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Contact: Jenni Brockman Phone: 804-443-3357 Fax: 804-443-6781 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tappahannock (January 17, 2003) - Almost 20 years ago, he was smuggled out of the country disguised as a woman. Now Harry Greaves, Jr., has returned from exile to his Liberian home with the goal of improving the war-torn nation's quality of life. 
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St. Margaret's School parent Harry Greaves, Jr., told students and faculty about the challenges facing Liberia today. The political leader is considering a run for the presidency of the West African nation.
"The priorities are clear," he told a recent assembly of St. Margaret's School students and faculty. "Electricity. Water. Roads. Schools. Health care." Liberia wasn't always like this, he explained. "I'd have to go back 40 years to the last time Liberia was without electricity. It was a modern country." But almost 10 years of civil war, followed by nearly five years of insurrection, have left the West African nation's infrastructure in shambles. Greaves, a current SMS parent, has spent the last six months in Africa helping the opposition prepare for national elections in October 2003. The country's political parties are forming coalitions to improve their chances of ousting strongman Charles Taylor, whom a Newsweek article describes as "a tyrant… brutal and seemingly indifferent to his people's woes." "The current administration's priorities are different," Greaves said. "Guns. Liquor. Fancy cars. A good time." It wasn't always that way. Liberia was established by an alliance of US segregationists and abolitionists in the early 1800's to provide an African homeland for free American blacks. The United States' influence can be seen in place names like Mississippi and Maryland, architecture that recalls the antebellum South, Southern-sounding accents, the acceptance of US currency as legal tender and the national government's tripartite structure. There were periods when other aspects of Liberian culture mirrored less favorable characteristics of American society. All of the early Liberian presidents, Greaves said, were light-skinned blacks. Skin-color prejudice existed, along with class distinctions between descendants of the original American "pioneers" and those of the indigenous tribal peoples. In the 1930's, a scandal almost led to the nation's loss of sovereignty when it was discovered that the sitting president had been a slaveholder. But Liberia was considered the most peaceful and progressive country in Africa until a 1980 coup overturned the democratic government and replaced it with the first in a series of corrupt, repressive regimes. Greaves is hopeful that democratic elections will lead to positive change. As he answered in response to a student's question, his party's symbol is a rooster because its members believe a new day will dawn for Liberia. |
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