Kunta Kinte’s World

Editor’s note: The TV miniseries Roots captivated audiences when it debuted in 1977. Based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel about his family’s history, it is the story of young Kunta Kinte, taken from his home in West Africa in 1767  and sold into slavery in America, and his descendants, through the Civil War. Watched by approximately 130 million viewers, it was nominated for 37 Emmys and won 9. A remake of the series begins Monday, May 30, broadcast simultaneously on four networks, the History Channel, Lifetime, A&E, and LMN, over four consecutive nights.

John Thornton, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of African American studies and of history and director of the African American Studies Program, served as a historical advisor on the new miniseries. Among his many books is A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1350-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), winner of the World History Association’s Prize for the Best New Book in World History.

We asked Thornton to write a piece for BU Today about the world of the real-life Kunta Kinte.

By John Thornton

After Roots first aired on television in 1977, a number of scholars and journalists questioned the veracity of Alex Haley’s story, some even suggesting that Kunta Kinte was in fact a fictional character, not related to Haley. When I took on the job of serving as historical advisor to the new Roots, I asked only this question: Could a person named Kunta Kinte have lived in Juffure, a town on the Gambia River, and been enslaved and carried to Annapolis, Md., on the Lord Ligonier in 1767? It didn’t take much research to answer each of those questions with a resounding yes. So with that in mind, I set out to describe what Kunta Kinte’s world was like.

Archaeology conducted by Liza Gijanto, a St. Mary’s College of Maryland assistant professor of anthropology, in 2004 and 2006 confirmed that Juffure was founded about 1400, reached its peak in the 1600s and 1700s, and faced a slow decline after that. The present town is a mere shadow of its past. In fact, when Kunta Kinte lived there, the town probably held 7,000 to 8,000 people, but a very short walk beyond that was another town, called Albreda, with a slightly larger population. And yet another town was a few miles down the river.

According to a French witness from the time, the whole region was a sort of cluster of towns, each with streets, walks, and squares, while the countryside around it was mostly cultivated fields; at least 80 percent of the land in the area was under cultivation.

Juffure had become a Portuguese trading post in the 1500s, and as a result the houses of the town were all constructed in what was called “Portuguese style”—rectangular, with outside pillars to hold up thatched roofs. If the Portuguese started the style, though, in Kunta Kinte’s day it was used by everyone, and few probably remembered its origin.

It was a commercial town and had a cosmopolitan population. In addition to Mandinke, the language of the majority in the town, people spoke Wolof, Serer, and Portuguese, French, and English. The remains found by Gijanto showed an amazing array of artifacts from all corners of the globe.

In the 1730s, the town had a Roman Catholic Church, although it’s not clear if it was still standing three decades later. The Portuguese (who by this time had intermarried so much with Africans that they no longer had any visible European ancestry) had constructed a new town, São Domingo, just down the river.

But even if there had once been a church in Juffure, the town was decidedly Muslim. Juffure belonged to the Niumi kingdom, and this kingdom was held to be the most devoutly Muslim region in the whole of coastal West Africa, and it and Albreda hosted mosques. Although we can’t confirm it, it’s believed that some of the Portuguese in the area were descended from Jewish refugees from the Inquisition and were rumored to still be secret practitioners.

The Kintes were relatively new to Juffure, having arrived only about a generation before Kunta’s birth. They were a Juula family, meaning a community that was primarily known to be merchants and Islamic scholars. Juulas had connections through their trade and scholarship throughout West Africa, and their brightest students might study at regional schools like Jakha, or if they were extraordinary, even at Timbuktu’s ancient university.

As merchants, however, the Kintes were involved in all manner of commerce, including the slave trade. Muslim intellectuals had been arguing for half a century over the legal fine points of the slave trade, whether it was legitimate or not, whether Muslims could be sold to Christians, and so on, and the Kintes might have participated in such discussions. In 1758, a Muslim ruler had briefly banned the slave trade farther north; in 1776, another had threatened execution for traders who intended to sell Muslim slaves. But most Juulas sold slaves to whoever would buy them, and the Kintes, at least some of them, were in that group.

It is somewhat remarkable that a person of Kunta Kinte’s status would be enslaved—usually middle-class people could be redeemed by their relatives, and slave traders would be happy to sell them back to their families for a high price. So, why would Kunta Kinte be sold?

The answer to this lies in the specifics of the time. In the mid 1760s, the English post at James Island was held by James Debat, a young and impetuous man without much sense. He became involved in a dispute with the king of Niumi and the two sides began seizing hostages. In one notable case, English soldiers, engaged in a firefight, accidently blew off three of the queen of Niumi’s fingers. In 1768, the year after Kunta’s deportation, some 500 Niumi troops attempted to storm James Fort, an unsuccessful attempt that eventually led to Debat’s departure and the resolution of the problem.

Somewhere in that confused period, someone decided that Kunta Kinte would be sent abroad in spite of the entreaties of his family. Perhaps it was revenge, or hatred between factions of the Juula or one of the traders, but it was final.