(traffic bustling) (uplifting music) - [Narrator] It started with one man's desire to do the right thing: apologize.

How could he make amends for 400 years of forgotten brutality and savagery?

How could he show to the African diaspora just how deep his country was involved in their past?

He decided to reveal the truth, all of it.

His country supported him.

Three Americans allowed this man and his country to show them a forgotten history.

What they found changed their world.

Through an African confession, one man and his country sought and international pardon.

(audience applauding) (uplifting African vocal music) (traffic bustling) (people chattering) (waves crashing) - [Ron] If these waters could talk, what a story they would tell.

The thousands of slaves that left these shores or those shores, but never made it across.

(uplifting African vocal music) - [Visitor] As an African in the United States, I can more in a better way empathize with what the African American is going through.

The very agony that has been passed on from generation to generation.

- The first time I was made aware that Africans actually sold Africans.

- [Visitor #2] It's just, it's just mind boggling.

All of my life I've heard about the slave trade.

I never knew that Africans played a part in the slave trade until just recently.

I mean, it seemed as though that portion of the picture was left out.

- [Alistair] I'm a white person.

I did not have family who were enslaved, but the emotion overwhelmed me to realize that we had a holocaust.

We had 3.6 million Africans sent in ships.

- Without our hearts, I don't think it would be so easy for Europeans, so please forgive us and let's come back home.

(vocal music fading) - [Narrator] Home is the small West African country of Benin.

400 years ago, Benin was known as Dahomey.

Its boundaries were broader and its influence reached all over West Africa.

The seat of its power was in Abomey.

- [William] The Assante Kingdom and Dahomey were the two major territories, that even though they traded other items, commodities and so forth, they were more based on the slave trade, particularly in the 18th century, in the early 19th century, than any other West African territories.

(crowd bustling) - [Narrator] It proved very lucrative for the kings, and it solidified Benin's powerful presence on the African continent.

From the 15th to the 19th centuries, Benin was known as the slave capital of the world.

- [William] It was, first of all, for much of its time, particularly in the 18th century, a tributary state to another area called Oyo, but it largely had its own control over the slave trade with its from, I think, 1727, its operations in the city, the port city of Ouidah.

And this became one of the I hate to say best organized, but let's say most efficient slave trading operations of all.

What is unusual about this whole episode is probably one, the actual enormity of it, the fact that here we're talking about millions of people within a circumscribed period of time, several centuries.

Secondly, we could probably also focus on the extreme brutality and dehumanization.

(percussive music) - [Narrator] They brought their voodoo belief system into the business.

They designed the slave operation to not only break down the captured Africans physically, but also spiritually.

- [William] And thirdly, I like to think about how indeed this sort of slave trade engendered a lot of ideas which we've come to know as modern racial ideas.

It's not that racial ideas began with the the slave trade, but whatever ideas did exist, the slave trade accelerated these ideas, emphasized them.

- [Narrator] These truths led President Matthew Kerekou to a noble desire: reveal the entire truth about Benin's role in the slave trade, and then seek forgiveness from the African diaspora.

In December of 1999, Kerekou convened a reconciliation conference and invited the slave trading nations, European and African, to join him.

They did.

- Let me once again before you say on behalf of our people how sorry we are for the misdeeds of the past.

- I'd like someone else to ask forgiveness on behalf of the Black Africans and Africans and others.

But as far as the ancestors of white America and white Europe, I ask on their behalf, to the ancestors of black America being grieved the total and divine forgiveness which I ask of today once and for all.

- How does anyone, how do I as a white European begin to speak on behalf of the tens of millions who have perpetrated the slave trade?

- [Narrator] The only way the participants could begin to understand the brevity of this apology was to walk the road their ancestors walked.

their quest for the truth led them down the slave route in Ouidah.

(percussive vocal music) - I am a symbol of the slave route.

Why?

I am descendants of a slaves master called Don Francisco Feliz de Souza.

He was sent to Dahomey as the commandant of the Portuguese force in Ouidah.

So he will stay in Dahomey for 61 years.

He'll become the vice roy of Ouidah.

Oudidah is the defining port for the slaves, this is the defining point, and I tell you that to your visit to Ouidah, that we going to tell you a lot of stories, a lot of history that will help you.

But please, I wish you the courage to be able to hold this.

- [Narrator] Three Americans from Virginia had the courage to experience the slave route in Ouidah.

Their journey began at the 17th century Portuguese port now turned into a museum.

Born in Scotland, Alistair Geddes is a self-proclaimed former racist.

