roots: the saga of an american family - chapters 1 - 3

THE SAGA OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY

THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON

ALEX HALEY

ALEX HALEY


THE SAGA OF AN AMERICAN

FAMILY

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ISBN-10 1-59315-449-6ISBN-13 978-1-59315-449-3

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$15.95/ $19.50 Can.

“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage. . . .

Without this enriching knowledge, there is

a hollow yearning no matter what our

attainments in life.”

—ALEX HALEY

Vanguard Press

Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where his great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him—slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects—and one author.

But Haley has done more than recapture the history of his own family. As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 39 million Americans of African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all peoples and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.

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“Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.”

So begins Roots, one of the most important and influential books of our time. When originally published thirty years ago, it galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that had not been seen in this country since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Roots has lost none of its emotional power and drama, and its message for today’s and future generations is even more vital and relevant than it was thirty years ago.

When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley’s grandmother used to tell him

stories about their family—stories that went back to her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called “the African.” She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the “Kamby Bolongo” and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America.

Still vividly remembering the stories after he grew up and became a writer, Haley began to search for documentation that might authenticate the narrative. It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of “the African”—Kunta Kinte—but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.

( C O N T I N U E D F R O M F R O N T F L A P )

( C O N T I N U E D O N B A C K F L A P )

PULITZER PRIZE

WINNER

PULITZER PRIZE

WINNER

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

WINNER

ROOTSThe 30th Anniversary Edition

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ROOTS: The 30 t h A n n i v e r s a r y E d i t i o n

P U B L I S H E R ’ S S TAT E M E N T

One of the most important books and television series ever to appear,Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial,social and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication ofUncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year,and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. Italso won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Rootsopened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of thedarkest and most painful parts of America’s past.

Over the years, both Roots and Alex Haley have attracted controversy,which comes with the territory for trailblazing, iconic books, particularly onthe topic of race. Some of the criticism results from whether ROOTS is factor fiction and whether Alex Haley confused these two issues, a subject he ad-dresses directly in the book. There is also the fact that Haley was sued for pla-giarism when it was discovered that several dozen paragraphs in Roots weretaken directly from a novel, The African, by Harold Courlander, who ulti-mately received a substantial financial settlement at the end of the case.

But none of the controversy affects the basic issue. Roots fostered a re-markable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970sand how America had fared since the days portrayed in Roots. VanguardPress feels that it is important to publish Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edi-tion to remind the generation that originally read it that there are issuesthat still need to be discussed and debated, and to introduce to a new andyounger generation, a book that will help them understand, perhaps for thefirst time, the reality of what took place during the time of Roots.

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A L E X H A L E Y

ROOTSThe 30th Anniversary Edition

THE SAGA of an

AMERICAN FAMILY

with a Special Introduction by

M I C H A E L E R I C DY S O N

and

A LE X H A LE Yon the writing of Roots

Vanguard PressA Member of the Perseus Books Group

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A condensed version of a portion of this work first appeared in Reader’s Digestin the May and June 1974 issues. Copyright © 1974 by Reader’s DigestAssociation. Copyright renewed 2002 by Myran Haley, Cynthia Haley, LydiaHaley and William Haley.

Copyright © 1974 Alex Haley. Copyright renewed 2004 by Myran Haley,Cynthia Haley, Lydia Haley and William Haley.

Alex Haley on the writing of Roots. Reprinted by permission from Reader’s Digest.

Special contents of this edition Copyright © 2007 The Roots Venture, c/oIPW LLC, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 2720, Los Angeles, CA 90067

Published by Vanguard Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Forinformation and inquiries, address Vanguard Books, 387 Park Avenue South,12th Floor, NYC, NY 10016, or call (800) 343-4499.

Designed by Brent WilcoxSet in 11.25 point Adobe Caslon

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHaley, Alex.

Roots : the saga of an American family : the 30th anniversary edition / Alex Haley.

p. cm.Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1976.ISBN-13: 978-1-59315-449-3ISBN-10: 1-59315-449-61. Haley, Alex. 2. Haley, Alex—Family. 3. Haley family. 4. Kinte family.

