> Clinton trip to Africa important to blacks
> 12:34 a.m. Mar 17, 1998 Eastern
>
> By Randall Mikkelsen
>
> WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - President Bill Clinton's trip to Africa
> next week could have a profound significance for the tens of millions of
> Americans who call the continent theirancestral home.
>
> African-American leaders and others say the trip will call attention to
> the historic roots of American blacks, focusing on the still-painful
> legacy of slavery, while also calling attention to new opportunities for
> expanded trade and cultural relations between Africans and their
> American cousins.
>
> ``I think the trip will say to African America it is all right to be
> involved with Africa. It is all right to be identified with your
> ancestral home,'' said U.S. Rep John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and
> veteran of the struggle for civil rights for American blacks.
>
> ``I think African Americans will take a great deal of pride in seeing
> the president of the United States in Africa,'' Lewis told Reuters. ``It
> will also ... make many African Americans a little more sensitive to the
> needs and concerns of the people of Africa,'' he said.
>
> Clinton is to leave on Sunday on a six-nation tour of Africa billed by
> his administration as the most ambitious visit to the continent by a
> sitting American president.
>
> Former President Jimmy Carter visited Nigeria and Liberia in 1978, while
> George Bush made a brief visit to Somalia in late 1992 and 1993 to visit
> U.S. forces stationed there.
>
> In 11 days, Clinton is to visit the West African nations of Senegal and
> Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda in East Africa, and Botswana and South Africa
> in southern Africa. He returns to Washington April 2.
>
> Clinton's trip will take him to remote villages, safari country,
> parliaments and the prison that held South African President Nelson
> Mandela for 18 years.
>
> An emotional highlight of the trip is to come on the final day of
> Clinton's journey, when he visits Goree Island in Senegal, from which
> some two million Africans were shipped as slaves to American colonies
> between 1680 to 1786.
>
> ``I would see it as a reconciliation and a recognition of what occurred
> in slavery,'' said Irv Randolph, managing editor of the Philadelphia
> Tribune, a newspaper serving a predominantly black readership.
>
> ``It would bring attention to one of the worst tragedies in human
> history,'' he said.
>
> The White House has said Clinton will not be making a formal apology for
> slavery in America during the stop, which some black leaders have called
> for.
>
> Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was named by Clinton as a
> special envoy for Africa and is planning to accompany him, said an
> apology is beside the point.
>
> ``It becomes a diversionary debate,'' he told Reuters. ``The real deal
> here is to repair and remedy the U.S.-Africa relationship. It is not
> language that we need to repair, it is actions.''
>
> However, Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, the ousted former director of the
> NAACP who now is affiliated with Louis Farrakhan's nation of Islam, said
> there is a need to recognize past harms and to take steps to correct a
> long history of what he said was mistreatment of Africa.
>
> ``The American government has got a lot to repent for its bankrupt
> policies toward Africa over many periods,'' he told the American Urban
> Radio network.
>
> The journey is also being anticipated for its impact on white Americans.
> The trip, said Lewis, ``will send a very, very strong signal that this
> president is committed to improving race relations in America.''
>
> ``It is my hope that white Americans will see that Africa is real. It is
> not some mythological continent,'' Lewis said.
>
> White House communications director Ann Lewis said the stop in South
> Africa will have a particular significance for U.S. race relations, as a
> demonstration of a country peacefully overcoming a violent past of
> racial divisiveness.
>
> Said Randolph, ``I think his (Clinton's) presidency has been encouraging
> all along to African Americans, and this trip continues in that same
> direction, of bringing African Americans along on a more equal level.''
>
> Jackson said a key benefit of the visit will be in strengthening
> relations between the United States and a region of the world which is
> already contributing to the U.S. economy and has strong future
> potential. REUTERS
>
> Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.