Introduction: Apartheid and American Jews

Abstract

In June 1990, New York City prepared for a triumphant visit by Nelson Mandela, the deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC), who had recently been released from his 27 years in prison for working to end apartheid in South Africa. New Yorkers welcomed the hero of human rights and saw his visit as the culmination of decades of global antiapartheid activism that helped to end 45 years of apartheid rule and more than 300 years of segregation in South Africa. Movement leaders emphasized that their struggle drew strength from the core American values of dignity, equality, and freedom.1 In working against apartheid, American Jewish organizations wedded these ideals to the Jewish imperative of justice, and they spoke of their activism in language that linked the lessons of the Holocaust and Black liberation.