Southern Africa Liberation Committee

The Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC) was a community organization working at Michigan State University (MSU) and in the Lansing, Michigan area from 1973 through 1997. It was founded by an MSU protestant campus minister Warren "Bud" Day, MSU political science doctoral candidate Carol B. Thompson, and MSU anthropology professor Bill Derman. Key players for decades were MSU tennis coach Frank Beeman and his wife Patricia Beeman. SALC was associated with the community-based Peace Education Center in East Lansing and also was a registered student organization at MSU. Some members of SALC formed a Zimbabwe Task Force in the mid-1970s. SALC organized a series of campaigns for material aid to liberation movements, educational (speakers, films), and action campaigns. In 1975-1976 it campaigned against U.S. intervention in Angola. In 1977 SALC successfully lobbied the City of East Lansing to adopt a selective purchasing policy restricting city purchases to companies not doing business in apartheid South Africa. SALC campaigned for MSU to divest from companies with subsidiaries in South Africa. With faculty and student support, the MSU Board of Trustees voted in 1978 to make it the first major public university to divest. SALC then campaigned for the MSU Foundation to divest, which occurred in 1986. SALC initiated the "McGoff Off" campaign in 1979 to remove the John McGoff name from the MSU Wharton Center because of his secret agent activity for the apartheid government, which was achieved in 1984. In 1978 SALC members met with State Representatives Lynn Jondahl (East Lansing), Virgil Smith (Detroit), and Perry Bullard (Ann Arbor) to plan a campaign for Michigan to adopt sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Subsequently the Michigan State Legislature passed three sanctions bills: prohibiting the deposit of state funds in banks making loans to South Africa (1979), prohibiting state university and college investments in firms operating in South Africa (1982), and divesting the $4 billion State of Michigan Pension Fund of any companies operating in South Africa (1988). Students in SALC also founded the national "Coke Boycott," protesting Coca Cola's staying in South Africa; they succeeded in removing Coke products from MSU dormitories. (Sources: David Wiley and No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950-2000, Africa World Press, 2008)