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Uprooting Kunta Kinte: On the Perils of Relying on Encyclopedic Informants*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Donald R. Wright
Donald R. Wright*
Affiliation:
SUNY - Cortland
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Extract

In the late summer of 1976, amid considerable publicity, Doubleday and Company published Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Almost overnight author and book gained considerable fame. Americans and soon others accepted the essential validity of the story of Haley's maternal ancestors, which reached back to the Gambia River and to the eighteenth century. Within a few months of its publication Roots had been serialized for televison. Before a year had passed Doubleday had sold over 1,500,000 copies of the book, it had gone into translation in several dozen languages, and Haley had been awarded a special Pulitzer Prize, neither for fiction nor non-fiction, but for something in between felicitously denominated “faction.” The magnitude of Roots' impact makes criticism of the basis of its argument somewhat indivious but perhpas all the more necessary.

One aspect of Roots that added considerably to its popularity was the apparent authenticity of the genealogy which Haley used to identify his African ancestor. Haley claimed that, largely through oral history, he had proved the existence of his ancestor, one Kunta Kinte, who had been kidnapped into slavery over two hundred years ago and brought directly to the British North American colonies. A decade of diligent searching had made it possible for Haley to piece together the basic outlines of his ancestry. To nearly everyone who read the book or heard the story of his quest, such success in locating his roots in Africa, after a century of slavery and another of difficult freedom, seemed to justify the endeavor.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 8 , 1981 , pp. 205 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1981

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Footnotes

*

I owe special thanks to Lori H. Lampert of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies for compiling a bibliography of over one hundred reviews and articles pertinent to this study and for providing me with copies of hard-to-get articles I would not otherwise have been able to obtain.

References

NOTES

1. Information on the opularity of Roots is most easily available in Gerber, David A., “Haley's Roots and Our Own: An Inquiry into the Nature of a Popular Phenomenon,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 5 (Fall, 1977), 87–88.Google Scholar

2. For example, see Wilkinson, Doris, “The Black Family: Past and Present: A Review Essay,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 40(1978), 832–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Arnez, Nancy L., “From His Story to Our Story: A Review of ‘Roots’,” The Journal of Negro Education 46(1977), 367–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There are many others.

3. The Sunday Times [London], 10 April, 1977, 1.Google Scholar

4. The best of the post-Ottaway criticism is Law's, Robin review in Oral History 6 (Spring, 1978), 128–34.Google Scholar Law questions Ottaway's specific criticism of Haley's Gambian informant, but he carries one of Ottaway's points considerably farther and shows that “in the light of [Ottaway's] criticisms it is certainly difficult to place great confidence in the fruits of Haley's African fieldwork” (132).

5. McFaden, Robert D., “Some Points of ‘Roots’” Questioned: Haley Stands by Book as Symbol,” New York Times, 10 April, 1977, 1.Google Scholar

6. For elements of this debate see Hattwig, Gerald W., “Oral Traditions Concerning the Early Iron Age in Northwestern Tanzania,” IJAHS 4(1971), 93–114 Google Scholar; Pender-Cudlip, Patrick, “Encyclopedic Informants and Early Interlacustrine History,” IJAHS 6(1973), 198–210 Google Scholar; Hartwig, , “Oral Data and Its Historical Function in East Africa,” IJAHS 7(1974), 468–79.Google Scholar

7. There are many published accounts of Haley's search in addition to his discussion in Roots, 564-97. See, for example, Haley, , “My Furthest-Back Person--‘The African’,” New York Times Magazine, 16 July, 1972, 12–16 Google Scholar, and Haley, , “Black History, Oral History, and Genealogy,” Oral History Review (1973), 1–25.Google Scholar

8. Haley, , “My Furthest-Back Person,” 15.Google Scholar

9. Ibid.

10. Haley, , “Black History,” 13.Google Scholar

11. Haley, , “My Furthest-Back Person,” 15.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 16.

13. The original recordings of my collection are deposited in Indiana University's Archive of Traditional Music. Copies are on deposit in The Oral History and Antiquities Division, Old National Library Building, Independence Drive, Banjul, The Gambia. I have published translations of the most valuable traditions in the collection in Oral Traditions From The Gambia (2 Vols.: Athens, Ohio, 1979–1980).Google Scholar

14. For one such episode in 1768 see Gray, J.M., A History of the Gambia (Cambridge, 1940), 239–42.Google Scholar For the larger picture of English relations with Niumi in the eighteenth-century commercial context, see Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975), 121–24.Google Scholar

15. In fairness, I have read a copy of a transcript of an interview B.K. Sidibe had with Fofana a year or more before I interviewed the latter. In this interview Sidibe asked Fofana to speak solely about the Kinte family of Juffure. Fofana did provide some genealogical information in the interview. He said:

It was Lang Kinte who migrated to Juffure. He begot Kunta Kinte…It was Lamin [Lang] Kinte who begot Omar Kinte. Omar Kinte begot Madi Kinte. Madi Kinte begot Jalang Kinte, my mother.

