| NOBLE DESIRE Reconciliation
I have placed
on 3 hour reserve at the John Jay library a copy of the following
documentary for you to watch if you choose. This program -- directed by V.D. Williams, a black documentary film maker -- features the historic efforts by the government of Benin to find reconciliation for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Benin’s President, Mathieu Kerekou, invited nearly fifty traditional African leaders, West African presidents, African-Americans, and others to a well-attended “Reconciliation Conference” wherein the African leaders apologized for African elites’ complicit participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade and asked for forgiveness from the ancestors of enslaved Africans. White Europeans and Americans (including a U.S. Senator) also attended and sought forgiveness. The documentary follows a number of African-American conference attendees as they tour various sites from the Kingdom of Dahomey -- a major supplier of enslaved Africans until the late 19th century -- in what is now Benin. In follow-up interviews, these African-Americans discuss the impact on their lives of both the trip and the apologies by the African leaders. |