5. African Americans—Biography. 6. African American families. I. Title. E185.97.H24A33 2007929'.20973—dc22[B]

2007008822

Vanguard books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S.by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information,please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group,2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, extension 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

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DEDICAT ION

It wasn’t planned that Roots’ researching and writing finally wouldtake twelve years. Just by chance it is being published in the BicentennialYear of the United States. So I dedicate Roots as a birthday offering tomy country within which most of Roots happened.

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AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S

I owe deep gratitude to so many people for their help with Rootsthat pages would be required simply to list them all. The followingare pre-eminent:

George Sims, my lifelong friend from our Henning, Tennessee,boyhood, is a master researcher who often traveled with me, shar-ing both the physical and emotional adventures. His dedicatedcombing through volumes by the hundreds, and other kinds ofdocuments by the thousands—particularly in the U. S. Library ofCongress and the U. S. National Archives—supplied much of thehistorical and cultural material that I have woven around the livesof the people in this book.

Murray Fisher had been my editor for years at Playboy maga-zine when I solicited his clinical expertise to help me structure thisbook from a seeming impassable maze of researched materials.After we had established Roots’ pattern of chapters, next the storyline was developed, which he then shepherded throughout. Fi-nally, in the book’s pressurized completion phase, he even draftedsome of Roots’ scenes, and his brilliant editing pen steadily tight-ened the book’s great length.

The Africa section of this book exists in its detail only becauseat a crucial time Mrs. DeWitt Wallace and the editors of theReader’s Digest shared and supported my intense wish to explore if

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my maternal family’s treasured oral history might possibly be doc-umented back into Africa where all black Americans began.

Nor would this book exist in its fullness without the help ofthose scores of dedicated librarians and archivists in some fifty-seven different repositories of information on three continents. Ifound that if a librarian or archivist becomes excited with yourown fervor of research, they can turn into sleuths to aid your quests.

I owe a great debt to Paul R. Reynolds, doyen of literaryagents—whose client I have the pleasure to be—and to DoubledaySenior Editors Lisa Drew and Ken McCormick, all of whom havepatiently shared and salved my frustrations across the years of pro-ducing Roots.

Finally, I acknowledge immense debt to the griots of Africa—where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a li-brary has burned to the ground. The griots symbolize how allhuman ancestry goes back to some place, and some time, wherethere was no writing. Then, the memories and the mouths of an-cient elders was the only way that early histories of mankind gotpassed along . . . for all of us today to know who we are.

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H A L E Y ’ S C O M E T

By Michael Eric Dyson

From the very beginning, Alex Haley’s Roots counted as muchmore than a mere book. It tapped deeply into the black Americanhunger for an African ancestral home that had been savaged bycenturies of slavery and racial dislocation. More than the sum ofits historical and literary parts—some of which have been rigor-ously criticized and debunked—Haley’s quest for his rootschanged the way black folk thought about themselves and howwhite America viewed them. No longer were we genealogical no-mads with little hope of learning the names and identities of thepeople from whose loins and culture we sprang. Haley wrote blackfolk into the book of American heritage and gave us the confi-dence to believe that we could find our forebears even as he sharedhis own. Kunta and Kizzy—and Chicken George too—becamemembers of our black American family. That’s why no flaw orshortcoming in Haley’s tome could dim the brilliant light he shedon the black soul. Haley’s monumental achievement helped con-vince the nation that the black story is the American story. He alsomade it clear that black humanity is a shining beacon that mirac-ulously endured slavery’s brutal horrors.

I was a seventeen-year-old boarding school student when Haley’scomet of a book hit the nation’s racial landscape. It immediately

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changed the course of our conversations around school and pro-vided a powerful lens onto a period of history that few of usreally understood. Until Haley’s book, there was little publicgrappling with the drama of American slavery. Of course, theepochal television miniseries that grew from Haley’s text seizedus in its thrilling exploration of chattel slavery’s vast and viciousevolution. The book and miniseries also sparked the phenomenonof black self-discovery. For too long, slavery had been an Ameri-can terror that left the lives of black folk scarred by memories ofpain and humiliation. Haley’s book brought black folk out of theshadows of shame and ignorance. It also spurred many of us forthe first time to speak openly and honestly about the lingeringeffects of centuries-old oppression. If the black freedom struggleof the ’60s had liberated our bodies from the haunting impera-tives of white supremacy, Haley’s book helped free our mindsand spirits from that same force.

