More than 1,300 pieces of memorabilia from the U.S. movement supporting freedom and justice in South Africa from the 1950s to the 1990s can now be found online, thanks to digitization provided by a MSU computing center.

At the newly revamped African Activist Archive Web site, Web surfers can observe written and recorded remembrances from activists, videos, photos, posters, historical documents, political buttons and T-shirts from 50 years of organizing against apartheid and colonialism in South Africa.

This is the most comprehensive collection readily available to the public that documents the solidarity movement in the United States, supporting the struggles in South Africa to overcome apartheid. The Web site is unique in that its focus is on documenting the grass roots efforts.

The project is sponsored by MSU’s African Studies Center and MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University.

 “This is an unusual digitizing project,” said Christine Root, the African Activist Archive project manager at MATRIX. “Most such projects begin with a library collection that already is organized and catalogued, but we are contacting individuals and asking them to look through their attics and garages and save their materials. We are eager to add materials and interviews from more activists to more fully represent this diverse movement.”

The MSU Library is accepting donated collections from organizers who wish to have their materials preserved and made available to the public.

The site contains items from 21 states and the District of Columbia, including: 

• an audio tape of Harry Belafonte welcoming African National Congress President Oliver Tambo to a 1987 reception in New York
•  a 1957 Los Angeles radio interview with Mary-Louise Hooper, who had worked as a volunteer personal assistant to Chief Albert Luthuli, who later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 

 “At this moment, when a U.S. president has just been elected by a movement that excited young activists, it seems especially important to bring to the public – with lively, multimedia materials – the history of this movement that has many lessons to teach us today,” said Mark Kornbluh, director of MATRIX and chairman of MSU’s Department of History.  

The African Activist Archive Project, begun in 2003, has received support from the Ford Foundation, individual donors, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and several local churches, the CWA Local 1180 and SEIU Local 371 unions and other organizations.

As one of the premier humanities computing centers in the United States, MATRIX creates and maintains online resources, provides training in computing and new teaching technologies and creates forums for the exchange of ideas and expertise in the field.