Comitato di Informazioni ed Iniziative per la Pace

H. Patrick Swygert, President of Howard University

Rome, 18 July 2000
H. Patrick Swygert
President of Howard University
hswygert@howard.edu

Dear President Swygert,
A recent article in the Economist newspaper said that one of the main obstacles to Africa's recovery is the psychological discomfort from which the African peoples are suffering, not so much because of the colonies as the slavery which has had far-reaching repercussions on them. We therefore wonder whether there anything is being done by the African American community to help their erstwhile brothers to overcome the psychological drama of slavery.
We have discussed this idea with the American Embassy in Rome which gave us the address of your university for information on whether or not there exists any such initiative, and if not, to request your opinion on the feasibility of such a scheme and ask you to indicate the people we might usefully contact.
We would like to seize this opportunity to send you a draft of our peace initiative for sub-Saharan Africa on which we have been working with a number of our African friends in Rome, the Italian Foreign Ministry and the South African Embassy. We would warmly welcome your distinguished opinion on it.
Yours sincerely,

(Avv. Franco Ligi)