Roots also prodded white America to reject the racial amnesiathat fed its moral immaturity and its racial irresponsibility. Aslong as there was no book or image that captured slavery’s dis-figuring reach, the nation could conduct its business as if allracial problems had been solved when it finally bestowed civilrights on its black citizens. But Haley helped us to resist that se-ductive lie with a tonic splash of colorful truth: that the nationhad yet to successfully negotiate its perilous ties to an institutionthat built white prosperity while crushing black opportunity.Roots was a soulful reminder that unless we grappled with thepast, we would be forever saddled by its deadening liabilities.Since it was published during the nation’s blithely romantic cel-ebration of its bicentennial, Haley’s book provided a touchstonefor alternative history. Haley’s book helped conscientious citi-zens to challenge the self-image of America as an unqualifiedchampion of democracy and freedom.

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The true impact of Haley’s book is that it started a conversationabout black roots that continues to this day. DNA tests to deter-mine black ancestry are more popular than ever. Scientific advanceis part of the explanation, but the cultural impetus for such anagenda of racial discovery lies with Haley’s inspiring book. It isalso fitting that Roots appeared the same year that Black HistoryWeek was officially extended to Black History Month. Haley’scrowning achievement came along at just the right time to promptthe investigation of black folks’ noble and complex contributionsto national culture. Haley’s Roots sparked curiosity among ordi-nary citizens by making the intricate relations between race, poli-tics and culture eminently accessible. Long before demands forhistory from the bottom up became a rallying cry of progressivehistorians, Haley’s book practiced what it preached. And if hemade missteps along the way, he nevertheless put millions of us onthe right path to racial and historical knowledge that shaped ourreckoning with the color line. Few books can claim such an im-pressive pedigree of influence.

Alex Haley’s Roots is unquestionably one of the nation’s seminaltexts. It affected events far beyond its pages and was a literaryNorth Star that guided us through the long midnight of slavery’shaunting presence. Roots is an exercise in the skillful telling of apeople’s pilgrimage through the quagmire of lost racial links to thesolid ground of recovered connections. For that reason alone, it isto be celebrated as a classic of American ambition and black striv-ing. Each generation must make up its own mind about how it willnavigate the treacherous waters of our nation’s racial sin. And eachgeneration must overcome our social ills through greater knowl-edge and decisive action. Roots is a stirring reminder that we canachieve these goals only if we look history squarely in the face.

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C H A P T E R 1

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days up-river from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child

was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte. Forcing forth from Binta’sstrong young body, he was as black as she was, flecked and slipperywith Binta’s blood, and he was bawling. The two wrinkled mid-wives, old Nyo Boto and the baby’s Grandmother Yaisa, saw thatit was a boy and laughed with joy. According to the forefathers, aboy firstborn presaged the special blessings of Allah not only uponthe parents but also upon the parents’ families; and there was theprideful knowledge that the name of Kinte would thus be bothdistinguished and perpetuated.

It was the hour before the first crowing of the cocks, and alongwith Nyo Boto and Grandma Yaisa’s chatterings, the first soundthe child heard was the muted, rhythmic bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp ofwooden pestles as the other women of the village pounded cous-cous grain in their mortars, preparing the traditional breakfast ofporridge that was cooked in earthen pots over a fire built amongthree rocks.

The thin blue smoke went curling up pungent and pleasant,over the small dusty village of round mud huts as the nasal wailingof Kajali Demba, the village alimamo, began, calling men to thefirst of the five daily prayers that had been offered up to Allah for

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as long as anyone living could remember. Hastening from theirbeds of bamboo cane and cured hides into their rough cotton tu-nics, the men of the village filed briskly to the praying place, wherethe alimamo led the worship: “Allahu Akbar! Ashadu an laila-hailala!” (God is great! I bear witness that there is only one God!)It was after this, as the men were returning toward their homecompounds for breakfast, that Omoro rushed among them, beam-ing and excited, to tell them of his firstborn son. Congratulatinghim, all of the men echoed the omens of good fortune.

