HAMPTON, Virginia ‒ As a child, Djimon Hounsou played soccer on the beaches of his native Benin, a small country in West Africa. He didn’t know then that those same beaches had been a “path of no return” for those led centuries ago to waiting slave ships.
It wasn’t until the award-winning actor starred in Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad,” a 1997 movie about a rebellion on a slave ship, that he fully understood the tragic history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its lasting impact.
“It really opened my mind about who I am … the history of my continent and the history of the diaspora,” Hounsou told USA TODAY in a recent interview. “We are very cut off from our past.”…