Paige Chargois travelled to West Africa for a meeting between the descendants of those who bought and sold Africans and the descendants of those they shipped to the Americas.

Margaret Smith finds lessons for peacemakers in a book which looks at conflict resolution through the lens of Jewish tradition.

For a century African slaves were landed on the James River in Richmond, Virginia, marched across a bridge in the dead of night, and sold at the slave auctions next day. In June last year hundreds walked the same route, at night, seeking to understand the roots of racial divisions still troubling their city.

Robert Corcoran, National Coordinator of the Hope in the Cities (HIC) coalition based in Richmond, Virginia, reports on the third annual Metropolitan Richmond Day, where HIC activists from across the USA gathered:

William Winter, one of the architects of Clinton's new initiative on race, grew up on a farm on the edge of the Mississippi Delta. What turned him into a reformer? He talks to Robert Webb.

This year 16 black Americans were among 100 travellers on a yatra through Gujarat, land of Mahatma Gandhi's birth. They came to honour Martin Luther King's spiritual debt to Gandhi.

President Clinton has put race relations high on his political agenda. The following article by Carolyn Barta, reprinted with permission of 'The Dallas Morning News' (16 February), looks at an initiative which already has an impressive track record.

Richard Ruffin is a former Rhodes Scholar. Since serving in the US Navy, including two years on the staff of the Secretary of Defense, he has been one of those responsible full-time for the programmes of Moral Re-Armament in the United States.

On 14 August 1990 the Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC) on Rikers Island, New York City, erupted in violence. Inmates turned on officers and on each other with handmade weapons. Correctional officers then blockaded the island's only access bridge for 36 hours to protest the administration's failure to hear their concerns.

On these pages Mike Bucki from Atlanta, Georgia, looks at a small but encouraging drop in this ocean of misery – an international charity which is working with the poor to outlaw unacceptable housing and homelessness. In so doing, Habitat for Humanity is tapping into a gathering trend in development thinking that the most efficient way to answer housing problems is to empower people to build houses for themselves.