A bronze statue group at the head of the City Dock showing Alex Haley reading to three children, with a plaque marking the arrival point of his ancestor Kunta Kinte from West Africa in 1767. A second element, the Compass Rose engraved in granite at Haley's feet, points across the Atlantic to The Gambia, where Kinte's village of Juffure stood. A third element is a set of "Story Wall" plaques tracing the journey of the slave ship.
The memorial was completed in 2002 after the original 1981 plaque was twice stolen. It is the largest and most prominent monument in the United States acknowledging the arrival of an enslaved African by name, and a deliberate counterweight to the colonial-era memorials that fill the surrounding streets.