Kunta Kinte

Kunta Kinte is a character in the novel Roots The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Haley claimed that Kunta Kinte was based on one of his ancestors a Gambian man who was born in 1750, enslaved and taken to America and who died in 1822. Haley said that his account of Kunta Kintes life in Roots was a mixture of fact and fiction.

According to Roots, Kinte was born circa 1750 in the Mandinka village of Juffure, in the Gambia.

Source: Wikipedia