David Hostetter joined the staff of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies in June 2005 as Director of Programs and Research.  He is author of Movement Matters: American Antiapartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics as well as “Experiment in Persuasion: The Vigil Against Biological Warfare at Fort Detrick, 1959-1961, and Antiwar Protest in the 1960s,” which appears in Mid-Maryland: A Crossroads in History, Volume 2.  David earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland College Park and has held teaching positions at the College of Southern Maryland and Goshen College.

“Lasers in the Jungle:” Hollywood’s Depiction
of Resistance to Apartheid
 

American activism against the South African system of racial segregation known as apartheid grew in conjunction with cultural expressions of resistance.  Many Americans learned of the oppression of apartheid and the struggle against it by viewing Hollywood movies.  From the 1940s through the 1990s South Africans fought to overcome the entrenched racism of apartheid while American activists worked in solidarity with them. Over time film portrayals of the struggle changed in a way parallel to the changes in American antiapartheid activism: the role and agency of African Americans in creating these movies grew at the same time that black activists and organizations led the fight for economic sanctions and divestment from South Africa.  Like “lasers in the jungle” referred to by musician Paul Simon on his controversial Graceland album, these films helped cut through the fog of disinformation produced by the US and South African governments to clarify starkly the immorality of apartheid and the legitimacy of the resistance.  Utilizing exemplary outtakes, this presentation will explicate this evolution in popular films.