Formed after the Soweto uprising, between 1977 and 1980 BCLSA focused on the ties between the First National Bank of Boston to the Standard Bank of South Africa, as well as its red-lining policies and support for nuclear power in the U.S. In 1980 it helped form MassDivest, which led the campaign to divest the state pension from companies doing business in South Africa. In January 1983 the legislature passed a comprehensive divestment bill that became a model for other states. The collection includes material of other Massachusetts organizations. The anti-apartheid activists who eventually formed BCLSA came from groups such as the Africa Research Group, whose Boston members were active in the early 1970s, and the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, which organized on the Harvard-Radcliffe campus in the mid-1970s. The collection includes material from other Boston area organizations including the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers’ Movement which drew attention to the Polaroid camera systems being used in the pass system in South Africa, the Gulf Boycott Coalition which between 1972-1975 was active in promoting the boycott of Gulf gasoline because of the company’s support for the Portuguese colonial regime in Angola, the Southern Africa Solidarity Coalition and MassDivest which led the successful campaign for state divestment. BCLSA stopped meeting as a separate organization in the mid-1980s and various members joined with other activities by other groups in the Boston area, primarily FreeSA and TransAfrica. FreeSA continued to do fund-raising events and supported non-governmental organizations active in South Africa in the late 1980s. Other activities that followed the institution of U.S. sanctions in the 1980s included meetings of health care professionals and formation of a Boston chapter of the Committee for Health in South Africa (CHISA), the mobilization of support for Nelson Mandela’s visit to Boston in 1990, and the development of a “sister state” agreement between Massachusetts and the Eastern Cape in the mid-1990s. Papers collected by Richard Clapp and Barbara Brown.