African American

Well this just connected some dots for me because I remember the country's name but wasn't sure when it changed to "Benin" (it was 1975, right during my freshman year in high school). Of course learning European history in school was considered more important.

In any case, what is significant about this man's origins is how it represented the poster child of the pillaging of an African country - both its people and its practices of religion and art (culture). And moreso because that "last ship" (that was documented, but may not have been the "last" for all we know), sailed some 50 years after the trade was purportedly forbidden by law.

And it is no wonder why the country served as a template for "Wakanda" in the Black Panther film.

As a sidenote when researching some of this, apparently the artist QuestLove from the group The Roots, had an ancestor also on that "last ship" and he was on Henry Louis Gates' PBS series "Finding Your Roots" this past December -

(can't exactly point to a time mark because the 3 being featured had their stories pieced together and interspersed through the entire episode).