This poster produced by the Pan-African Liberation Committee in Brookline, Massachusetts in the early 1970s conveyed a crystal clear message: “There are but two sides in a war—she fights on the side of African freedom—Gulf finances the other.” The iconic photograph was taken by Boubaker Adjali, an Algerian journalist and filmmaker.

The Massachusetts Coalition for Divestment from South Africa (MASS Divest) created this poster below in 1981 to support Senate Bill 1138 requiring the state pension fund to sell stocks invested in companies doing business in South Africa. This multi-racial coalition, working with Representative Mel King and Senator Jack Backman, succeeded in making Massachusetts the first state to adopt total divestment of its public employee pension fund. This poster conveyed not only opposition to apartheid and its system of cheap, migrant labor but also a call for jobs and access to mortgages for people in Massachusetts. MASS DIVEST wrote a case study of their campaign that was published by the American Committee on Africa. Today, climate justice activists in Massachusetts are building support for a parallel bill focused on fossil fuel companies.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) office in Atlanta, Georgia produced this boycott Coca-Cola poster:

The boycott was initiated in October 1985 at the Midwest Anti-Apartheid Conference held in Chicago; the AFSC and Georgia Coalition for Divestment in South Africa brought it to Coca-Cola’s doorstep in Atlanta. The Atlanta AFSC effort was led by Thandi Gcabashe, the daughter of Chief Albert Luthuli who was President of the ANC from 1972 to 1967 and the first African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

This last poster, created by the Southern African Liberation Committee in East Lansing, Michigan, celebrated the 1994 first democratic election in South Africa with the joyful slogan, “The Sun Shall Rise.”

The poster design incorporated ten hand-made buttons from campaigns SALC had undertaken over the course of its 20 years of solidarity work. Among these campaigns were divestment by Michigan State University (1978), removing the McGoff name from a performing arts center in 1984 (Michigan newspaper publisher John McGoff clandestinely cooperated with the South African Department of Information), the Coke Boycott campaign (1986), and a material aid campaign for the ANC’s Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO) in Tanzania.

• These posters are used by permission of the organizations that created them or former members of those organizations that no longer exist.