He was surprised at how deeply involved the Africans were.

- [Alistair] I think what was amazing to learn was the fact that in Africa itself, in Benin, there was equal hunger on the part of the African to profit from the slavery.

And here, the relationship between the African and the Portuguese took place at this fort.

And there was obviously a concerted effort between the two.

It wasn't just a European effort, but it was also an African effort.

- [Narrator] The fort was the starting point for the captured Africans.

They were kept in the fort for months waiting for the Europeans to come.

- We cannot talk about the slave without talking about the kings of Abomey.

Actually, they were the ones that facilitated the slave trade.

They were the ones who would send their army to fight villages, made a lot of prisoners of war so that they can sell them to the Europeans.

Against what?

Against gunpowder, beads, tobacco, and, you know, very cheap things.

- The slaves were taken by a canoe to the ships waiting for them.

So some of them kill each other into the sea.

They kill themselves.

They commit suicide because they do not know what they are going to do, what they are going to do to them.

Some thought they were even going to be eaten.

And this is how they are packed into the boats.

This is the way they're packed into the boats, in millions.

- [Narrator] Ron Taylor grew up in the segregated South.

His American experiences did not prepare him for what he found in Ouidah.

- [Ron] They took us on a tour of the museum where they showed us some of the artifacts, the chains and the bits that went in the slaves mouths.

But I guess what appalled me more than anything else about it was the fact that there was a church smack dab in the middle of the fort.

And with what went on there and what was done there, it was sort of incomprehensible for me to even think about how someone could do what they did and yet worship God in the process.

- [Narrator] Finding a church in the middle of the fort did not sit well with Doris McFarland.

She's the granddaughter of a South Carolina sharecropper.

- [Doris] That was a low point for me to start off with because the museum was there, but there were so many people going up to the museum that you know, you couldn't all go at once.

So that's when I wandered over and heard that this was the church place, the place where the Portuguese actually worshiped, and in the back area was where they held the slaves, so they could actually look out of the window while worshiping and see the slaves.

And that caused mixed emotions for me.

(crowd bustling) (percussive music) - Here was the yard where the slaves were kept.

Not everyone was allowed to do any kind of activity at that time.

So when you go to the court, you see some activities like weaving.

(loom creaking) (wood pieces clanking) - [Narrator] The African captors moved their human cargo to the auction place.

(drums pounding) (singers chanting) Under a similar tree in this square, they were set up on blocks and inspected like cattle.

- [Tour Guide] We are now at the same market place (indistinct) - And the auction place had three trees.

There was the tree of bidding, there was the tree of forgetfulness, and there was the tree of return.

And at the tree of bidding, they would take the slaves and auction them and trade them.

- It was not a big market, but there was a stage was put here to display the slaves where they were bartered on auction for various goods, such as canoes, spirits, gunpowders, et cetera.

- From the tree of bidding, they would go to the tree of forgetfulness where the slave was then walking around.

The male slaves would walk nine times around the tree.

The female slaves would walk seven times around this tree.

And the idea was that they would forget Benin or the country they were living in.

They would forget it, never to think about it again.

- It was sort of like being on sacred ground for me just to realize that I was in a location where this actually took place.

I was standing in spots where a hundred years ago, whatever, that people actually stood and they went through this and I'm standing here as a free man, but they're standing there as captured humans about to be sold.

And so was a sombering experience, very much so.

- [Tour Guide] From here we go onto the slave boats.

- [Narrator] After the transactions were completed, the Africans were forced to walk to the hut of Zomai.

It means "the place of darkness."

It was designed to prepare the Africans for the holds in the ships.

Here is where the captured Africans had their human dignity systematically stripped away.

- [Tour Guide] Slaves' stay in this place was to prepare them for the life of (indistinct) and obscurity in the holds of the slave ships.

- All of the smells, all of the cries of these people and they can't even see a person to embrace them and say "it's okay" or whatever.

You are all there together in darkness.

So for a few moments I just kind of closed my eyes and try to envision what they were feeling, and that's hard.

But I guess somehow or the other, I wanted to enter into it and this was my way of closing my eyes and trying to just imagine what they were feeling.

There were people around who were making groans or muffled sounds.

I think we all were going through our private pain and we just weren't willing at that time to try to share it with anybody.

We just had to go through it for ourselves.

- [Tour Guide] We have different kinds of heads.

The small heads represent people from the north.

They were in a little number deported.

And we have two big heads, which shows the presence of the Yorubas.

The Yorubas also were greatly deported.