Each man, back in his own hut, accepted a calabash of porridgefrom his wife. Returning to their kitchens in the rear of the com-pound, the wives fed next their children, and finally themselves.When they had finished eating, the men took up their short, bent-handled hoes, whose wooden blades had been sheathed with metalby the village blacksmith, and set off for their day’s work ofpreparing the land for farming of the groundnuts and the couscousand cotton that were the primary men’s crops, as rice was that ofthe women, in this hot, lush savanna country of The Gambia.

By ancient custom, for the next seven days, there was but a sin-gle task with which Omoro would seriously occupy himself: theselection of a name for his firstborn son. It would have to be aname rich with history and with promise, for the people of histribe—the Mandinkas—believed that a child would develop sevenof the characteristics of whomever or whatever he was named for.

On behalf of himself and Binta, during this week of thinking,Omoro visited every household in Juffure, and invited each familyto the naming ceremony of the newborn child, traditionally on theeighth day of his life. On that day, like his father and his father’sfather, this new son would become a member of the tribe.

When the eighth day arrived, the villagers gathered in the earlymorning before the hut of Omoro and Binta. On their heads, thewomen of both families brought calabash containers of ceremonial

2 — A L E X H A L E Y


sour milk and sweet munko cakes of pounded rice and honey.Karamo Silla, the jaliba of the village, was there with his tan-tangdrums; and the alimamo, and the arafang, Brima Cesay, whowould some day be the child’s teacher; and also Omoro’s twobrothers, Janneh and Saloum, who had journeyed from far away toattend the ceremony when the drumtalk news of their nephew’sbirth had reached them.

As Binta proudly held her new infant, a small patch of his firsthair was shaved off, as was always done on this day, and all of thewomen exclaimed at how well formed the baby was. Then theyquieted as the jaliba began to beat his drums. The alimamo said aprayer over the calabashes of sour milk and munko cakes, and as heprayed, each guest touched a calabash brim with his or her righthand, as a gesture of respect for the food. Then the alimamo turnedto pray over the infant, entreating Allah to grant him long life, suc-cess in bringing credit and pride and many children to his family, tohis village, to his tribe—and, finally, the strength and the spirit todeserve and to bring honor to the name he was about to receive.

Omoro then walked out before all of the assembled people ofthe village. Moving to his wife’s side, he lifted up the infant and,as all watched, whispered three times into his son’s ear the namehe had chosen for him. It was the first time the name had everbeen spoken as this child’s name, for Omoro’s people felt that eachhuman being should be the first to know who he was.

The tan-tang drum resounded again; and now Omoro whis-pered the name into the ear of Binta, and Binta smiled with prideand pleasure. Then Omoro whispered the name to the arafang,who stood before the villagers.

“The first child of Omoro and Binta Kinte is named Kunta!”cried Brima Cesay.

As everyone knew, it was the middle name of the child’s lategrandfather, Kairaba Kunta Kinte, who had come from his native

R O O T S 3 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y E D I T I O N — 3


Mauretania into The Gambia, where he had saved the people ofJuffure from a famine, married Grandma Yaisa, and then servedJuffure honorably till his death as the village’s holy man.

One by one, the arafang recited the names of the Mauretanianforefathers of whom the baby’s grandfather, old Kairaba Kinte,had often told. The names, which were great and many, went backmore than two hundred rains. Then the jaliba pounded on his tan-tang and all of the people exclaimed their admiration and respectat such a distinguished lineage.

Out under the moon and the stars, alone with his son thateighth night, Omoro completed the naming ritual. Carrying littleKunta in his strong arms, he walked to the edge of the village,lifted his baby up with his face to the heavens, and said softly,“Fend kiling dorong leh warrata ka iteh tee.” (Behold—the onlything greater than yourself.)



C H A P T E R 2

It was the planting season, and the first rains were soon to come.On all their farming land, the men of Juffure had piled tall

stacks of dry weeds and set them afire so that the light wind wouldnourish the soil by scattering the ashes. And the women in theirrice fields were already planting green shoots in the mud.

