Black Cultural Center

The Black Cultural Center led work on southern Africa at the University of Tennessee (UT) as well as other anti-racist organizing. In the fall of 1978, three students were arrested at a Board of Trustees meeting to call attention to the issue of divestment from companies operating in South Africa. The next year, charges against these students were dropped. Organizing on southern Africa, in addition to work on campus divestment, included educational events and films about South Africa on campus and in the community and in a prison, radio talk shows about southern Africa and domestic struggles, raising funds for an African National Congress (ANC) school in Tanzania, education about the struggle in Zimbabwe and support for ZANU, and opposing the John Tate (a resident of Knoxville) fight with Gerry Coetzee fight in South Africa in 1979 and picketing the ABC station that planned to broadcast the fight.  In the spring of 1980, 18 students were arrested when they took over the Black Cultural Center after the administration fired its progressive staff. Students also met with the Black Caucus of the state Legislature about divestment of state funds and met about divestment with the Governor, who chairs the Board of the University of Tennessee. (Source: Various issues of Student Anti-Apartheid Newsletter, published by  the American Committee on Africa.)