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Kunta
Kinte
According to research done by Alex Haley,
Kunta Kinte was an African from The Gambian town of Jufferee.
According to Haley family history he was sold into slavery
in a town called "Naplis."
Haley's
research identified a slave ship, the Lord Ligonier,
which salied from Gambia River, July 5, 1767, with 140 captured
Gambians. It arrived in Annapolis, Maryland on September
29, 1767, with only 98 survivors. Haley believed one of
those survivors was a seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte.
The
Africans were sold into slavery on October 7, according
to an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette newspaper.
 |
Advertisement
in the October 1, 1767 Maryland Gazette Newspaper,
announcing the arrival of the slave ship. |
Kinte
would have been purchased at the ship or in one of the local
inns or resturants. He was then taken to a farm in Virginia
where he continued his American heritage.
Kinte's
arrival in Annapolis is symbolic of the slave trade era
when millions of African men, woman and children were captured
and sent to the New World. They endured the horrors of the
"Middle Passage" — the Atlantic crossing
in which Africans were packed into the holds of ships for
months, many dying en route.
Kinte
survived to tell his story — a story that was shared
by his descendent Alex Haley in the book Roots.
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