Jufureh Village
Jufureh is a small village on the north bank of the Gambia River, and was founded by the Taal family in 1455. The village is adjacent to Fort James Island on the mainland, the birthplace of Kunta Kinte, the hero of Alex Haley’s 1976 bestselling novel Roots.
General Information
One of the oldest villages in the Upper Neumi region, Jufureh is a typical settlement of the Mandinka people who have experienced a long history of varied adversity. In 1979, a film crew arrived here to shoot the television version of the novel about the Kunta Kinte family.
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In the novel “Roots” is about the days when Jufureh was the center of the slave trade, and the population of the Gambia was under the rule of Portuguese, French, Spanish and English merchants. Quite a number of the country’s inhabitants were taken from here to Europe, the West Indies, and America. The story of Kunta Kinte, taken to America in 1767, has aroused an unexpected interest in this absolutely provincial town, which has played a very important part in the realization of racial injustice.
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Inspired by the stories of his grandmother Cynthia, freed from slavery in 1865, Haley traced his roots and managed to find his African ancestors. After studying the customs and traditions of the village, historical texts, and, most importantly, the oral legends passed down to younger generations by the village chronicler, Haley wrote a colorful saga, something between social commentary and family legends based on accounts of the Kinte family’s life from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century.
The building, which dates back to 1840, houses a small museum with an exhibit on the Senegambian slave trade.
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