The Yorubas are from Nigeria, and so many wars were waged against Nigeria to capture slaves.

- It had to be a horrible experience to be put in total darkness, never see light, simply to try to break your will, break your spirit, just to break a man's will so that he won't escape, he won't run away.

He'll become so disorientated that he'll do whatever you say.

It's the lowest treatment that anyone could ever receive.

And that's why it made me so angry.

- [Tour Guide] Then up there you see a scale, which means it was unlawful, that practice.

But one day justice will come.

One day justice will come.

Another very important thing about the Zomai is that this is the place of the stamping.

So they put iron into fire and when it is red, then they mark, they press it on the back of the slaves.

That was the stamping.

To be kept here right from the arrival at the Zumuji, and were allowed to get out of the hut, only to be taken to the tree of the return.

That total sequestration was meant to make the slaves completely lose their sense of orientation and rid from them all attempt to run away or rebound.

(percussion music) - [Alistair] The third tree was the tree of return.

It was supposedly there for when the slaves were traded and when they left and went to the colonies or whether they went to Americas or the Caribbean, whatever they went to, that once they died in the colonies or the place of ultimate destination, their spirit would then one day return.

But for as long as they were alive, they were to forget Africa.

(uplifting percussion music) (man singing) - [Doris] How horrible that they had to forget everything.

Memories, you know, you carry them with your lifetime and they're saying, "Forget your memories."

But again, I was still experiencing my little silent pain.

I didn't know how to react.

I didn't know whether to cry for 'em.

I didn't know whether to just go away and stand by myself.

I didn't know what to do.

- [Tour Guide] Among them, there were rebels, and that is how the rebels were treated.

- [Ron] Didn't really know who to be angry at, whether the Europeans or the Africans who betrayed their own people.

I was seething.

I didn't even want to be bothered at that point.

I didn't want anyone to talk to me.

As a matter of fact, I remember going off to myself because I didn't want to talk to anybody.

I just wanted to deal with what I was feeling at that time.

And that was very emotional for me.

But it got worse.

- [Alistair] The whole thing of walking down a dusty path brings memories, thoughts that were coming to me of people being herded.

This was not a beautiful paved highway.

This was probably very much like it was 200, 300, 400 years ago at the height of slavery.

I think what was most overwhelming in a sense as I walked down that road towards the burial site was the thought that we weren't talking a hundred people.

We weren't talking a thousand people.

We were not talking a hundred thousand people.

We were not talking one million people.

We were talking about multi millions of people walking down this road, many of them to their death, all of them to captivity.

- [Narrator] Common graves were prepared along the way.

The dead, sick, weak, or dying were all thrown in together and buried.

Lines of bound Africans could only watch and endure the cries as they followed their captors to the Atlantic Ocean.

- [Tour Guide] This is a place of holocaust.

(Tour Guide speaking French) (indistinct) - I felt like crying, but I couldn't cry.

I felt like screaming, but I couldn't scream.

I was angry, I was hurting, just to think that captured slaves or captured Africans who may have been sick, who may have become injured because of their capture or just died of natural causes were all just thrown in this massive grave, some still alive.

And just to imagine something like that happening, I was enraged at that point.

These were emotions that I had never felt before in the light of this situation and never thought it would touch me like this.

(people singing mournfully) - [Narrator] At the common grave, candles were lit in memory of the dead.

Here is where the participants paid their respects and wrestled with the painful truth of what transpired.

And there was a prayer given right there among the African Americans and the Europeans and the Africans.

And I'll never forget, in the midst of that prayer, Brian Mills from Great Britain just started sobbing.

He just fell on his knees and started sobbing.

(Brian sobbing) (Brian wailing) I think it caused a chain reaction with many people, but definitely with me.

And I found myself sobbing too, because here was the sight of people who died forgetting that they had a life, bound and gagged, many of them probably thrown in with people that were dead already to die.

I remember Brian Mills giving me a couple of beads that were used to beat the people with and he said, "Doris, this will never happen again."

We embraced right there at that burial site.

He hugged me and he again said, "I'm so sorry."

And I accepted that.

(people murmuring) - [Alistair] Everybody at the site, at the burial site, was beginning to almost, if you pardon the expression, play off one another.

You looked at somebody and they were broken, you looked at somebody else, they were broken.

And it was like as if everybody at one time were being spent, were just letting their emotion loose.

As you begin to understand the magnitude of this whole issue of slavery.

- God bless you, God bless you.

