Kizzy Moore [1790-1861], also known as Kizzy Reynolds, was a slave, and the first ever African-American born in the Kinte dynasty. She is the first-born child of Kunta Kinte and Belle Reynolds and is the mother of Chicken George, grandmother of Tom Harvey, great grandmother of Elizabeth and Cynthia, great-great grandmother of Bertha-George Palmer and great-great-great grandmother of Alex Haley
Months later, Bell goes into labor and gives birth to Kizzy.
Upon seeing her and holding her, Kunta names her Kizzy and when Belle asks about her name, Kunta explains that in Mandinka talk, her name means "stay put." and that unlike her previous children, she'd never be took from Belle.
That same night, Kunta takes Kizzy away to name her like his father did before him, but is distracted by the sound of the drums signalling his escape, but he decides to remain with Bell and Kizzy
He then takes her home and puts her to bed and tells her a story about how her name means, "stay put" but it doesn't mean stay a slave and he proceeds to tell her that she is the daughter of the African Kunta Kinte, son of Omoro and Binta Kinte etc ...
16 years later
When she is sixteen Kizzy falls in love with a field hand, Noah, the son of Ada, another field hand. Noah desperately wants to escape the plantation and asks Kunta for his advice (as Kunta had made repeated attempts to escape, before being maimed by slave catchers.) Being in love with Noah, Kizzy tries to talk him out of going, warning him what she overheard about what patrollers do to runaways between Master Waller and a visitor, but he will not be swayed. Unbeknownst to Kunta, Kizzy helps Noah escape by using her secret ability to write to forge a traveling pass. Noah then escapes into the night, Kizzy prays to Jesus to protect Noah from the slave catchers for him to reach North.
Kizzy is sold away from her parents.
A Friend's Betrayal and Being Sold Off the Reynolds Plantation
After one week on the run, Noah is caught by slave catchers and dragged back to the plantation by the overseer Ordell, to the horror of Kizzy, her parents, Noah's mom, Ada, and the other slaves. The exhausted Noah is taken into the barn and whipped until he finally reveals it was Kizzy who forged his traveling pass. The near-dead Noah is then sold off. Master Waller orders Toby and Bell to come at the big house where he reveals the fake traveling pass forged by their only daughter. Despite the desperate pleas of Kunta and Belle, Kizzy is sold off to a gamecock fighter named Tom Lea of Caswell County, North Carolina. Kizzy begins screaming for her parents and Missy Anne to help her. When Kunta and Belle hear Kizzy's anguished screams, they run out of the house to see her being forcibly taken onto the wagon by Ordell. They are kept back from reaching her by gunpoint as they are forced to watch their daughter driven off the plantation. Missy Anne, hearing the commotion, looks out through her window at the scene below. After watching for a moment, she turns away and closes the shutters and does nothing to help Kizzy, thus breaking her promise to save Kizzy and betraying her trust. As Kizzy is driven away from the plantation crying and screaming for help, Missy Anne later told her uncle that Kizzy was just the same like other typical black slaves and then skipped heading to her room while Dr. Waller is shocked and disappointed by his niece's behavior and comment. After being sold, Kizzy would never see her parents again.
Later Years at Lea Plantation, the Matriarch of the Family (1806-1861)
An Abuse and Impregnation at the hands of Tom Moore
Tom Lea now meets her and rapes her in order to get his revenge on William Waller. Kizzy's last name is changed to Lea but her master rapes her again once she says "Kinte". Kizzy is told by Tom Lea to do work but she says she pregnant but the master whips her and tells her that he will sell the baby if she doesn't do the work. He says he raped her because Waller killed Tom Lea's Brother, who was shot dead after trying to help the slaves on his plantation.
