Divest 1986

Divest 1986

“Viewing the links”

Despite Bryn Mawr’s self image as a place that protects women and minorities, it was an explicitly racist environment. In 1988, a coalition of students published an open letter about racism and classism in The College News. The letter cited examples, a major instance being some racist positions on South Africa on campus. One student wrote how someone posted anti-Black signs on their door saying things such as: “What’s wrong with apartheid” and “[n-word] lover.” Another student shared in the same open letter they “heard a former president of Bryn Mawr College inform a South African woman that he knew more about that situation; after all, he’d been on a fact finding mission in South Africa.”1

During Black History month, anti-Apartheid activism was central to student organizations. In 1988, Sia Nowrojee wrote an article titled “Apartheid Continues” in The College News which highlighted Bryn Mawr’s Black affinity group and Sisterhood’s continued educational events about South Africa. Sisterhood’s co-president Jackie McGriff, in a speech introducing South African speaker Victor Mokoena, made clear connections between the US and South Africa, naming racism at BMC as tantamount to apartheid.2

Sisterhood would hold several anti-Apartheid and anti-racism educational events at their affinity house called Perry House. The House closed in 2012 “due to lack of maintenance”. This was very “upsetting [to] residents, who” had reason to believe “the college had let the building fall into disrepair.”3 The fall of the cherished and active affinity house is indicative of the college’s institutional racism.

Gina Dorcely, a student in the class of 1988, wrote an article for the DSA newsletter in 1985 titled “Racism and apartheid: Viewing the links.” She newsletter how activists must make ties between the US and South Africa, not just economically, but in social structures. She called on the student movement to confront structural and internal racism. Her peers at a DSA roundtable discussed the importance of movements forwarding Black leadership rather than tokenizing it. The anti-racist struggle could not be complete without self-reflection and confronting how even well-intentioned activists can perpetuate racism in the movement. She noted how at primarily white institutions it was essential to confront paternalism, and further, to not allow international solidarity organizing to distract activists from issues within and around them at home.

Dorcely argues that comparing the racism of both the US and South Africa not only fosters solidarity, it provides insight into how those located in the US can confront racism. She writes, “The anti-apartheid movement’s power to transform the landscape of American student politics lies partially in the moral intensity and urgency of its aim, to eradicate the evil of racism in South Africa. This aim evokes compelling images of a more just world in which people of all races work together, images that at once jar and stimulate the national consciousness.”4

Left, An event at Haverford in protest of Apartheid also made this insistence racism at the college was important to the movement. Right, a Bi-College Action week led by Anti-Apartheid Committee.5

The New Left student movement, despite its global solidarity, was held back by racism and sexism, as Kathie Sheldon wrote in The Radical Teacher about her experience in anti-Apartheid groups at UCLA.5 Sheldon proposed radical coalition building as a way to be more inclusive in the movement. Linking racism to Apartheid was a crucial component of the struggle for divestment on campus. The vision of building an anti-racist society was transnational and embraced solidarity across causes. As Audre Lorde said: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.”6

  1. Bryn Mawr College Publications, Special Collections, Digitized Books The College News 1988. 4-13 Vol. 9 No. 11 Students of Bryn Mawr College. https://repository.brynmawr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2392&context=bmc_collegenews.
  2. Nowrojee, Sia. “Apartheid Continues”. College News. Feb 17. (1988). Pg 7.
  3. Mulhere, Kaitlin. “Confederate Flag Causes Controversy at Bryn Mawr.” Inside Higher Ed. October 6, 2014. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/06/confederate-flag-causes-controversy-bryn-mawr.
  4. STUDENTS BOX LISTS 9I ISSUES ON CAMPUS/STUDENT ACTIVISM. Folder: apartheid. Dorcely, Gina. Publication of the Youth Section of the Democratic Socialists of America. Number 16. September 1985. “Racism and apartheid: Viewing the links”.
  5. HCV PRESIDENT’S PAPERS ROBERT B STEVENS 1985-1986 Box 16. Folder: Bryn Mawr-South Africa, 1986; Pr-So Box 20 Folder: South African April-October 1985.
  6. Sheldon, Kathie. “Anti-Apartheid Organizing on Campus.” The Radical Teacher, no. 21 (1982): 14–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20709346.
  7. Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”. 1981. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1981-audre-lorde-uses-anger-women-responding-racism/