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Mary-Louise Hooper papers

 Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: MSS 293

Scope and Contents

Within the Mary-Louise Hooper papers are original letters of Albert Luthuli and his wife, Nokukhanya, and eldest daughter Albertina Luthuli, and other prominent South Africans such as Moses Kotane, Oliver Tambo, M.B. Yengwa, Alfred Hutchison, Eskia (Ezekial) Mphahlele, G.M. and M.P. Naicker, Stephen Dlamini, Alan Paton, as well as letters from the Mandela and Tambo law firm, Trevor Huddleston, Joshua Nkomo of Zimbabwe, and Tom Mboya of Kenya. There is also correspondence with San Francisco organisations such as the International Longshoremen Workers Union, active in anti apartheid campaigns in that city. Also included are files on tours of the U.S. by prominent South Africans such as Robert Resha and Dennis Brutus. numerous publications of African liberation and anti-apartheid movements (many annotated by Hooper), tapes (including the Nobel Prize speech of Albert Luthuli and a talk on the Freedom Charter) and photos (including those of Luthuli, and of Hooper underground with the FLN of Algeria, and of various ANC leaders in KwaZulu-Natal, and later in exile in Tanzania or Zambia).

Dates

  • Creation: 1950s-1980s

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright is retained by the authors of the items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. For photocopy and duplication requests, please contact the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.

Biographical / Historical

Mary-Louise Hooper (1907-1987), an American Quaker, in 1956 went to South Africa and soon became a secretary of Chief Albert Luthuli of the African National Congress (ANC), for whom she worked for two years. She was arrested as part of the repression around the Treason Trial and deported in 1957. In the United States she worked at the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) in New York and from 1958 as the West Coast Representative of the Africa Defense and Aid Fund, an organization set up and administered by ACOA. She officially represented the ANC at the All-African Peoples Conferences held in Accra, Ghana, in 1958, in Tunis, 1960, and Cairo, 1961; and also underground in Algeria in the early 1960s, before independence. She worked on many anti-apartheid and related camapigns, editing South African Bulletin (later Southern Africa Bulletin), and co-coordinated the Committee of Conscience against Apartheid, which campaigned against the financial support to apartheid given by banks.

Extent

3.2 Linear Feet (5 boxes) ; 27 x 14 x 32 cm.

Language of Materials

English

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession information unknown.

Related Materials

There are additional archival material that relates to Mary-Louise Hooper in the archives of the ACOA at the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University. This includes letters she sent to ACOA while in South Africa using the name “S H Norris” or “S H N” is which she simply identifies Lutuli as “the boss.” It also includes the material related to her work at ACOA.

General

Forms part of the African Activist Archive.

General

Inventory available but under revision: contact Africana.

Varying Form of Title

African Activist Archive.

Title
Finding Aid for the Mary-Louise Hooper papers
Status
4 Published And Cataloged
Author
Finding aid prepared by Peter Limb
Description rules
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
English

Revision Statements

  • 2020: Finding aid updated to reflect rehousing.

Repository Details

Part of the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections Repository

Contact:
MSU Libraries
366 W. Circle Drive
East Lansing MI 48823 USA