The American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society (ACCESS), founded in 1976 by Richard Lapchick, was a coalition of some 30 national civil rights, political, religious, women's and sports organizations focused on the international sports boycott of South Africa. In 1978 it led a boycott of the Davis Cup tennis match between South Africa and the U.S. at Vanderbilt University. In 1981, ACCESS was involved in protests against the U.S. tour of the all-white the Springboks South African rugby team, forcing cancellation of matches in Chicago and New York. The collection comprises official papers of ACCESS as well as correspondence, news releases, flyers, and other works focusing largely on the sports boycott of South Africa, but also covering other issues such as loans. Events/themes covered include the 1981 Springbok rugby tours of New Zealand and the U.S., tennis, golf, karate, and other sport protests.

Includes correspondence and papers of other organizations, such as American Committee on Africa, the Stop Apartheid Rugby Tour, Trans Africa, and Supreme Council of Sport in Africa (SCSA) Coalition for Human Rights in South Africa, HART (Halt All Racist Tours Movement), ICARIS, SAN-ROC, and Apartheid in Sports Information Center, SACOS, and UN Centre against Apartheid. Includes original diary of Lapchick that includes his impressions of Stop the Seventy Tour meetings in the UK in 1969. Major correspondents include Richard Lapchick and John Dommisse, Abraham Ordia (SCSA), Dennis Brutus (ICARIS), Trevor Richards (HART), and M.N. Father (SACOS).

The collection is complemented by Papers of Richard Lapchick at Northeastern University. Aspects of the history of ACCESS are covered in three books by Lapchick: Broken promises: racism in American sports (New York: St. Martin's, 1984); Five minutes to midnight: race and sport in the 1990s (Lanham: Madison Books, 1991); and Smashing barriers: race and sport in the new millennium (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 2001, revised edition)