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s i x The Free South Africa Movement In my 20 years of working on this [anti-apartheid], I have never seen such a groundswell as we are currently seeing. I think one reason is that the level of resistance in South Africa has never been the way it is now. I also think there has never been a point at which the black community and particularly the leadership of the black community has been as mobilized as they currently are on this issue. —Prexy Nesbitt, Chicago union organizer, 19851 On 21 November 1984, four African-American leaders entered the South African consulate in Washington, D.C., and refused to leave until the South African regime dismantled apartheid and released all political prisoners . Randall Robinson, president of TransAfrica; Congressman Walter Fauntroy; Mary Frances Berry, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission ; and Eleanor Holmes Norton, a law professor and former Carter administration of¤cial, had been invited to discuss U.S.–South African relations with South African ambassador Bernadus G. Fourie. After they presented their ultimatum to the ambassador, Norton left the room to brief the international press while Robinson, Berry, and Fauntroy remained behind and were arrested. After spending a night in jail, the three announced the formation of the Free South Africa Movement and began daily demonstrations outside the embassy. The sit-ins took hold in more than two dozen other cities, including Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle, New York, San Francisco , and Cleveland, with weekly demonstrations at South African consulates , federal buildings, coin shops that dealt in gold Krugerrand coins, and businesses with South African interests. Hundreds of celebrities, including Gloria Steinem, Harry Belafonte, Amy Carter, Detroit mayor Coleman Young, Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson, and at least twenty-two con- gressmen were arrested outside the embassy.2 The movement, which was a coalition of church, student, civil rights, and women’s groups, also spread to hundreds of college campuses across the country, where rallies and sitins questioned the investment of university pension funds in companies that did business with South Africa. Hundreds of students were arrested at Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University , the University of Illinois, and other schools. Over ¤ve thousand people were arrested across the country in a twelve-month period. Coordinated by FSAM, TransAfrica, and the Congressional Black Caucus , this upsurge in anti-apartheid activism in®uenced Congress to adopt the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over President Reagan’s veto in 1986. Why did FSAM succeed in in®uencing Congress to impose comprehensive ¤nance and trade sanctions against South Africa in 1986 when four decades of anti-apartheid activism in the United States had failed? Besides the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the presence of African Americans in Congress, FSAM stood on the shoulders of the decades of activism on the question at local and national levels. The catalyst for this resurgence in anti-apartheid activism was the retrenchment of racism on both sides of the Atlantic. In South Africa, a new constitution unveiled on 3 September 1984 gave 800,000 Indians and 2.5 million “coloreds” their own legislatures while still excluding the black majority, numbering 23 million, from power. This constitution was rejected emphatically by the black people of South Africa. Residents of Sharpeville organized a massive rent strike and sparked demonstrations and rioting that claimed hundreds of lives.3 Within weeks, the regime had arrested virtually all the black trade union leaders. The United Nations General Assembly deliberated and passed a resolution condemning the arrests . Although the resolution passed unanimously, the United States abstained . Once again, the anti-apartheid community was outraged at the decision of the U.S. government, which claimed to oppose apartheid yet continued to protect the regime in international forums. Robinson decided to launch a direct-action campaign to force the United States to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime.4 On 21 November 1984, TransAfrica organized the sit-ins at the South African Embassy. Robinson, Fauntroy, and Berry spent the night in jail. The initial reaction to the sit-ins in the national media was muted. The New York Times put the article on its national news page, although the Washington Post put the story on page 1.5 Both newspapers focused on the most prominent of the three—D.C. Congressional Delegate Walter E. Fauntroy—in their headlines and leads: “Fauntroy Arrested in Embassy” (Washington Post) and “Capital’s Delegate Held in Embassy Sit-in” (New 124 Race...

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