omitted the year when he went missing. At one point, he even placed Kunta Kinte in a generation that was alive in the twentieth century. It was also discovered that elders and griots could not give reliable genealogical lineages before the mid-19th century, with the single apparent exception of Kunta Kinte. It appears that Haley had told so many people about Kunta Kinte that he had created a case of circular reporting. Instead of independent confirmation of the Kunta Kinte story, he was actually hearing his own words repeated back to him. After Haley's book became nationally famous, American author Harold Courlander noted that the section describing Kinte's life was apparently taken from Courlander's own 1967 novel The African. Haley at first dismissed the charge, but later issued a public statement affirming that Courlander's book had been the source, and Haley attributed the error to a mistake of one of his assistant researchers. Courlander sued Haley for copyright infringement, which Haley settled out of court. However, despite the inconsistencies with Haley's chronology, Kunta Kinte was probably a real person. According to historian John Thornton, director of the African American Studies program at Boston University (who served as a historical advisor to the 2016 remake of Roots), the historical Kunta Kinte was indeed from the town of Jufureh, which was then part of the Kingdom of Niumi, and was from a Muslim Jula family which had moved there a generation before his birth. He came from a family of merchants who were involved in all matters of commerce, including the slave trade. He was sold into slavery around 1767. It is remarkable that he was sold into slavery given his family's social status as middle class merchants, as well as the ongoing debate at the time regarding whether it was permissible to sell Muslims as slaves to Christians, and his being sold into slavery possibly had something to do with inter-factional disputes among the Jula or traders, as well as the dispute Kingdom of Niumi had with a Royal African Company trading post at the time, during which the two sides seized hostages. In popular culture Kunta Kinte has inspired a reggae riddim of the same name. This started off life as a track called Beware Of Your Enemies released from Jamaica's Channel One. A dub version, put out in 1976 by Channel One house band The Revolutionaries became a sound