Boston Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa Physical Archives

Description: In 1982 it changed its name to the Boston Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa. The collection includes material of other Massachusetts organization including after BCLSA ceased operating. The anti-apartheid activists who eventually formed BCLSA came from groups such as the Africa Research Group, whose Boston members was active in the early 1970s, and the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, which organized on the Harvard-Radcliffe campus in the mid-1970s. The collection includes material from other Boston area organizations including the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement which drew attention to the Polaroid camera systems being used in the pass system in South Africa, the Gulf Boycott Coalition which between 1972-1975 was active in promoting the boycott of Gulf gasoline because of the company's support for the Portuguese colonial regime in Angola, the Southern Africa Solidarity Coalition, the Fund for a Free South Africa (FreeSA) and Mass Divest which led the successful campaign for state divestment. FreeSA continued to do fund-raising events and supported non-governmental organizations active in South Africa in the late 1980s. The archive includes other activities that followed the institution of U.S. sanctions in the 1980s included meetings of health care professionals and formation of a Boston chapter of the Committee for Health in South Africa (CHISA), the mobilization of support for Nelson Mandela's visit to Boston in 1990, and the development of a 'sister state' agreement between Massachusetts and the Eastern Cape in the mid-1990s. This collection forms part of the African Activist Archive collections. Papers collected and donated by Richard Clapp and Barbara Brown (members of BCLSA).