District of Columbia Bank Campaign: banking practices, news clippings, 1982-1980

The Project files cover the general work of the Campaign to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa (COBLSA) and are of interest for the study of business, education, civil, and human rights campaigns in the United States and southern Africa. The files encompass various projects, organizations, or programs that the campaign undertook and consist of extensive news clippings, as well as correspondence, brochures, campaign registration forms, flyers, press releases, reports, statements, testimonies, and additional documentation. The bulk of the project files range from 1981 through1983 and are organized alphabetically by project name or program, followed by descending chronological order

Main topics include: apartheid, banking, business, civil rights, divestment, education, human rights, lending discrimination, and liberation movements in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia.

Of note are a small number of American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Southern Tour files and The People Say Project files, a series ofnetworking and informational tours of the southern United States. Their main objectives involved campaigning within the southern states to end all investments and bank accounts linked to institutions that conducted business with the South African government. The seven participating cities and states for the tour included the following: Charlottesville, Virginia; Greensboro and Charlotte North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; and St. Petersburg, Tampa, and Tallahassee, Florida. These records consist of brochures, correspondence, fact sheets, flyers, hand script notes, press releases, programs, project summaries, and reports.

Most of the member organizations of COBLSA were local groups based in one city or state. One of these affiliates, the District of Columbia (D.C.) Bank Campaign's records include data charts, flyers, guidebooks, meeting minutes, news clippings, reports, and statements. As the largest grouping of files within the series, the District of Columbia Bank Campaign files document a coalition of organizations and individuals who worked to change the repressive apartheid system abroad. Launched in June 1979, the campaign focused on changing the operations of local banks that financed loans for the repressive governments in Chile and South Africa. Campaign members also demanded efforts to end red-lining and mortgage loan discrimination in the District of Columbia.

The D.C. Bank Campaign also targeted Riggs National Bank because of the latter’s involvement with financing loans to South Africa and Chile and its poor record of services and loans to the D.C. community. The Riggs National Bank Project challenged the Riggs Bank's international and domestic lending practices. As an initiative of the District of Columbia Bank Campaign, the Riggs National Bank Project focused on ending all bank loans, investments, and credits to South Africa until apartheid was abolished and full political, economic, and social rights were established for all people. Chile also became a target for the campaign due to President Salvador Allende's socialist regime.

Of interest within the D.C. Bank Campaign and the Riggs National Bank files are the press conference statements of Christine Root, a member of the D.C. Bank Campaign and Associate Director of the Washington Office on Africa, and other members of the D.C. community on November 30, 1979. The members voiced their commitment to the campaign at a press conference to announce its second Day of Withdrawal from Riggs National Bank protest because of its discriminatory lending and other practices in the District of Columbia.

The small amount of District of Columbia (D.C.) Divest Project files include brochures, correspondence, fact sheets, a manual, lists, meeting minutes, notes, news clippings, and press releases regarding consumer boycotts against Chilean and South African products. D.C. Divest, a coalition of groups and individuals working for the liberation of black people in southern Africa and against the South African minority regime, assisted with the passing of the divestment bill, Prohibition of the Investment of Public Funds in Financial Institutions and Companies Making Loans or Doing Business with the Republic of South Africa Act of 1983 that Councilmember John Ray from the Council of the District of Columbia proposed.

Formed in June 1978, the Southern Africa Support Project (SASP), a D.C. community-based organization, provided political, educational, and fund-raising work regarding the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. They aimed to give political assistance to the people of the Frontline States of Mozambique, Angola, Zambia, Botswana and Tanzania, which were devastated by military and economic hardships. The SASP files contain brochures, correspondence, and newsletters.

The administrative files conclude with the United Nations Bank Campaign files that detail the work and efforts of the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid. The campaign focused on forming workshops and publishing documents, papers, posters, and reports on actions by various campaigns in different countries. Records included are conference materials and reports.