While she was recovering from childbirth, Binta’s rice plot hadbeen attended by Grandma Yaisa, but now Binta was ready to re-sume her duties. With Kunta cradled across her back in a cottonsling, she walked with the other women—some of them, includingher friend Jankay Touray, carrying their own newborns, along withthe bundles they all balanced on their heads—to the dugout ca-noes on the bank of the village bolong, one of the many tributarycanals that came twisting inland from the Gambia River, known asthe Kamby Bolongo. The canoes went skimming down the bolongwith five or six women in each one, straining against their short,broad paddles. Each time Binta bent forward to dip and pull, shefelt Kunta’s warm softness pressing against her back.

The air was heavy with the deep, musky fragrance of the man-groves, and with the perfumes of the other plants and trees thatgrew thickly on both sides of the bolong. Alarmed by the passingcanoes, huge families of baboons, roused from sleep, began bel-lowing, springing about and shaking palm-tree fronds. Wild pigs

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grunted and snorted, running to hide themselves among the weedsand bushes. Covering the muddy banks, thousands of pelicans,cranes, egrets, herons, storks, gulls, terns, and spoonbills inter-rupted their breakfast feeding to watch nervously as the canoesglided by. Some of the smaller birds took to the air—ringdoves,skimmers, rails, darters, and kingfishers—circling with shrill cuesuntil the intruders had passed.

As the canoes arrowed through rippling, busy patches of water,schools of minnows would leap up together, perform a silverydance, and then splash back. Chasing the minnows, sometimes sohungrily that they flopped right into a moving canoe, were large,fierce fish that the women would club with their paddles and stowaway for a succulent evening meal. But this morning the minnowsswam around them undisturbed.

The twisting bolong took the rowing women around a turn intoa wider tributary, and as they came into sight, a great beating ofwings filled the air and a vast living carpet of seafowl—hundredsof thousands of them, in every color of the rainbow—rose andfilled the sky. The surface of the water, darkened by the storm ofbirds and furrowed by their flapping wings, was flecked withfeathers as the women paddled on.

As they neared the marshy faros where generations of Juffurewomen had grown their rice crops, the canoes passed throughswarming clouds of mosquitoes and then, one after another, nosedin against a walkway of thickly matted weeds. The weeds boundedand identified each woman’s plot, where by now the emerald shootsof young rice stood a hand’s height above the water’s surface.

Since the size of each woman’s plot was decided each year byJuffure’s Council of Elders, according to how many mouths eachwoman had to feed with rice, Binta’s plot was still a small one. Bal-ancing herself carefully as she stepped from the canoe with her newbaby, Binta took a few steps and then stopped short, looking with



surprise and delight at a tiny thatch-roofed bamboo hut on stilts.While she was in labor, Omoro had come here and built it as ashelter for their son. Typical of men, he had said nothing about it.

Nursing the baby, then nestling him inside his shelter, Bintachanged into the working clothes she had brought in the bundleon her head, and waded out to work. Bending nearly double in thewater, she pulled up by the roots the young weeds that, left alone,would outgrow and choke the rice crop. And whenever Kuntacried, Binta waded out, dripping water, to nurse him again in theshadow of his shelter.

Little Kunta basked thus every day in his mother’s tenderness.Back in her hut each evening, after cooking and serving Omoro’sdinner, Binta would soften her baby’s skin by greasing him fromhead to toe with shea tree butter, and then—more often thannot—she would carry him proudly across the village to the hut ofGrandma Yaisa, who would bestow upon the baby still morecluckings and kissings. And both of them would set little Kunta towhimpering in irritation with their repeated pressings of his littlehead, nose, ears, and lips, to shape them correctly.

Sometimes Omoro would take his son away from the womenand carry the blanketed bundle to his own hut—husbands alwaysresided separately from their wives—where he would let the child’seyes and fingers explore such attractive objects as the saphiecharms at the head of Omoro’s bed, placed there to ward off evilspirits. Anything colorful intrigued little Kunta—especially his fa-ther’s leather huntsman’s bag, nearly covered by now with cowrieshells, each for an animal that Omoro had personally brought in asfood for the village. And Kunta cooed over the long, curved bowand quiver of arrows hanging nearby. Omoro smiled when a tinyhand reached out and grasped the dark, slender spear whose shaftwas polished from so much use. He let Kunta touch everythingexcept the prayer rug, which was sacred to its owner. And alone



together in his hut, Omoro would talk to Kunta of the fine andbrave deeds his son would do when he grew up.

