"As someone who was active in the struggle against apartheid inside South Africa and later for two decades in the U.S., I believe it is extremely important that the history of the solidarity movement be documented."
— Dumisani S. Kumalo, South African Ambassador to the UN, letter to David Wiley, 20 December 2002.

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African Studies Center

Established in 1960, the African Studies Center at Michigan State University is one of the most comprehensive and highly ranked in the United States with 150 faculty across the university and offering 30 African languages.  Its outreach program produces information on Africa for scholars of Africa, policy makers, publishers, the media, and the public throughout the country.  MSU houses one of the largest research libraries on Africa in the nation.

Michigan State University has continuing projects with many African universities and is active in cooperation to build the new South Africa.  The Center has extensive links to African universities and is working with educational institutions in Africa to preserve the history of African struggles.  Projects of the Center and the MSU MATRIX Program  to place some archival material on the web are collaborations with South African universities and technikons and with the Mandela Museum, the UWC/Robben Island Mayibuye Archives (s unit of the Robben Island Museum), the African National Congress Archives, and other institutions.

Richard Knight, Project Director

Richard Knight has more than 30 years of experience in the U.S. movement in solidarity with African struggles.  From 1975 until 2001, Knight worked at the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) and its 501(c)3 associate, The Africa Fund.  He maintained the ACOA/Africa Fund’s database of individuals and organizations active in the solidarity movement.  From the mid-1980s until 2002, Mr. Knight prepared material from ACOA and The Africa Fund for archiving at Amistad Research Center in New Orleans.

ACOA was the major U.S. national organization supporting African struggles against colonialism and apartheid.  It headed the U.S. response to the African liberation movement’s call for sanctions and took national leadership in creating the campaign for divestment from companies doing business in South Africa and Namibia.  Richard Knight served as a program associate for the state and municipal divestment program and as primary assistant to the Projects Director, Dumisani Kumalo, who is now South Africa’s Ambassador to the United Nations.  He maintained a list of states and cities taking economic action against apartheid.  As a senior researcher, he was in regular contact with numerous organizations and individuals, providing them with information on U.S. government and corporate ties to apartheid.  He monitored companies doing business in South Africa and Namibia and authored three editions of the Unified List of United States Companies Doing Business in South Africa. His personal web site is www.richardknight.com.

African Activist Archive Advisory Committee

Marsha Bonner is Vice President for Programs, Marin Community Foundation, CA and a Trustee of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation. Prior to this, she served as the Associate Director of the Aaron Diamond Foundation, a private New York City Foundation that funded in the areas of AIDS medical research, minority education, arts and culture, civil liberties, and human rights. She formerly served a Trustee a The Africa Fund. She was a student anti-apartheid activist at Princeton University and an intern at the American Committee on Africa.

Moore Crossey was Curator of the African Collection at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library from 1963-1998. Under his direction the African Collection developed a particularly strong focus on Anglophone southern, central, east, and west Africa; Francophone and Lusophone countries are also strongly represented. He has extensive experience in the collection of ephemera both from Africa and U.S. He assisted Yale in acquiring collections from U.S. solidarity organizations. For many years Crossey was an active participant in the Cooperative Africana Microform Project run by the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago.

Jennifer Davis, born in South Africa, became an active opponent of apartheid while at the University of the Witwatersrand. She left South Africa in 1966, with her family, under threat of possible house arrest.  In 1967 she began work at the American Committee on Africa/ The Africa Fund and was appointed Executive Director in 1981. Under her leadership, ACOA played a central role in building alliances which enabled a national campaign to get many churches, universities, states and cities to divest from companies investing in apartheid South Africa and ultimately won Congressional sanctions. She wrote extensively on U.S.-Africa political and economic relations and testified frequently before Congress and the United Nations on issues ranging from U.S. military support for Portuguese colonialism to the negative impact of U.S. corporate investment in South Africa. She also served as editor of Southern Africa magazine.

Traveling in Africa she maintained close connections with a broad range  of leaders, organizations  and individuals – some of whom have, in the years she has known them, been transformed from political prisoners or so-called terrorists to internationally recognized Nobel Laureates and political figures such as Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel and Desmond Tutu. Since leaving ACOA in March 2000 she consults on international issues and currently serves on the boards of Shared Interest and The Washington Office on Africa.