A Courtship with the fancy driver, Sam Bennett
In 1824, Kizzy, aged 34, now a field hand, meets Sam Bennett, a freemen who bought his papers in 1821, (one year before Toby dies) who is visiting the Lea plantation. Sam is immediately smitten with Kizzy, but she dislikes his arrogance and ignores him. After a while, she warms to him and they begin a relationship. One night, after feeding Sam a meal, he asked her to "fetch" some water. Hearing this, Kizzy got water- but instead giving to him, Kizzy threw the water at Sam which angers him. He demands to know why she did that. She replied to Sam that he should never say "fetch" to her because she suffers too much due to slavery. After they reconciled, Kizzy begins to burst into tears admitting to Sam that she was bitter and lonely. She told him that she lost everybody when her first love Noah was sold away, and then when the whites took her away from her parents. In order to make her happy and not feel lonely again, Sam planned to marry Kizzy and afterwards made love to her. The next day, her son George talked to Kizzy about how he disproves of his mother's courtship with Sam. Sam told George that he received the permission to marry Kizzy. While still making her decision, Kizzy tells George that he needs her to stay, but her son finally agrees and tells his mother that he appreciates all the love she could give while raising him and now it's time for Kizzy to be happy. After hearing this, Kizzy tearfully embraced her son and decided to marry Sam.
Unexpected Visit
Later that night after a conversation with Sam's master about how George is valuable to be sold, a drunken Massa Tom Lea left his house to visit Kizzy. Sam sees Lea heading to Kizzy's cabin, but he did not interfere. As Kizzy lights a candle, she sees Massa Lea come to her cabin and is not pleased as she fears the master came to use her once again. Lea orders her to have sex with him, but he is angered when she tells him "no". She then pleads with the master that she didn't want to do it with him because she's going to marry Sam in a short while. Lea replied that he knows about the impending marriage and agrees to her upcoming wedding. He is seemingly jealous, but does not care as he backhands Kizzy. After he orders Kizzy to take his boots off. Kizzy does as she is told and is forced to let Tom Lea have sex with her again.
We're Too Different
When Sam and Kizzy returned late to the Lea plantation, Sam's owner, furious by his tardiness, threatens to send Sam back into the fields and to not buy Kizzy, which causes Sam to cower on his knees and plead for forgiveness. Kizzy witnesses Sam's easy acceptance of his status of slave and is both heartbroken and disgusted by it. Sam later finds Kizzy in her cabin and seeing her unpacked wonders why. Kizzy tells Sam she can not marry him because they were too different, despite Sam being a good man who gave her more joy in a week than she had ever had in her whole life. Confused and disappointed, Sam asks Kizzy if she thinks she's better than he is, and revealed that he knew Massa Lea was in her cabin the night before. Kizzy is angry that Sam knew of her abuse and did nothing to try to stop it. Kizzy angrily tells Sam that master Moore can take her body but he could never touch her soul. Kizzy tells Sam of her dreams of being a free woman and admonishes Sam for selling his soul for free. Sam tells Kizzy that he too dreams, just not big as she does. Sam leaves, heartbroken.
A New Hope and passing the Mandinka ways
Kizzy sees George training his chickens and takes him to a horse. She jumps and tells George to do the same thing. George wonders why his mother is doing this. His mother tells him that he she wants to pass on the heritage of Kunta Kinte. Chicken George does all the Mandinka ways and gives him beads that her grandmother gave to Kunta when he became a Mandinka Warrior. Kizzy teaches George a lot of words in Mandinka but later on George usually forgets some of them. George becomes furious because he missed training his cocks and doesn't care about his Mandinka heritage. Kizzy slaps him and says "whenever I look at you, I see Tom Lea." George wards off.
Can't Trust a "Toubob"
In 1841, during the time of Nat Turner's rebellion, Kizzy, aged 51, now a grandmother of two, warns George, who earned the nickname "Chicken George," and has a successful career of cockfighting, that he can't trust Massa Lea as his friend because he is a "toubob". She tells him about a white woman named Missy Anne who used to be her best friend, but when Kizzy needed her the most, Anne turned her back on her. This proves true when Master Lea bursts into George's family cabin with a shotgun, threatening to shoot them if he sees any sign of rebellion from the slaves. After the master leaves, Kizzy tells George that no matter who they are, they are all "toubob." After a while, Nat Turner and his group would end up getting caught and killed.
