From Kansas, Alex travels to the National Archives and finds the North Carolina census records from after the Civil War. There he sees the blacksmith, Tom Murray, recorded as well as his wife, Irene. Alex even sees that his own “Great Aunt Liz” was six years.

Now Alex focuses on “ko” and “Kamby Bolongo” to figure out the tribe. Alex’s friend George points him to a group of African linguists. One oral historian, Dr. Jan Vansina, is particularly interested in how this story was passed down. He is certain the sounds come from the Mandinka language. A “ko” probably refers to a “kora,” a stringed instrument made from a dried gourd covered with goatskin. “Kamby Bolongo” probably comes from the word for moving water of the Gambia River.

When Alex speaks at Utica College, he hears about a student from the Gambia. Ebou Manga is of the Wolof tribe and offers to take him to Africa the following week. Ebou Manga and his father tell Alex that villages are named for the families who settled them centuries ago. They point on a map to the village of Kinte-Kundah Janneh-Ya (exact village founded by Kunta’s uncles named Janneh and Saloum). They also tell Alex of men called griots, living messengers of oral history. Eventually, they find a griot who is very knowledgeable about the Kinte clan.

Alex finds himself speeding up the Gambia River (the “Kamby Bolongo”) to reach the village of Juffare, where this old griot lives. Alex calls meeting him the “peak experience” of his life. Among the thatched roofs of the village, Alex Haley listens to the griot. Finally, he talks about Kairaba Kunta Kinte, a marabout (Muslim holy man) who founds villages and whose second wife is Yaisa who begot Omoro. Then comes the final piece of evidence: “About the time the King’s soldiers came . . . the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, went away from his village to chop wood . . . and he was never seen again.” Alex is awestruck.

Suddenly, the entire assembly gathers around Alex in concentric rings. They chant and move counterclockwise, asking Alex to hold their babies in an ancient ceremony called “The Laying on of Hands” that connects them all together. The holy men pray for Alex. When they approach the next village, Alex is brought to tears as the village people shout his name as “Meester Kinte!”

Using the griot’s information, Alex Haley visits England, where he finds the maritime records of the Fort James Slave Fort on the Gambia River. After seven weeks of studying more than a thousand slave ships, Alex finds the Lord Ligonier, captained by Thomas Davies, that sailed to Annapolis with 140 slaves. 98 survived the journey in 1767. He even finds the advertisement for the slaves in the Maryland Gazette. Alex confirms the sale of “Toby” to John Waller and the record in 1768 of the transfer to William Waller of a maimed “Negro man slave named Toby.”

To accurately portray the crossing, Alex signs up as cargo on a freighter across the ocean and forces himself to sleep on shelves in the cargo hold. He promises that “every lineage statement” in Roots is absolute fact, but “dialogue and most of the incidents are of necessity a novelized amalgam of what I know took place together with what my researching led me to plausibly feel took place.”

On September 29, 1967, Alex Haley stands on the same pier where the Lord Ligonier landed two hundred years before to the day.