American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society
American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Duration: 1976 - 1991
American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society (ACCESS) was founded in 1976 by Richard Lapchick. For more than 15 years, ACCESS focused on the international sports boycott of South Africa in such areas as tennis, golf, boxing and rugby. ACCESS was a coalition of some 15 organizations. In 1978, it led a boycott of the Davis Cup...
American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society (ACCESS) was founded in 1976 by Richard Lapchick. For more than 15 years, ACCESS focused on the international sports boycott of South Africa in such areas as tennis, golf, boxing and rugby. ACCESS was a coalition of some 15 organizations. In 1978, it led a boycott of the Davis Cup tennis match between South Africa and the U.S. at Vanderbilt University. As a result, only 1,100 people attended the match, while several thousand marched outside. Lapchick was teaching at the time at Virginia Wesleyan College. In 1981, ACCESS was involved in Stop the Apartheid Rugby Tour coalition which led the protests against the U.S. tour of the Springboks, the all white South African rugby team, forcing matches to be moved and cancelled in a number of cities. Lapchick was coordinator of the International Advisory Commission to End Apartheid in Sport (IACEAS), which included leading members of the international movement to impose a sports boycott on apartheid South Africa. Originally ACCESS was based in Norfolk, Virginia; at the time Lapchick was at Virginia Wesleyan College. In 1978, ACCESS was moved to New York, New York when Lapchick moved to the city. In 1984 ACCESS was based in Boston, Massachusetts; at this time Lapchick helped found and directed the Center for the Study of Sport in Society in 1984 at Northeastern University. Dennis Brutus of SAN-ROC worked with ACCESS, and he often was listed as a contact on press releases and attended many meetings. ACCESS Coalition Members included: American Committee on Africa; Americans for Democratic Action; American Friends Service Committee; ARENA, the Institute for Sport and Social Analysis; Clergy and Laity Concerned; Coalition of Concerned Black Americans; Gray Panthers; Methodist Federation for Social Action; Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity); South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SAN-ROC); South African Students Movement; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Sports for the People; Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. (Source: ACCESS documents and Lapchick biography.)
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