte.
- A ferry on the Banjul – Barra ferry route put into service in June 2017 was named Kunta Kinteh .
literature
- Alex Haley: Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Dell, New York 1976, ISBN 0-440-17464-3
- German edition under the title Roots. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-22448-9
- Donald R. Wright: Uprooting Kunta Kinte. On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants , in: History in Africa , Vol. 8, pp. 205-217, New Brunswick 1981
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ James Island renamed - Daily Observer. (No longer available online.) In: The Daily Observer . archive.observer.gm, archived from the original on December 23, 2015 ; Retrieved December 20, 2015 .