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Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family encouraged black Americans to explore their past and helped to popularize oral history and family history in the United States. His writing reminds us that oral history recording taps into a vast, rich reservoir of oral traditions sustained through family, community and national memories.As a boy, Alex Haley spent his summers on his grandmother's front porch in Henning, Tennessee. listening to her and her sisters tell stories of the family's history back through the days of slavery. The "Furthest–Back person" they spoke of was an ancestor they called "the African," who was kidnapped in his native country, shipped to Annapolis, Maryland, and sold into slavery. He remembered hearing:"Yeah, boy, that African say his name was 'Kin-tay'; he say the banjo was 'ko,' an' the river 'Kamby-Bolong,' an' he was off choppin' some wood to make his drum when they grabbed 'im!"These stories stayed with young Alex throughout his life. And he became obsessed with finding his family's roots in Africa.With the help of some friends and a linguist from West Africa, he learned that some of the words in his grandmother's stories were like Mandinka words (a language spoken by some tribes), and that the river she spoke of as 'Kamby Bolong' was probably the Gambia River. Alex knew that he must get to the Gambia River.With the help of Gambian officials, he learned that a griot, or oral historian, knew the history of a Kin-tay family. Could this be his own family? Alex Haley began his own trip up the Gambia River to find out.