George M. Houser was a founder in 1953 of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA).  He served as Executive Director of the ACOA from 1955-1981 and of The Africa Fund from 1966-1981. An activist in the U.S. civil rights struggle, he was on the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for 13 years. He was a founder, with James Farmer, of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 and served as Executive Secretary for ten years. In 1947 he, along with Bayard Rustin, was an organizer and participant in the very first freedom ride, the Journey of Reconciliation. Houser built his African solidarity work on the foundations of his earlier experience and used those connections to build valuable new links between the African and Afro-American freedom struggles.

His African solidarity work dates to 1952 when he organized support in the U.S. for the ANC-led Defiance Campaign against apartheid in South Africa. At ACOA he spearheaded numerous campaigns supporting African struggles for liberation and independence from Algeria to Zimbabwe.  Since 1954 he has made over 30 trips to Africa and his support of liberation movements led him to develop close ties with many African leaders including Amilcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Eduardo Mondlane, Kwame Nkrumah, and Oliver Tambo.  He is the author of numerous articles and two books No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggle(New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989) and, with Herbert Shore, I Will Go Singing: Walter Sisulu Speaks of his Life and the Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (Cape Town: Robben Island Museum, 2000).

Dumisani S. Kumalo has served as South Africa's Ambassador to the United Nations since April 1999. In 1977 he was forced into exile for his anti-apartheid activities and sought asylum in the United States where he continued to work for South African liberation and democracy. As Project Director at the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) and its sister organization The Africa Fund from 1979-1997 he play a key role in the mobilization of U.S. sanctions against apartheid, helping to build the divestment movement which led to 28 states, 24 counties and more than 90 cities and 155 colleges and universities divesting from U.S. banks and companies which did business with apartheid South Africa. He visited almost every state in the union, testifying before state legislatures and city councils and speaking in communities and at countless colleges and universities. Before going into exile he worked as a political reporter for the Golden City Post, the World Newspapers, DRUM, and the Johannesburg Sunday Times. After the end of apartheid he returned to South Africa and was appointed Director of the United States Desk in the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1997.

Prexy Nesbitt is a long-time African activist in Chicago with extensive contacts across the U.S. He is a formerly served on the staff of the American Committee on Africa and the board of The Africa Fund. He was founded the Coalition for Illinois' Divestment from South Africa and the Chicago Committee for the Liberation of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (CCLAMG). He co-founded with Robert Van Lierop the Africa Information Service in New York, was the first national chair of the Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa and helped organize anti-apartheid campaigns in other key U.S. cities, including San Francisco, New York, Detroit, Nashville, Houston, and Seattle during the 1970s-80s. He a founder of the Mozambique Support Network and ran the Mozambique Solidarity Office on behalf of Mozambique government. He worked in Tanzania for Frelimo's secondary school, the Mozambique Institute, in1968-1969. He also worked as a program officer for MacArthur Foundation and as program director of the Program to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches. His writings include Apartheid in Our Living Rooms (1986).

David Wiley is a Professor of Sociology and since 1977 has been the Director of African Studies Center at Michigan State University (MSU). Under his leadership the Center has developed extensive links to African universities and is working with educational institutions in Africa to preserve the history of African struggles.  The Center is working to place some archival material on the web with a number of South African universities and technikons, including the Mandela Museum, the UWC/Robben Island Mayibuye Archives (a unit of the Robben Island Museum), and the African National Congress Archives,. He served as President of the African Studies Association in 1998-99. Previously he was one of the organizers of the New York Southern African Committee and Southern Africa Magazine.  He was active in the faculty- and student-led Southern African Liberation Committee, whose activities led MSU to divest in from companies doing business in South Africa in 1978 and two the three Acts of sanction on South Africa of the State of Michigan. Prior to coming to MSU, he was one of the organizing founders of the New Jersey Committee on Southern Africa in 1965 and the Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa in 1969. He was a founding board member of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, an activist scholar’s organization, formed in 1977.