Abstract
In the late 1960s and 1970s, American activists rediscovered southern Africa and began formulating broad-based strategies to challenge American complicity with unjust systems of colonialism and apartheid. The Gulf Boycott Coalition (GBC) was one early success. Founded in Dayton, Ohio, by the progressive Congregation for Reconciliation, the GBC drew upon civil rights sentiment and the nascent corporate responsibility movement to mobilize against Gulf Oil operations in the Portuguese colony of Angola. This interview with Rev. Richard Righter details the founding, operation, and impact of the GBC both locally and nationally. It reveals some of the ways leftist politics and religiously inspired social justice movements intersected to fuel transnational activism during this period, as well as the underappreciated—but vital—roles transitory movements played in expanding political attention to southern African struggles for self-determination.