- [Ron] In walking down the road, I was walking as a free man, and I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to walk that road being in chains, being captured, losing the freedom that you had, perhaps even at that point being separated from your family, being taken to a place, not knowing what's going on perhaps, walking to the beach there to the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps seeing a ship, the fear, the uncertainty about what's gonna happen.

Perhaps even the sense of knowing that you're leaving your homeland, you're losing your family, all in one fell swoop, never to recapture any of that again.

And the terrible pain that must have been felt by the men and women who went through that.

I know for them it had to be a thousand times what I felt because it was a actually happening to them and they were experiencing it.

- [Narrator] The last leg of the participant's journey was the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.

For the captured Africans, it was only the beginning of the untold horrors of slavery in the Americas.

The gate of no return stands were a small hut once stood.

The Africans passed through it and onto the waiting ships.

- [Tour Guide] You saw the first side, which was towards the town.

And you see the men, how they were chained, the way they were ill-treated.

You see the iron statue, still men chained to symbolize the slavery, the greatest deportation that had ever taken place.

And on your right, a hand was up which symbolized the abolishing of slavery.

At this side facing the sea, you can still see those people looking towards the unknown destination.

Their facial expression already shows that they were really made for hardships.

Then you see two statues, left and right.

They are the ghosts.

We call them (indistinct) because we believe in reincarnation, because we believe in the survival of the soul.

- [Doris] When I walked through the Gate of No Return or the hut, I began to think of thousands and millions of Africans who were trying to get through here and then looking at the ocean and thinking that it's not blue water, peaceful, but it's a symbol of death, simply because they would never return through this gate again.

At some point, it seemed very bloody.

It didn't have the peace and tranquility again that we often want to see in water.

It just had an array of bloodiness.

I just couldn't shake that.

- [Alistair] As I went down around the Gate of No Return, down to the beach and we gathered on the beach, wow, that was moving.

I saw people walking out into the ocean with their shoes on, with their long pants on, standing there with their hands in the air, looking out to the ocean and saying, "My ancestors, people that my ancestors had sent off in ships, had gone out here by the millions."

When you think of the magnitude of this holocaust, that's what's overwhelming.

It's reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust of this century.

It's that type of scene that you are thinking when you stand outside it.

But it's never been told, the story hasn't been told, not in its fullness until right now.

And when you're standing realizing, and people are walking along that beach holding hands, the emotion of millions of people boarding ships and leaving the continent of Africa, it's overwhelming, and I can tell you I shed many more tears down there as well.

- Oh, I can't even explain how that made me feel.

To think that perhaps some of my ancestors actually went through what I was just touring.

It created a sense of sadness, mourning, even a sense of loss, loss of identity.

Because at that point I really wanted to know if this is what my ancestors went through, you know?

And I really wanted to, if you will, connect with them.

- [Narrator] Perhaps a view like this one was the last thing the captured Africans saw of their native land.

Their new captors brought them to the Americas where more suffering was to come.

Slave raids and wars provided the kings of the Dahomey with their human bounty.

Many villages and tribes fought back, but lost.

One village managed to defeat the king's Amazon army without a fight.

They escaped to the small islands on Lake Nokoue.

Crossing water was taboo for the king's army, and this ensured the freedom of the villagers.

It also cut them off from the rest of the world.

Eventually, Western influence reached this remote city of Ganvie.

It's also known as the Venice of Africa.

(child shouting playfully) Life is simple here, but it's also hard.

25,000 people live in Ganvie.

Most of them are fishermen.

The tall weeds and netting are strategically placed to capture fish.

Children as young as eight are already experts at swimming and navigating canoes.

(child speaking indistinctly) (people chattering) For over 220 years, life for Ganvie has remained the same.

They do have markets and places of worship, but healthcare is sorely lacking.

Because of the remote area, it's hard to keep doctors and nurses.

The education opportunities are limited.

For the young people who can, they leave to be educated on the mainland.

(children shouting playfully) There are a few hotels within the city that cater to tourists.

They have battery operated TVs and solar panels to provide some familiar 20th century comforts.

This hotel owner is pointing his hopes of a better future toward African-Americans.

(man speaking French) - [Translator] He say if can stay with them, it will be very good.

- [Translator] He says that you take part of the building of America, and that if you can come and settle down here, right, and teach them what you've done there in the United States of America, if you can bring all here your enterprises, everything here, so that to save life of Ganvie people, it'll be wonderful for Benin.

(boat motor churning) (water sloshing) - [Narrator] After walking the slave route, the three Americans had a deeper understanding of why President Kerekou wanted this pardon.

