Dennis Brutus Papers

1970-1990

Born in 1924, Dennis Brutus is a South African-born poet and human rights activist who spearheaded a successful campaign to ban apartheid South Africa from international sport competitions. He founded the South African Sports Association in 1961 and the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SAN-ROC) in 1963, and was subsequently arrested and jailed, placed under house arrest, and banned from all literary, academic and political activities. He went into exile in 1966 and has lived in the United States since 1970, emerging over the years as a prominent lecturer and author, a professor of African literature and a major spokesperson in the international movement to end apartheid in South Africa. The collection consists of personal and professional papers, correspondence, writings, files of SAN-ROC and the Dennis Brutus Defence Committee, anti-apartheid posters, photographs, recordings, and subject files on Nelson Mandela, human rights, South African politics, divestment, apartheid and sports, African literature, and the struggle against apartheid in general. Also included are conference and symposium papers on apartheid, material of the Dennis Brutus Defense Committee, the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid and the South African Council on Sports (SACOS), and printed matter.