Found 2 collections related to Political%20prisoners%20--%20South%20Africa

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on February 3, 1926, Joel Carlson was a lawyer who devoted his legal career to opposing apartheid. Through the 1960s and 1970s he developed a reputation for defending black South Africans in a variety of cases including removal from homelands, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture cases, and pass law violations. Carlson eventually opened his won civil rights practice, exposing apartheid atrocities, which made him a target among government officials and the South African police. After years of harassment and numerous threats against his life, Carlson left Johannesburg in 1971, relocating to New York. In 1994, Carlson revisited South Africa, serving as a United Nations observer in the country's first free elections. He died of leukemia in Manhaset, New York, in 2001. Joel Carlson South African Legal Files, 1958 - 1990, chronicle Carlson's legal career in South Africa through the late 1960s and early 1970s. Modeling Carlson's own mapping of his life and career in No Neutral Ground, the collection highlights the kinds of cases that Carlson understood to define his anti-apartheid work: prison abuse investigations and the defense of political detainees, as well as his representation of Winnie Mandela and members of her family. Primarily organized chronologically by case type and individual case, the collection consists largely of correspondence, legal documents relating to trials and defendants, and news clippings. less

A rare collection of 12 typed letters signed by Steve Biko, written to the Chief Magistrate of King William's Town between May 16, 1973 and July 19, 1977, just weeks before Biko's death in police custody. The collection also includes 9 carbon copy responses/handwritten memos from the magistrate relating to Biko's requests. This collection of letters shows an increasingly exasperated Biko bravely challenging the petty demands of the apartheid regime. less