New British Anti-Apartheid Movement online archive

The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) Archives Committee has launched an online archive, "Forward to Freedom: the History of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement 1959-1994" (http://www.aamarchives.org/apartheid.html).

This is a valuable collection of archival materials, interviews with about 50 activists, and essays about each decade of the AAM and several of its campaigns. Most of the original materials are held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Browse and search features allow you to explore by media type, including about 150 posters, 50 buttons, 30 T-shirts, annual reports from 1961 to 1993, and 60 pamphlets.

You can also browse materials by various campaigns, including the arms embargo, boycotts, sport, Barclays and Shell, political prisoners, death sentences, “Stop the hangings,” “Free Mandela,” sanctions, and campaigns of goods.

This is an important addition to freely available historical materials about the international anti-apartheid movement. An archive of this movement in the United States, the African Activist Archive (http://africanactivist.msu.edu) now contains more than 7,250 items from almost 400 organizations across the country and 350 items from other countries. 

The AAM archive and African Activist Archive have cooperated  with each other to enhance both of these online collections.