Plot
Colonial times
In the Gambia, West Africa, in 1750, Kunta Kinte is born to Omoro Kinte, a Mandinka warrior, and his wife, Binta. He is raised in a Muslim family. [5] [6] When Kunta reaches the age of 15, he and other boys undergo a semi-secretive tribal rite of passage, under the kintango, which includes wrestling, circumcision, philosophy, war-craft and hunting skills.
Meanwhile, Captain Thomas Davies meets Villars, the owner of a cargo ship, Lord Ligonier, and is given command of the vessel in order to trade goods between England, Africa and America. Only at the last minute is he informed that part of his cargo will consist of African slaves, to his dismay.
During the early voyage, Mr. Slater, one of the ship's officers, pontificates to Davies about slavery. After learning that Slater is an expert in the field, having undertaken many similar voyages previously, Davies eventually grants him total authority and control over all procedures for ensuring their safe and secure passage to America.
When the ship docks in Africa, Slater introduces Davies to the trader and negotiator, Gardner, who is tasked with the capture or purchase of 170 Africans.
Back in Juffure, Kunta is instructed to catch a bird unharmed. The bird escapes from the safety of the training area, and during the chase, Kunta crosses paths with Gardner's small party of European slave hunters and their captives.
Shortly after his ceremonial return, while fetching wood outside his village to make a drum for his younger brother Lamin, Kunta is captured by Gardner and four black collaborators. He is then sold to a slave trader and placed aboard the slave ship for a three-month journey to Colonial America. The ship eventually left Africa with 140 Africans.
During the voyage, Kunta bonds with a Mandinka wrestler who was part of his manhood training, as well as a Mandinka girl named Fanta whom he met shortly before his kidnapping. An insurrection among the human cargo fails to take over the ship, but results in the death of Mr. Slater, several crew members and several Africans, including the wrestler.
The ship eventually arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1767, with 98 Africans still living. The captured Africans are sold at auction as slaves. John Reynolds, a plantation owner from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg, buys Kunta and gives him the Christian name Toby. Reynolds assigns an older slave, Fiddler, to teach Kunta English and train him in the ways of servitude. Although Kunta gradually warms up to Fiddler, he wants to preserve his Mandinka (and Islamic) heritage, and he defiantly refuses to eat pork or accept his Christian name.
Kunta makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape, first breaking his ankle chain with a broken tool blade he finds half buried in a field. After this attempt the overseer, Ames, gathers the slaves in the barn, and directs another slave, James, to whip Kunta until he acknowledges his new name "Toby." Fiddler comforts the bloody-backed Kunta and uses his Mandinka name for the first time, assuring him "there will be another day."
Late 18th century
In 1776, the adult Kunta Kinte, still haunted by his Mandinka roots and desire for freedom, tries again to escape. He makes it to a nearby plantation where his boyhood friend Fanta is enslaved, although he discovers after spending the night with her that she has turned away from her African name and heritage in the name of survival. A pair of slave-catchers track him there and hobble him by chopping off almost half his right foot with a hatchet. Exasperated, John Reynolds decides to sell Kunta, which will also settle a debt with his brother Dr. William Reynolds, the local physician. John also transfers several of his other slaves, including Fiddler, to William as well.
Bell, the cook for William's family, successfully treats both Kunta's mangled foot and wounded spirit. A trusted member of the Reynolds household, she arranges for Kunta to become Dr. Reynolds' driver. Eventually Kunta submits to a life of servitude, although he never entirely renounces Africa, his faith in Islam, nor his hope of returning home. He marries Bell, in a ceremony which includes jumping across a broom, although his talk of Africa frustrates her. Bell bears a daughter in 1790, to whom Kunta gives the name Kizzy, which means "stay put" in the Mandinka language (in hopes of ensuring that she will never be sold away). Fiddler continues to mentor Kunta, and dies an old man shortly after Kizzy's birth.
Turn of the 19th century
An adulterous relationship between Dr. William Reynolds and John Reynolds' wife produces a daughter, Missy Anne, whom John believes is his own. Missy Anne and Kizzy become playmates and best friends despite the social confines of Southern plantation culture. Missy Anne secretly teaches Kizzy to read and write, a skill forbidden to slaves. In 1806, Kizzy falls in love with Noah, a spirited slave who attempts to flee North with a "traveling pass" forged by Kizzy from a pass given to her by Missy Anne.
Dr. Reynolds, although amiable and compassionate toward his slaves, regards the pass and escape to be such an egregious breach of trust that he separately sells both Noah and Kizzy, much to the horror of Bell and Kunta. Missy Anne, who had offered Kizzy a place as her companion and maid, watches dispassionately as Kizzy is dragged away. Tom Moore, a planter in Caswell County, North Carolina, with a sexual appetite for young female slaves, becomes Kizzy's new owner, and rapes her the night of her arrival. Kizzy becomes pregnant from the assault and gives birth to their son, George, nine months after her arrival.
Early 19th century
In 1824, the cheerful and confident George, under the tutelage of an older slave named Mingo, learns much about cockfighting. By direction of Moore, George takes over as the chief trainer, the "cock of the walk." George befriends Marcellus, a free black man, and fellow cockfighter, who informs him about the possibility of buying his own freedom. At the same time, he believes Moore to be a close friend.