A Shocking Revelation
When Chicken George is betrayed and angered by Tom Lea who denies his freedom, he steals the gun from a dead remnant to kill the master. Kizzy catches up to him and tries to plead to George to think about his family, but it is futile as George responds they have no hope as along as Massa Lea is still breathing. To prevent Chicken George from killing the master as the consequences for a slave killing a white man would result in death, Kizzy finally prevents George by revealing her secrets to him that Tom Lea is his father and he was a product of her rape by Lea. Afterwards, George and Massa Lea would later lose a big bet of $20,000 in a big gamecock fight against Sir Eric Russell which forced Lea to settle the debts by sending Chicken George to England with Sir Russell to train other gamecock trainers. As her son is heading to England, Kizzy tells the story of her father, Kunta Kinte, to his children.
A long-waited revenge in a cup of water
In her later years, she and Missy Anne cross paths again when Missy Anne's carriage stops at the Lea plantation and Missy Anne demands a cup of water from Kizzy. An aged Missy Anne does not recognize Kizzy until Kizzy reveals her identity to her. Missy Anne pretends not to know Kizzy, who turns her back and angrily spits in the cup of water she then gives to Missy Anne. Afterwards, Kizzy continues to live with her son's family until they are sold off to another plantation at Alamance County before she dies in spring of 1861, two months before her son, Chicken George, returned and received his freedom from Massa Lea.
Legacy
Kizzy carried the life, knowledge, and dreams of freedom of her father, Kunta Kinte, and she passes it on to her son and her descendants. Kizzy knows her father's legacy lives on. Kizzy was a strong person as she had the blood of her father Kunta Kinte the Warrior live inside her.
Kizzy grows up in Waller's plantation and becomes friend with Dr Waller's "niece" Melissa Katherine, who teaches her how to read and to write.
As a teenager
Miniseries/Novel Differences
In the novel, her slave surnames were Waller and Lea, while in the television series were Reynolds and Moore; both respectively her masters, Dr. William Waller/Reynolds and Tom Lea/Moore.
In the novel, the day Kizzy was sold, she was working alongside her mother in the big house in the morning before Massa Waller and the sheriff came to confront Kizzy about her aid in Noah's attempts to escape and after she admitted the sheriff took her out of the plantation. the miniseries, the overseer took Kizzy out of her cabin while her parents were summoned to the big house to keep them from interfering.
In the novel, Missy Anne and Kizzy's friendship drifted apart when Anne did not acknowledge twelve-year-old Kizzy in front of her friends at her sixteenth birthday party. In the miniseries, Missy Anne promised Kizzy that she would protect her always and when Kizzy plead Anne to save her from being sold away, Anne betrayed Kizzy and stood watching her being taken.
In the novel, Kizzy never swore nor prayed for Massa Lea to be killed despite his repetitive abuses against her; while in the miniseries she wants vengeance against Massa Moore by having Chicken George killing him when she was young.
Her second lover, Sam Bennett, was only a fictional character in the miniseries as he was created to comfort Kizzy; while in the novel, Kizzy did not have another lover.
In the miniseries, Kizzy encounter Missy Anne in her last years and after Anne pretend of not knowing a slave named Kizzy, Kizzy got her revenge by spitting into a cup of water while Anne wasn't watching; while in the novel, Kizzy never sees Missy Anne again after she was taken off her uncle's plantation.
Trivia
She was portrayed in 1977 television mini-series, Roots, by actress/singer, Leslie Uggams in the remake.
Kizzy was the only member of her family to be born and die as a slave.
Kizzy Waller is the granddaughter of Omoro and Binta Kinte. Also the great granddaughter of Yaisie KInte