Finally he would return Kunta to Binta’s hut for the next nurs-ing. Wherever he was, Kunta was happy most of the time, and healways fell asleep either with Binta rocking him on her lap orbending over him on her bed, singing softly such a lullaby as,

My smiling child,Named for a noble ancestor.Great hunter or warriorYou will be one day,Which will give your papa pride.But always I will remember you thus.

However much Binta loved her baby and her husband, she alsofelt a very real anxiety, for Moslem husbands, by ancient custom,would often select and marry a second wife during that time whentheir first wives had babies still nursing. As yet Omoro had takenno other wife; and since Binta didn’t want him tempted, she feltthat the sooner little Kunta was able to walk alone, the better, forthat was when the nursing would end.

So Binta was quick to help him as soon as Kunta, at about thir-teen moons, tried his first unsteady steps. And before long, he wasable to toddle about with an assisting hand. Binta was as relievedas Omoro was proud, and when Kunta cried for his next feeding,Binta gave her son not a breast but a sound spanking and a gourdof cow’s milk.



C H A P T E R 3

Three rains had passed, and it was that lean season when thevillage’s store of grain and other dried foods from the last har-

vest was almost gone. The men had hunted, but they had returnedwith only a few small antelopes and gazelle and some clumsybushfowl, for in this season of burning sun, so many of the sa-vanna’s waterholes had dried into mud that the bigger and bettergame had moved into deep forest—at the very time when the peo-ple of Juffure needed all their strength to plant crops for the newharvest. Already, the wives were stretching their staple meals ofcouscous and rice with the tasteless seeds of bamboo cane andwith the bad-tasting dried leaves of the baobab tree. The days ofhunger had begun so early that five goats and two bullocks—morethan last time—were sacrificed to strengthen everyone’s prayersthat Allah might spare the village from starvation.

Finally the hot skies clouded, the light breezes became briskwinds and, abruptly as always, the little rains began, falling warmlyand gently as the farmers hoed the softened earth into long,straight rows in readiness for the seeds. They knew the plantingmust be done before the big rains came.

The next few mornings, after breakfast, instead of canoeing totheir rice fields, the farmers’ wives dressed in the traditional fertilitycostumes of large fresh leaves, symbolizing the green of growing

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things, and set out for the furrowed fields of the men. Their voiceswould be heard rising and falling even before they appeared asthey chanted ancestral prayers that the couscous and groundnutsand other seeds in the earthen bowls balanced on their headswould take strong roots and grow.

With their bare feet moving in step, the line of women walkedand sang three times around every farmer’s field. Then they sepa-rated, and each woman fell in behind a farmer as he moved alongeach row, punching a hole in the earth every few inches with hisbig toe. Into each hole a woman dropped a seed, covered it overwith her own big toe, and then moved on. The women workedeven harder than the men, for they not only had to help their hus-bands but also tend both the rice fields and the vegetable gardensthey cultivated near their kitchens.

While Binta planted her onions, yams, gourds, cassava, and bit-ter tomatoes, little Kunta spent his days romping under the watch-ful eyes of the several old grandmothers who took care of all thechildren of Juffure who belonged to the first kafo, which includedthose under five rains in age. The boys and girls alike scamperedabout as naked as young animals—some of them just beginning tosay their first words. All, like Kunta, were growing fast, laughingand squealing as they ran after each other around the giant trunkof the village baobab, played hide-and-seek, and scattered the dogsand chickens into masses of fur and feathers.

But all the children—even those as small as Kunta—wouldquickly scramble to sit still and quiet when the telling of a storywas promised by one of the old grandmothers. Though unable yetto understand many of the words, Kunta would watch with wideeyes as the old women acted out their stories with such gesturesand noises that they really seemed to be happening.

As little as he was, Kunta was already familiar with some of thestories that his own Grandma Yaisa had told to him alone when he



had been visiting in her hut. But along with his first-kafo play-mates, he felt that the best storyteller of all was the beloved, mys-terious, and peculiar old Nyo Boto. Bald-headed, deeply wrinkled,as black as the bottom of a cooking pot, with her long lemongrass-root chewstick sticking out like an insect’s feeler between the fewteeth she had left—which were deep orange from the countlesskola nuts she had gnawed on—old Nyo Boto would settle herselfwith much grunting on her low stool. Though she acted gruff, thechildren knew that she loved them as if they were her own, whichshe claimed they all were.