Meanwhile, the adult Kizzy is wooed by Sam Bennett, a fancy carriage driver whose master is visiting the Moores. Seeking to impress Kizzy, he takes her for a short visit to her former home on Dr. Reynolds's plantation, in the hope that she can see her parents. Kizzy learns that Bell has been sold away and that Kunta died two years earlier. Kizzy sees her father's grave and his wooden marker; using a small stone, she scratches over the name Toby and writes below it "Kunta Kinte," and promises him that his descendants will be free one day.
In 1831, George realizes his master's true feelings when he and his family are threatened at gunpoint by Moore and his wife, as a result of Nat Turner's Rebellion. Although none of Moore's slaves are personally involved in the rebellion, they become victims of the paranoid suspicions of their master, so they start planning to buy their freedom, although Moore tells George he will never allow it. Kizzy finally tells George that Moore is his father.
George, having become an expert in cockfighting, earns for himself the moniker "Chicken George." Squire James, Moore's main adversary in the pit, arranges for a British owner, Sir Eric Russell, and twenty of his cocks to visit and to participate in the local fights. Moore eventually bets a huge sum on his best bird, which George has trained, but he loses and cannot pay.
Under the terms of a settlement between Moore and Russell, George goes to England to train cocks for Russell and to train more trainers and is forced to leave behind Kizzy, his wife Tildy, and his sons, Tom and Lewis. Moore promises to set George free on the latter's return and to keep the family together in his absence. However, a now-broke Moore then sells all of his remaining slaves except Kizzy.
Later in life, Kizzy and Missy Anne Reynolds meet by chance one last time. Missy Anne denies that she "recollects" a "darkie by the name of Kizzy." Kizzy then spits into Missy Anne's cup of water without Missy Anne realizing it.
The Civil War
George returns in 1861, shortly before the start of the Civil War. He proudly announces that Moore, after some reluctance on Moore's part and some persuasion on George's part, has kept his word by granting George his freedom. He learns that Kizzy has died two months before, and that Tildy, Tom and Lewis now belong to Sam Harvey. Tom has become a blacksmith on the Harvey plantation and has a wife, Irene, and two sons.
George is welcomed warmly and learns that his relatives have spoken well of him during his absence. He further learns that according to a law in North Carolina, if he stays 60 days in that state as a freed slave, he will lose his freedom, so he heads northward, seeking the next stage in his career as a cockfighter and awaiting the end of the war, the emancipation of the slaves, and another reunion of his family. Meanwhile, Tom meets harassment at the hands of two brothers, Evan and Jemmy Brent.
While the war continues to its inevitable end, a hungry and destitute young white couple from South Carolina, George and Martha Johnson, arrive and ask for help, and the slave family take them in. George Johnson is given a job as overseer of the plantation, but has no experience with slaves and balks at the expectation that he mistreat them. Martha soon gives birth, but the child is stillborn. The couple stays on with Tom and his wife, becoming a part of their community.
Eventually, a month before the surrender by the South, Jemmy deserts the Confederate Army during the final desperate days of the war, and he shows up at Tom's blacksmith shop. Tom reluctantly runs an errand for him but, on returning, he finds Jemmy trying to rape Irene, and in the resulting fight Tom drowns him in the quenching tub. Later Evan, now an officer in the Confederate cavalry, arrives at the shop, demands to know about Jemmy, gets no answer, and angrily tells Tom that he has not yet finished with him.
Postwar
After the war, the former owner of the farm Tom works on, Sam Harvey, is forced to surrender all of his property to Senator Arthur Justin, a local politician intent on acquiring as much land as possible. Under the terms of the surrender, his former slaves are allowed to stay on as sharecroppers, with eventual rights to own a part of the land. However, because no written deed has been filed, the senator deems the agreement void and imposes heavy debts on the black farmers as a legal pretext to keep them from leaving the county. He later gives oversight of the farm to Evan Brent, who reinstates George Johnson as overseer, believing whites should not farm alongside blacks.
One night, several local white men, led by Evan and wearing white hoods (made from fabric sacks from Evan's store) begin to harass and terrorize Tom, his family, and other members of his community. Tom emerges as the leader among his group, while tensions arise between the white Johnsons and Tom's brother Lewis. As the local blacksmith, Tom devises a horseshoeing method to identify the horses involved in the raids by the hooded men. But when Tom reports his suspicions and his evidence to the sheriff, who sympathizes with Evan and knows every member of the white mob, the sheriff tips off Evan.
Evan's mob leads another raid against Tom, during which Tom is whipped. George Johnson intervenes and reluctantly volunteers to whip Tom, in order to save his friend's life. Lewis emotionally reconciles with the Johnsons as the family treats Tom's injuries, unsure of their future. Chicken George then unexpectedly returns, raising the spirits of his relatives and friends, and begins to plot their next step. He reports that he has bought some land in Tennessee.
Using some cunning and deception of their own, the black farmers make preparations for their move away. The group eventually lures Evan and his gang to the farm and overpowers them, jubilantly departing for Tennessee. Chicken George and his group arrive on his land in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, to start their new life. Once there, George and Tom retell part of the story of Kunta Kinte in Africa to his grandchildren in Tennessee.
