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Title VI: Romeo Horton and Father Kandakai
Brief
Report from Liberian Collections Project to Title VI Librarians/Africana
Librarians Council
African Studies Association 2008 Meetings,
Chicago
The Liberian Collections Project is pleased to
report that the project to microfilm the restored W.V.S. Tubman papers is nearly
complete. Happily,
microfilming is finishing about two months ahead of schedule and $3,000
– 5,000 under budget. Hudson
Micrographics microfilmed all twenty-one boxes of Tubman materials, yielding a
forty-seven reel set. Final service copy sets will be produced in early
December.
Per the agreement with the Title VI
Librarians, one set of Tubman microfilms will be deposited at the Center for
Research Libraries. Title VI Librarians and CAMP participants are invited to
purchase full sets of the microfilmed papers for their own libraries at cost
($1,350/set).
Coinciding with this budgetary surplus is an
opportunity to acquire two additional sets of personal papers from Liberia:
Romeo Horton was an important banker during
and after the Tubman era; Father C. K. Kandakai, a well-known Liberian linguist,
specialized in the Vai language and its indigenous script. Processing capabilities still do not exist in
Liberia so the materials will be brought to Indiana University for arrangement
and preservation. Estimated cost
for packing and air freighting the approximately 30-40 boxes from Liberia to
Indiana is $4-6,000.
The Liberian Collections Project requests that
the Title VI Librarians consider re-allocating any unspent funds from
microfilming the W.V.S. Tubman papers to underwrite packing and shipping the
boxes from Liberia to Indiana. Verlon Stone is in Liberia from November 20th to
23rd on Indiana University and British
Library’s Endangered Archives Programme project business. It would be convenient, but not mandatory, if
he could ship the materials while in Liberia.
Romeo Horton, Banker
A. Romeo Horton (1923-2005) was best known in
Liberia as a banker, the founder and former president of Liberia's first
indigenous bank, the Bank of Liberia (BOL). Horton was also a dedicated public
servant, rising from Assistant Economic Advisor to President W.V.S. Tubman to
become the first Secretary of Commerce, Industry and Labor. In the early 1970s
he became the founding dean of the College of Business and Public Administration
at the University of Liberia, which began training Liberian accountants, who
soon took over accountancy in Liberia. Previously, most Liberian businesses
hired Nigerian, Ghanaian and Sierra Leonean accountants to manage their
accounts.
Committed to economic cooperation
in West Africa until his death, Horton was one of the intellectual powers behind
the establishment of the African Development Bank (ADB) and its subsidiary, the
ECOWAS Fund. In the mid 1960s he approached President Tubman with the idea of
establishing an African continental bank that would help accelerate development
in Africa. Tubman agreed with him on the need for such an institution, and sent
him to discuss the matter with several of Tubman's colleagues, other heads of
state in West Africa. The African leaders agreed, and appointed a Committee of
Nine to further discuss the matter, naming A. Romeo Horton as Chairman. That is
how came about. Today the African Development Bank is a multibillion dollar
institution, one of the most viable financial institutions in the world and a
close partner of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Group.
Mr. Horton received his elementary
and high school education in Liberia at the Ricks Institute, Booker Washington
Institute (BWI) and the College of West Africa, where he graduated in the early
1940s. He then entered Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, his father's alma
mater, where he graduated from college. (Among his classmates was Martin Luther
King.) Mr. Horton earned a Master's degree in Business and Finance from the
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance.
He returned home in 1954 and
started the Liberian Savings and Loan Association, which later became the Bank
of Liberia. The BOL provided facilities to thousands of Liberians, many of whom
could not even be considered by the only other bank in town, the Bank of
Monrovia, which started as a Firestone-owned bank. The Bank of Liberia ran
successfully until the April 12 1980 coup, after which the hostile government of
Samuel K. Doe deprived the Bank of depositors and funds. In 1981 the government
instituted involuntary liquidation and closed the Bank of Liberia.
Following the coup, Mr. Horton left
the country with his family for the USA, where he was appointed president of
Philadelphia Corporation for Development and Cooperation (PCDC) by the Mayor of
Philadelphia. The PCDC was a development-oriented entity to help small
businesses. As a senior consultant Horton also assisted in the founding and
establishment of the United Bank of Philadelphia, the city’s only
minority commercial banking institution.
