Newspapers / Mars Hill University Student … / Nov. 5, 1976, edition 1 / Page 9
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It Ford 3% of the 47%; how- /ho planned tl election' ishion, it' his vic' /hole cour result® jxpected- :e either r conte®' lat their :ome true- a either r largely iracle i*' he state® es of the ong,"HaP' gain" rf3® ut over nt's"Hai e team o‘ Waltet n captnt® r the ned of the ■on, sai^ iaptist cor $25,000 do such ^ )wn withoO le $100,00’ ith repor^' nmended ^ ^ f Endowms*'^ iptist col' illy soon ^ the tranS ind wi :ch-reiat® are ih' snts wh®‘' institrr' ;udy aS ifidence ^ Ligher ed^ ilue in tP ■up to tlr 1^" Fished r is expe'^J I by Decef. iluated : 1977. The Hilltop, November 5, 1976, Page Nine Bridges’ Book World UalcomX’AuthorExploresAfrimnHeriiage ^^the Author: Haley taught himself to write in the United States Coast Guard. '5.^08 Chief Jovamalist of the Coast when he retired in 1959. He then a magazine writer and interview- tL first book was The Autobiogra- Malcolm X. He spent twelve years l^^^'^hing and writing Roots. Even be- publication ^reviewers were calling "an epio work destined to become Lassie of American literature." |^^*~The Saga of an American Family: A Alex Haley was a child in Hen- Tennessee, his grandmother used him stories of his family .all k back to a man she called "the ' - •Can." This man was a slave who had torn in Africa where he was cap- to search for documentation that authenticate the narrative that 15 '• After Haley became a writer, he wn ... 4f Standmother had related. ,, ten years and extensive travel, a fantastic genealogical dis- He discovered that the name of ^ African" was Kunta Kinte, and that from the village of Juffure in West Africa. Kinte was abducted I. ^^67 when he was sixteen years old. shipped to Maryland where he was h to a Virginia planter. went to Juffure where he talked African sixth cousins. In Roots, re-creates the story of Kunta 55^ and the six generations of his Ij Ctidants in America. is the first black American to trace his family back to its roots. His manner of tracing these roots was as exciting as a mys tery novel. He had certain sounds to go by. "The African’s" name was Kunta Kinte. He had called a guitar a "ko" and he had called a river "Kamly Bo- longo." These words were sharp, angular sounds, with "k" predominating. What African tongue sounded like this? Haley contacted Dr. Jan Vansina who was an ex pert in African linguistics.Dr. Vansina was an oral historian, too, and was certain that these sounds were from the "mandinka" tongue. Mandinka was spoken by the Mandingo tribe, and in that language, "bolongo" meant river_ Therefore, "Kamly Bolongo" probably meant Gambia River. Haley next located a student from Gambia and flew to Gambia with him. In Gambia, he discovered that most of the oldest villages were named for the fam- lies that settled them centuries ago, and that there was a village named Kinte-Kundah. Haley also discovered that there were very old men, called griots, who lived in the back country and who were walk ing archives on oral history. These groits spent forty or fifty years mem orizing histories of villages, clans, families, and great heroes. Since the Kinte clan was old and well- known in Gambia,he was able to locate a groit of the Kinte clan. Haley had to organize a safari to reach the groit and he took along three Interpreters and four musicians because the groits would not talk without music in the background. When Haley reached the small village of Juffure, he began to have a "peak experience"—an experience which tran scends any other emotional experience in one's life.Juffure was a small vil lage of only seventy people; it still contained circular mud houses with con ical thatched roofs just as it had two ^hundred years ago. The groit began to tell the story of the Kinte clan. After he had talked for two hours, he stated: "About the time the king’s soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, went away from his village to chop wood....and-he was never seen again...." These were exact ly the same words Haley had heard as a child on his grandmother's front porch in Tennessee. He relayed this infor mation to the groit who told it to the people of the village. They were excit ed and pleased, and welcomed him as one of their own. The men of the village took him to their mosque made of bamboo and thatch,and prayed in Arabic,"Praise be to Allah for one long lost from us whom Allah has returned." Haley was deeply moved by this ex perience and he continued his research. Lloyds of London opened old English maritime records to him. Through these he identified the slave ship his an cestor was aboard. Haley wanted Roots to be as factual as possible, but part of the story is fictional and a re-creation of the way Haley felt conditions really were like in the times and places he described. The book re-creates a grim page in American history,but at the same time, it is a testament to the endurance of the black family in the midst of perse cution and tribulation.
Mars Hill University Student Newspaper
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Nov. 5, 1976, edition 1
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