- When I crossed the threshold of Africa, I had a global perspective of really what slavery and inhumanity is all about.

I can never be the same person.

I can never be the same person again.

- Before going there, my sentiment was I have not lost anything in Africa.

I have no desire to go there because I don't have any relatives there.

I've lost nothing there.

But now at this point, I feel like I have.

I feel that part of me is lost in Africa.

- It wasn't only African American emotions, but it was European emotions.

I think that's what struck me more than anything else was that this, if you'll pardon the expression, this was not a Black thing only nor was it a white thing only.

People were here to do business of reconciliation.

Therefore, anything that we could participate in, we wanted to.

We did not come from America or Europe for a vacation.

We did not come from America or Europe for the purpose of trading and doing business.

We came from America and from Europe for the purpose of understanding, for the purpose of reconciliation, for the purpose of healing.

(uplifting African choral music) - [Narrator] The Reconciliation Conference attracted international leaders from the United States and Europe.

They offered their own confession.

As a show of support, the city of Liverpool gave President Kerekou a reconciliation statue along with a written acknowledgement of their role in slavery.

- [David] One was a declaration agreed unanimously by all 99 members of the city council, that as their last formal act of this millennium, they wish to place on record their shame and their remorse for what their forebears did in Liverpool in perpetrating the slave trade.

Many of the slave ships came from Liverpool as part of the notorious triangle of infamy.

And they sailed from Liverpool to West Africa and then on to America to the Caribbean, and then back to Liverpool, and vast sums of money passed hands.

We have a Black community in Liverpool just as there is a huge Black diaspora in the United States of America.

And as one young woman said to me some years ago after a riot in the city, "We came here 200 years ago, and since then we've just moved half a mile up the road."

And no one had recognized a massive social injustice, which the Black community has faced in cities like my own.

So building on reconciliation there then has to be renewal and a determination to change, to reform.

And if I can use another R word, that leads to release.

And at the moment, our relationships I think are just caught up in this drama that preceded us.

The hatreds, the bitterness, we've become prisoners of our history, and somehow we've gotta escape from that and move forward and I think that means going through the whole of this process.

But first of all, not trying to pretend it didn't happen.

(traditional African music) - [Doris] A freedom took place in that place that I've never seen before.

When I first heard it, I have to say that it sounded new to my ears.

I can't say that I had never heard an apology before, but perhaps it was nothing of this sort.

So it immediately allowed me to sit up and take note.

History was being made today and I was a part of it.

- How does anyone, how do I as a white European begin to speak on behalf of the tens of millions (audience members clapping) who have perpetrated the slave trade over those 350 years?

Where do you begin?

Well, we repent and we confess our sin.

And we ask your forgiveness for the abominations we through our forebears have inflicted upon you, our beloved brothers and sisters.

(audience applauding) - [Tony] I can't pass a law, I don't have the authority without my colleagues in the Congress to apologize to African-Americans.

But as a person and a citizen of my country and a US congressman, I can apologize.

I can say to you that I feel very inadequate to stand up here and say that.

I don't have the words.

I haven't experienced the suffering.

I feel it in my bones that it's right.

I'm very sorry for what's happened.

I hope that you forgive me, because it's easy to pray, "Well, it's those other people that did it."

No, I'm part of it too.

Forgive me.

Forgive me for my sins, forgive me for my ancestors.

(audience applauding) This is just the start.

It's not the end, it's the beginning.

And maybe God, hopefully God will take this conference, take these apologies and start to heal.

Start to close this wound that's there.

Amen.

- [Alistair] When I heard everybody speak up there who spoke on the apology, everybody who was in that conference was genuine.

You could not fabricate this conference.

You see, you can fabricate words, but you cannot fabricate emotion.

I find it very difficult to turn on emotions without something touching me.

Everybody who stood up there, the president, even the President of Ghana Rawlins, Michael Fenton Jones, a business person from England as well as the member of Parliament from Liverpool, everybody stood up there and talked and confessed and spoke about their apology were absolutely genuine.

- But as far as the ancestors of white America and white Europe, I ask on their behalf to the ancestors of Black America being grieved, the total and divine forgiveness, which I asked of today once and for all.

Amen.

- [Ron] It had become personal because I had experienced those feelings and I had thought about my ancestors perhaps going through that.

And so now for me, it just wasn't a general thing that slavery was wrong and that yes, an apology needs to come forward for participation in slavery and the slave trade.

But now it became a personal thing where I am owed an apology.

