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This paper argues that in order to understand the anti-Apartheid campaign in Portland, Oregon it must be located within the particular socio-historical context of race and racism in the city and state. Thus, Black people living in Portland had good reason to compare the Apartheid system in South Africa to their own experience. Therefore, the confluence of national and local issues that move the local anti-Apartheid campaign forward is examined; the paper documents the rise and development of critical organizations in the anti-Apartheid campaign in Portland; the paper focus on the closure of the Honorary South Africa Consulate in downtown Portland and the passing of South Africa divestment legislation at the state level which paralleled actions of the national movement. This study is based on an analysis of historical documents, and interviews with four prominent community activists and politicians regarding their participation. In conclusion, it is argued that this research is important because there is little scholarship of the anti-Apartheid movement in the Northwest region of the U.S., and even less on the role Black people in the state of Oregon played in the anti-apartheid movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares US and South African labour relations from 1935 to 1956, a period that saw the rise and decline of left-led trade unions, significant initiatives of independent black trade unionism, and a new receptivity on the part of some white trade unionists to cooperation with the black working class. However, interracial unionism in both the US and South Africa fell victim to a post-war anti-left purge, unfavourable legal structures and right-wing trade union factions. Consequently, blacks in the US looked to the racially liberal state to attack racism, but the civil rights movement lacked the mass participation of black workers. In South Africa, the state offered white workers protection against black encroachment and denied black workers a place in the trade-union movement. As a result, black workers played an integral part in the liberation movement. In both cases, the defeat of interracial unionism can be attributed primarily to state action, not working-class racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the interactions of the communist parties of South Africa and the United States with the black working class of each country until 1950. It discusses, in particular detail, the influence of internationalist currents of radical syndicalism on the course and destiny of each party. The analysis also focuses on how each communist movement adjusted its tactics in response to indigenous patterns of black migration, white working-class racism, black radicals' negotiation of recurring tensions between class, nationalist and reformist influences, and the ways in which communist labour activists in each country were limited or empowered by the changing ideological influences of the Communist International. South African and American communists endured periods of sectarian political rigidity and isolation but, ultimately, communist activists' pragmatic and flexible interpretations of working-class dynamics in each country were more important in shaping each party's relationship with blacks than Leninist ideology or the requirements of Soviet or Cold War politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid strategy incorporating admonitions of both theory constructionists and naturalists has been adapted in a comparative study of how social conditions and legal system characteristics affect the viability of the American and South African legal orders. The initial step is to construct a first "causal model" to guide analyst's of various kinds of evidence considered indicative of viability, with one or more revisions of the model expected in the course of those analyses. Six social conditions and four legal system characteristics "variables" were identified, and the two cases were "scored" in terms of literature reviews culminating in ten generalizations. These generalizations were then used in conjunction with four postulates to generate a set of propositions stating how each of the ten "variables" presumably affects viability in these cases. The resulting propositions wilt be used subsequently as a first model in analyzing materials on the nature and impact of legal control efforts in the United States and South Africa, the leading test cases of whether a viable legal order can be achieved where racism has been institutionalized in a high degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]