Omar Kinte was a half-brother of Usulu Kinte. Usulu Kinte begot Lan Kinte. Lan Kinte begot Boto Kinte…Boto Kinte begot Bamba Kinte…Bamba Kinte begot…Bire Kinte and Tunko Kinte. It is Bire Kinte who is alive today.

16. I suppose it is just possible that Fofana, around seventy-eight years old at the time of my interview with him, could have been the victim of a rapidly failing memory. Perhaps he once had more information at his command than he was able to provide in 1974?

17. Robin Law makes this point and associates it with Fofana's account of Kunta Kinte in his review cited in note 4.

18. Historians of various parts of Africa are sometimes able to find evidence of genealogies, traditions of origin, and the like that have been borrowed or invented. For example, see Beidelman, T.O., “Chiefship in Ukaguru: The Invention of Ethnicity and Tradition in Kaguru Colonial History,” IJAHS 11(1978), 227–46Google Scholar; Morton, R.F., “New Evidence Regarding the Shungwaya Myth of Miji Kenda Origins,” IJAHS 10(1977), 628–43.Google Scholar One of the leading families of the former state of Niumi completely altered its tradition of origin early in this centtury to lend legitimacy to its prominent position among Niumi's leading families in colonial times. See Wright, , “Koli Tengela in Sonko Traditions of Origin: An Example of the Process of Change in Mandinka Oral Tradition,” HA 5(1978), 257–71.Google Scholar

19. The relevant parts of my interview with Fofana are as follows:

Fofana: Kunta Kinte…was our ancestor. He was stolen. On the day he was stolen everybody was sad. No meals were cooked because he was a very outstandyoung man.

Question: Was his family very influential or what?

Fofana: He was very popular in those days. He was not very old because he was twenty-three when he was caught. He was a very outstanding man. He was taken to the island. We did not hear about him until six years later when he was taken to America.

Question: How do you know he went to America?

Fofana: His younger brother was called Swandi Kinte. After six years he told his father that he was going to look for his brother on the island because he thought the Europeans had taken him there. Swandi Kinte left and went to look for his brother. His boat capsized and he was left there. Swandi did not have any children.

Question: Then when did you hear about Kinte?

Fofana: You should not say ‘you,’ because I was not yet born then. Even my grandparents were not present then. When he arrived in America it was then known that Kunta Kinte was stolen by the Europeans and taken to America. The villagers were very sad about it and were unable to do anything because in those days there was no law and order.

20. Haley, , Roots, 569 Google Scholar; Haley, , The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

21. Personal communications with B.K. Sidibe, 1974-75 and 16 October, 1980. Sidibe is Director of the Gambia's Oral History and Antiquities Division.

22. Fofana's genealogy is in note 19.

23. Haley, “My Furthest-Back Person,” 16.

24. Charles O'Hara was first Governor of the English Colony of Senegambia. For his tenure as Governor and his brief and infrequent activities in the Gambia see Gray, , History of the Gambia, 237–43.Google Scholar

25. For examples of British hostilities with Niumi in the nineteenth century see the account of the Bara-British War in Mbaeyi, Paul Mmegha, British Military and Naval Forces in West African History, 1807-1874 (New York, 1978), 74–78.Google Scholar

26. It is interesting to note that in neither Sidibe's interview with Fofana in the early 1970s nor in mine with him in 1974 did Fofana use the phrase “about the time the king's soldiers came.” In fact, in neither interview did he use means at all similar to this to indicate about when events took place. Griots who know long family histories, which they remember and recite by rote, almost invariably recite these stories in exactly the same way, using nearly identical words and phrases. Haley suggests the account he got from Fofana, “as if some ancient scroll were printed indelibly within the griot's brain,” was such a memorized recital. To the best of my knowledge, no one besides Haley and those in attendance at his interview ever hear such a smooth, memorized narration from Fofana.