Northeast Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa

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The Northeast Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa (NECLSA) was an anti-apartheid organization founded in 1977 at Yale University by members of the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY) and students at Rutgers University in response to the massacre of black students by the South African police during the Soweto student uprisings in June 1976. The organization quickly expanded to a majority membership of white Americans. At its height, NECLSA became the umbrella organization of Anti-Apartheid committees on some 100 campuses throughout the North East region of the United States.

Yale University Private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

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Rutgers University multi-campus American public research university in New Jersey, United States

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Soweto Place in Gauteng, South Africa

Soweto is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships. Formerly a separate municipality, it is now incorporated in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, Suburbs of Johannesburg.

The organization initiated the South Africa divestment movement on the U.S. university campuses. The movement was eminently successful in focusing and influencing corporate America's policy towards apartheid South Africa. It can be argued that NECLSA and its sister organizations in the Mid-West, South and West of the United States, made a pivotal contribution to the eventual abolition of apartheid in South Africa.

Apartheid System of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s

Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed in descending order by Asians, Coloureds, and black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.

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The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), originally known as the Boycott Movement, was a British organisation that was at the centre of the international movement opposing the South African apartheid system and supporting South Africa's non-White population who were persecuted by the policies of apartheid. The AAM changed its name to ACTSA: Action for Southern Africa in 1994, when South Africa achieved majority rule through free and fair elections, in which all races could vote.

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