Before, yeah, you apologized and that was cool with me, but I really had no knowledge of what you were supposed to be apologizing for.

So now let's make it specific.

(Ron chuckling) - Let me once again before you say on behalf of our people how sorry we are for the misdeeds of the past.

(bright horn music) - [Alistair] If there wasn't an apology, especially from the president of Benin, we would still be thinking that it was only a white problem.

And I think this brought it into a completely new context that doesn't absolve the Europeans or the white people of their part of this terrible crime.

But it certainly in some way maybe evens the playing field to give us the true story and the true history of it.

(man speaking French) - [Translator] I owe you the truth.

And the truth is made clear in the theme of this conference.

The theme is reconciliation and development.

The word development does not appear in the theme because I'm from a poor country.

It does not appear in the theme because of what I've gone through in my life.

It does not appear in the theme because we want money.

I think what is very, very important for me at this conference is reconciliation.

And if we, because I'm also the president of the poor in this country, and if we were to put development before reconciliation, I'm sure of one thing: God will not bless such a development.

That is why the most important thing for me was this pardon, this forgiveness that we needed from you.

(man chanting) - [Narrator] The Kings of Benin arrived in quiet dignity.

They added their support to President Kerekou and offered a more personal symbol of forgiveness and peace to the African-Americans.

(people speaking indistinctly) (people conversing indistinctly) - Delighted to meet you.

- Delighted to meet you.

- I wish you all welcome back home and I want you to be home without any condition.

Any place in Africa is your home.

Any country in Africa is your home.

- [Narrator] Bishop David Perrin represented the African diaspora during the conference.

He was given the responsibility of responding to the apologies.

- The apology that is extended here today (translator speaking French) is no small thing.

(translator speaking French) The forgiveness that is extended here today (translator speaking French) is no small thing.

(translator speaking French) Prejudice in the marketplace, racism the schools, always having worse, always being denied the best, always having to strive harder.

At the hands of those that you sold us into, we have faced this all of our lives.

And there has been this haunting thought: Would a brother?

Could a brother?

Could a father, could a sister sell their very brother, allow white people to do this to us?

Is it possible that they did not know?

We have never allowed ourselves to think that thought.

It is by his grace, and it is by his power that we are able to reach out to our African brothers and to our African sisters and to say to you that because of the love of God, and the faith that we have in Christ, we forgive it all, we forgive it all, we forgive it all.

(audience applauding) You know, I think that apologies save lives.

And I think America is going to come back to learn that in a very difficult way.

I think that we are being taught that.

You know, we've not apologized for slavery, not apologized for the Indian situation.

Now, a lot of the anger that is flaring up in our schools, where our children are killing each other has simply to do with the fact that a basic principle, the ability for one person to say to another "I may have done something to you, I did do something to you and I'm sorry" would save a lot of people's lives.

And that's a lesson that we're coming to have to learn now.

- [Doris] It has changed me significantly in that my perspective of things is totally different.

I really can't say that I had a desire to go to Africa, but I'm so thankful that I went.

- I think only time will tell whether America's ready for this or not.

But there are some very key people in America, both in the white community and in the Black community that are ready for this.

If it's up to government, perhaps not, because as you know, Congressman Hall put forth an initiative in 1997 that was rejected by government.

But we don't have to be involved.

This is not a government initiative.

This is a relationship initiative.

And I for one, I'm ready, I want to be reconciled.

- I'm here, you're here because our ancestors were the strong ones who survived.

And if they survived that, that me means to me that their strength is in me.

Now, I have a responsibility to keep this legacy going and to somehow, some way, even though I don't know to whom, but let my ancestors know they didn't survive in vain.

(uplifting piano music) - [Narrator] The apology offered from Benin is the beginning of a long process of rebuilding relationships with the African diaspora and the people living within Benin's borders.

Tribes that were historically on opposite sides of the slave trade do not want to relate to each other.

President Kerekou hopes these confessions will bring an international pardon from the African diaspora and a new future to his country.

♪ Sorry for the pain ♪ (uplifting pop music) ♪ Sorry for the shame ♪ ♪ (indistinct) ♪ ♪ Somebody say so ♪ ♪ Somebody say so ♪ ♪ Somebody say so ♪ ♪ Somebody say so ♪ (uplifting pop music continuing) (waves crashing) ♪ Sorry for the shame ♪ ♪ Sorry for the pain ♪ (uplifting African vocal music) - [Announcer] For more information on "Noble Desire" or to request a community discussion guide, log on to WHRO's website, www.whro.org.