GSA Donates Computers to Howard University for African Burial Ground Project

GSA #9488

May 18, 1998
Contact: April Kaufman
Hap Connors
202/501-1231

WASHINGTON -- At a brief ceremony in his office this morning, Howard University President Pat Swygert accepted eleven computers from the U.S. General Services Administration on behalf the university's history department for use on the African Burial Ground Project.

The computers will be used to store important information about the remains from the African Burial Ground in New York City. The Howard University history department is studying the social and cultural contributions of New York's first African Americans.

The African Burial Ground Project is a significant research, education and interpretation project that began after an eighteenth-century cemetery was unearthed by GSA during construction of a federal office building in lower Manhattan. One part of the African Burial Ground Project involves studies by Howard University, including bioanthropological studies of human remains, artifact studies and a historical report.

GSA Deputy Administrator Thurman M. Davis, Sr., presented the computers, valued at approximately $16,000, as part of on-going programs that help Historically Black Colleges and Universities obtain excess federal property and the Clinton Administration's "Computers for Learning" initiative.

"It is fitting that Howard University should undertake the responsibility of researching, analyzing and documenting the life and times of these early African Americans," Davis said. "GSA is honored and proud to help with this computer donation."

Davis said that GSA has donated "thousands" of surplus computers to schools across the country and that some GSA employees act as volunteers and mentors to provide training and technical assistance.