Near the beginning of the second episode of Roots, after the uprising by Africans on the Lord Ligonier, there is the landing at port in America on September 29, 1767. That takes place at Annapolis, Maryland, now a famed training base for the U.S. navy, but for writer Alex Haley it had more emotional significance than ranks of white-suited servicemen.

The man who wrote Roots said he had the greatest emotional experience of his life on September 29, 1967, when he stood on the site where his ancestor Kunta Kinte, who was among that batch of captured Africans on the Lord Ligonier, arrived two centuries before.

That emotion is, of course, understandable, but historians are much more inclined to put fact before feeling and many believe that that feeling Haley had was not based on fact. Roots is not without its critics, who question its historical accuracy.

And, in so doing, they question the validity of the book and, naturally, the movie which is based on it.

While Haley did not claim that Roots was historically accurate throughout (it is, in fact, historical fiction), he did maintain that he was descended from Kunta Kinte and the ship and date of arrival are real.

Plagiarism claims

However, genealogists and historians have placed Kunta Kinte in the Americas up to five years earlier and his death years before when Kizzy, Kunta Kinte's daughter who Haley claims to be his great-great-great grandmother, was supposed to have been born.

It has not helped that plagiarism claims have been made against Roots, Haley settling out of court for claims that there was widescale plagiarism of The African, written by Harold Courlander.

Margaret Walker was not as successful in her lawsuit, as her claim that Jubilee was plagiarised by Haley was dismissed.

-MC