Kunta Kinte

The observances for the fifth annual Kunta Kinte Commemoration and Heritage Festival continue this weekend with a variety of events in the Baltimore area and Annapolis.The festival reaffirms the importance of the African-American community as a medium for social change and self-improvement, as demonstrated by its theme: "With Faith, We are Family."A celebration of the heritage, culture, history, music and cuisine of African-Americans, the festival marks the arrival on Sept. 29, 1767, in Annapolis of the ship Lord Ligonier, which carried 98 Africans into slavery, including Kunta Kinte, an ancestor of author Alex Haley.

The annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival will not go on as scheduled this month after organizers said they could not raise enough money to hold it. The Annapolis festival has celebrated African-American history and honored the legacy of slave Kunta Kinte since 1987. It usually features musical performances, food, arts and crafts, African dance and drumming and storytelling. Organizers announced on the festival's website that they had not been able to raise enough money to hold the event this year, but that they still planned on holding it next year.

The observances for the fifth annual Kunta Kinte Commemoration and Heritage Festival continue this weekend with a variety of events in the Baltimore area and Annapolis.The festival reaffirms the importance of the African-American community as a medium for social change and self-improvement, as demonstrated by its theme: "With Faith, We are Family."A celebration of the heritage, culture, history, music and cuisine of African-Americans, the festival marks the arrival on Sept. 29, 1767, in Annapolis of the ship Lord Ligonier, which carried98 Africansinto slavery, including Kunta Kinte, an ancestor of author Alex Haley.

When she was a child growing up in Lothian, Lyndra Pratt loved spending time with her grandmother, Margaret Ann Easton, at Easton's nearby farm. Naturally, Pratt was curious about this woman she loved so dearly. What, she wondered, had her grandma's life been like? How had she become the way she was? "Who are your parents?" Pratt asked one day when she was 8. "Where did they come from?" Easton burst into tears. That was 48 years ago, long before Pratt, now Lyndra Pratt Marshall, realized black Americans of her grandmother's time rarely wanted to discuss their lineage.

The observances for the fifth annual Kunta Kinte Commemoration and Heritage Festival start tomorrow at the Holiday Inn in Annapolis Thursday and conclude Saturday and Sunday, with a variety of events in theBaltimore area and Annapolis.The high point of the festivities will be a Melba Moore concert Sept. 28 at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis, with a reception to follow.The event, intended to reaffirm the importance of the African-American community as a medium for social change and self-improvement, has as its theme: "With Faith, We are Family."

The Office of Tourism Development, part of the Maryland Department of Economic and Employment Development, has awarded the 1990 Kunta Kinte Commemoration and Heritage Festival $50,000 under its Super Event Funding Program. Super Event Funding is given to about four events per year, and is intended to establish marketable tourist attractions throughout the state.The fourth annual Kunta Kinte Commemoration and Heritage Festival runs through Oct. 1, and observes the arrival of Kunta Kinte in Annapolis on Sept.

It seemed only fitting that a weekend when thousands came to Annapolis to commemorate Alex Haley's ancestor Kunta Kinte found Willie Ragsdale sitting beside a poster-board chart showing his own family's roots.Mr. Ragsdale, president of the Baltimore chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, joined other society members in answering questions about genealogical research and encouraging those attending the annual Kunta Kinte festival to search out their own pasts.Mr.

Dr. Mankekolo Mahlangu-Ngcobo knows the power people can wield when they are united for a common cause. The South African native, a longtime activist for the African National Congress, saw apartheid topple earlier this year under the will of the people.Now this same strong "spirit of Africanism" will be celebrated in Annapolis this weekend at the fifth annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival, says Dr. Mahlangu-Ngcobo, who fled South Africa in 1980 and now lives in Baltimore."It is a way in which you can be uplifted spiritually and to celebrate African, African-American and Caribbean culture," she says.

A weeklong festival celebrating African-American culture, history, music and cuisine begins Saturday in Baltimore."Maryland is steeped in the culture of African Americans, and we invite everyone to come and participate in it," says Chris Rogers, spokesman for the fourth annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival.The theme for the Kunta Kinte Festival, named after an ancestor of Alex Haley popularized in his historical novel "Roots," is "We Are Family." Leonard Blackshear, festival chairman, promises a week filled with "events and experiences which focus on the strength and contributions of the African-American family."

