African Activist Archive

Leaflet advertising a Sharpeville Memorial event on the steps of Memorial Church on March 21 to commemorate the date in 1960 when South African police opened fire on a crowd of men, women and children peacefully demonstrating against the pass laws outside the police station at Sharpeville. The massacre left 69 people dead and 188 wounded, most of them shot in the back. The Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association, the H-R African Students Association, and the H-R Southern Africa Solidarity Committee invites everyone in the Harvard community to a convocation in memory of Sharpeville and to recognize the South African people's continuing struggle for freedom. The leaflet says Canon Burgess Carr of Liberia, Visiting Professor of Divinity and Secretary-General of the All-African Union of Churches, will speak about the history of the liberation movements in Southern Africa. Tepresentatives of the liberation movements in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa will deliver messages of solidarity. Members of the Kuumba Singers will perform freedom spirituals, and Reverend Peter Gomes, Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold, and Reverend Tom Powers will deliver benedictions. The leaflet calls for supporting the Southern African liberation movement, including by advocating for corporate withdrawal by demanding that Harvard divest, providing medical and material aid for the liberation struggle, and educating ourselves about the liberation movements and the role of the U.S. in Southern Africa. The leaflet discusses the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Chase Manhattan Bank, foreign corporations, U.S. banks, loans, Charles Engelhard, democratic rights, national independence, the African National Congress (ANC), resistance, armed struggle, Umkoto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), Poqo, President Carter, President Bok, economic sanctions, the Soweto uprising, and mass demonstrations.

African Activist Archive

sharpeville memorial

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