Beninese Americans

Beninese American are Americans of Beninese descent. According to the census of 2000, in the United States there are only 605 Americans of Beninese origin.^[1] However, because since the first half of the eighteenth century to nineteenth many slaves were exported from Benin to the present United States, the number of African Americans with one or more Beninese ancestors could be much higher. The number of slaves from Bight of Benin exported to present United States exceeded 6,000 people, although this might consist not only in Benin, but also washes the shores of Ghana, Togo and Nigeria. It is also important to note that they were slaves from modern Benin (along with the Haitian immigrants arrived in the United States in the late nineteenth century), who exchanged voodoo practices with Francophone African descendants in Louisiana. Currently, there are Beninese communities in cities such as Chicago or Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and in other states as New York. As of 2021, there were over 500 Beninese immigrants in the town of Austin, Minnesota.^[2]