![]() ![]() To this son she passed along what she could remember of her father’s history. When Kizzy was sixteen, family lore continued, she was sold to a small planter in North Carolina, by whom she bore a child called George. To this little girl “Kin-tay” told the story of how the slave traders had captured him when he strayed from his African village into the forest, and he drilled into her memory the words in his native tongue for half a dozen familiar objects, such as a guitar. He mated with another slave, “Bell, the big-house cook,” and they had a daughter called Kizzy. Her recital went all the way back to the days before the American Revolution, to the time when a man she called “the African” had been brought aboard a slave ship to a place she pronounced “Naplis.” According to family tradition, this African forebear had called himself “Kin-tay,” but the Virginia planter who purchased him renamed him “Toby.” In a fourth unsuccessful attempt to escape, he was trapped by professional slave-catchers, who mutilated his foot so that he would never run away again. ![]() When Alex Haley was growing up in Tennessee during the 1920’s, his grandmother used to entertain him with stories about his ancestors. ![]()
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