Why is kunta kinte a hero

The new Roots spares no expense in recreating historical detail, and Kirby often wondered whether he was really acting at all. It often felt closer to reenactment. He talks of filming on a full-scale slave ship, for example. We shot in there for about two weeks. It was a similar story in Louisiana. There was something uncanny about pretending to hack sugar cane outside a historic plantation house, just as slaves would have done for real years earlier.

And then the first scene is me witnessing somebody being hanged. And suddenly I just pictured people hanging from all these beautiful oak trees. Those are probably the same trees people really did hang from. Suddenly the whole place feels really different. There were physical challenges Kirby could prepare for: learning bareback horse-riding, or Mandinka language and customs.

I actually found strength in that Kunta would have been very unprepared to go on this journey, too. When I ask him which was the hardest day, Kirby falls silent.

He is tied to a post and whipped in front of the other slaves. There was no script or timeframe for the scene. Though tiny -- it is barely big enough to house some ruins of its past and a baobab grove -- the role it has played in world history has been large indeed. Once known as James Island, Kunta Kinte Island was a holding ground for captured slaves before they were shipped to America. The island is named for its most famous slave, who was later immortalized in the book and then mini-series Roots.

Hide Caption. He claimed to be a seventh generation descendant of Kunta Kinte -- a claim that some experts dispute. Roots remains the third-highest rated telecast in American history. The show is credited by some as invoking a change in American attitudes to slavery -- a turning point in the post-civil rights struggle. Kinte is said to have been captured in Juffureh, a village across from Kunta Kinte Island, and transported to America on a boat called the Lord Ligonier.

Visitors to the Juffureh slavery museum can see the history of slavery in the area, and read some of the ads posted for the sale of slaves.

Heroes Wiki Explore. Top Content. Bureaucrats Jester of Chaos. Pure Good Terms. Explore Wikis Community Central. Yet there are several potential justifications. The African scenes of the new version are filmed in South Africa, rather than the US state of Georgia that was originally used.

These factors all potentially add authenticity. But in a scene-by-scene comparison between the opening episodes of Roots from then and now, the major differences reflect changes in racial attitudes. The series alternated between an American narrative — in which a slave-trading ship sails from Maryland — and an African strand, starting with the birth of Kunta Kinte, son of a Mandinka warrior in the Gambia. The new version, though, features no American characters until Kunta is taken captive and transported to Virginia.