Surrounded by them, she would growl, “Let me tell a story . . . ”“Please!” the children would chorus, wriggling in anticipation.And she would begin in the way that all Mandinka storytellers

began: “At this certain time, in this certain village, lived this cer-tain person.” It was a small boy, she said, of about their rains, whowalked to the riverbank one day and found a crocodile trapped ina net.

“Help me!” the crocodile cried out.“You’ll kill me!” cried the boy.“No! Come nearer!” said the crocodile.So the boy went up to the crocodile—and instantly was seized

by the teeth in that long mouth.“Is this how you repay my goodness—with badness?” cried the

boy.“Of course,” said the crocodile out of the corner of his mouth.

“That is the way of the world.”The boy refused to believe that, so the crocodile agreed not to

swallow him without getting an opinion from the first three wit-nesses to pass by. First was an old donkey.

When the boy asked his opinion, the donkey said, “Now thatI’m old and can no longer work, my master has driven me out forthe leopards to get me!”



“See?” said the crocodile. Next to pass by was an old horse, whohad the same opinion.

“See?” said the crocodile. Then along came a plump rabbit whosaid, “Well, I can’t give a good opinion without seeing this matteras it happened from the beginning.”

Grumbling, the crocodile opened his mouth to tell him—andthe boy jumped out to safety on the riverbank.

“Do you like crocodile meat?” asked the rabbit. The boy saidyes. “And do your parents?” He said yes again. “Then here is acrocodile ready for the pot.”

The boy ran off and returned with the men of the village, whohelped him to kill the crocodile. But they brought with them awuolo dog, which chased and caught and killed the rabbit, too.

“So the crocodile was right,” said Nyo Boto. “It is the way of theworld that goodness is often repaid with badness. This is what Ihave told you as a story.”

“May you be blessed, have strength and prosper!” said the chil-dren gratefully.

Then the other grandmothers would pass among the childrenwith bowls of freshly toasted beetles and grasshoppers. Thesewould have been only tasty tidbits at another time of year, butnow, on the eve of the big rains, with the hungry season alreadybeginning, the toasted insects had to serve as a noon meal, for onlya few handfuls of couscous and rice remained in most families’storehouses.



THE SAGA OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY


SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON

ALEX HALEY

ALEX HALEY


THE SAGA OF AN AMERICAN

FAMILY

9 781593 154493

ISBN-10 1-59315-449-6ISBN-13 978-1-59315-449-3

5 1 5 9 5

$15.95/ $19.50 Can.

“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage. . . .

Without this enriching knowledge, there is

a hollow yearning no matter what our

attainments in life.”

—ALEX HALEY

Vanguard Press

Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where his great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him—slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects—and one author.

But Haley has done more than recapture the history of his own family. As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 39 million Americans of African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all peoples and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.

Experience ROOTS on DVD from Warner Home Video

Cover photography: © Warner Bros. Ent. Inc.

Vanguard PressA Member of the Perseus Books Groupwww.Perseusbooks.com

$15.95/$19.50 Can.

“Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.”

So begins Roots, one of the most important and influential books of our time. When originally published thirty years ago, it galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that had not been seen in this country since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Roots has lost none of its emotional power and drama, and its message for today’s and future generations is even more vital and relevant than it was thirty years ago.

When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley’s grandmother used to tell him

stories about their family—stories that went back to her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called “the African.” She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the “Kamby Bolongo” and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum when he was set upon by four men, beaten, chained and dragged aboard a slave ship bound for Colonial America.

Still vividly remembering the stories after he grew up and became a writer, Haley began to search for documentation that might authenticate the narrative. It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of “the African”—Kunta Kinte—but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.

( C O N T I N U E D F R O M F R O N T F L A P )

( C O N T I N U E D O N B A C K F L A P )

PULITZER PRIZE

WINNER

PULITZER PRIZE

WINNER

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

WINNER

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