The 13th annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival will be staged tomorrow and Sunday at St. John's College in Annapolis. The festival, which will run from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. tomorrow and until 7 p.m. Sunday, celebrates African, African-American and African-Caribbean culture. It takes its name from the young slave who arrived at the Annapolis City Dock more than 230 years ago. His descendent, the late Alex Haley, documented Kinte's story in the Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle Roots. The festival will feature more than 70 vendors and crafts people selling jewelry, clothing, arts and crafts, and traditional and ethnic cuisine.

Organizers of the annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival are assessing their finances and mulling the location of next year's celebration, after rain apparently contributed to a lackluster turnout this year for the event's return to downtown Annapolis. David Arthur, president of the board of directors for Kunta Kinte Celebration, said organizers will meet in the coming weeks to discuss fundraising strategies and the best format and venue for next year's festival. City officials approved a one-day permit for the festival, celebrated Saturday at City Dock, taking into account concerns from the business community over a perceived drop in customer traffic when organized events convene downtown.

EASTON --More than three years after winning a bitter fight to place a statue of Talbot County's most illustrious native son - abolitionist Frederick Douglass - here on the courthouse lawn, the grass-roots group that is leading the drive has raised only about half the money it needs. The sculptor who was selected to create the statue complains that he doesn't have a contract in hand or a check to reimburse him for money he's spent on travel and designing models. "I've been working for three years and haven't made a nickel.

Chris Haley's family tree has extra-strong Roots. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same title, his uncle Alex Haley traced the family history back to an African slave named Kunta Kinte -- and spawned a legend. The book later became a television mini-series (which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year) and one of the defining cultural events of the 1970s. Chris Haley has embraced his legacy -- he works for the Maryland State Archives and is a longtime trustee of the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, which this year will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Kunta-Kinte Heritage Festival.

Ivy Chisley looks at earrings during the Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival at the Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds. At top right, Danielle Edwards, 5, dances on the shoulders of her father, Derrick Edwards, as they enjoy music and wait for food. Below, Jerome Hall of the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry Association mans the group's Buffalo Soldiers exhibit. The festival honors Kunta Kinte, an African slave brought to Annapolis in the mid-1700s. An ancestor of author Alex Haley, he was featured prominently in Haley's book Roots.

Throwing a party while mourning the host is the challenge faced this weekend by the friends and family of Leonard A. Blackshear, founder of the Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival. Blackshear, who also founded the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, died in March at age 62 of cancer. Tonight, the city of Annapolis will dedicate the story wall at the memorial to Kinte and Alex Haley at City Dock, monuments that Blackshear made a reality. The next morning, the 19th festival will open at the Anne Arundel County fairgrounds in Crownsville.

On Sept. 29, 1767, a 17-year-old slave disembarked at City Dock in Annapolis after a brutal ocean voyage from West Africa. His name, Kunta Kinte, has taken on a legendary quality, but only after the efforts two centuries later of his descendant Alex Haley. Relying on his grandmother's memories - she was a family griot, or storyteller - Haley sought to memorialize Kinte's life in his international best-seller, Roots. According to Haley family history, Kinte was sold into slavery in a town called "Naplis."

Tourism, a field that has often relied on our fascination with history, is increasingly tapping into a desire to better understand our respective heritages. Witness the success of Ellis Island since that immigration landmark was refurbished in 1990. Likewise, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is opening to immense attention in Washington.With that in mind, what a great idea it was for Maryland economic development and cultural officials to devise an African-American tourism strategy for the state.

When Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer passes by the Alex Haley statue and memorial wall along Annapolis' waterfront, she thinks of Leonard A. Blackshear. "This is indeed Leonard's walk and Leonard's wall," she said this week of Blackshear, who died of cancer March 24. Haley wrote the best-seller Roots about his ancestor Kunta Kinte, who is believed to have arrived as a slave at Annapolis' City Dock in 1767. For Blackshear, a telecommunications business owner who founded the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, roots were a favorite metaphor for making the past seem present and real, here and now. "Roots provide an anchor in a world moving so fast," Blackshear said in an interview last year at a children's genealogy summer camp.