Interview with Alice Palmer

Length: 107 minutes Oral history interview of Alice Palmer by Katherine Elizabeth McAuliff As a youth, Palmer mentions, she encountered news of South African Apartheid through a magazine to which her grandparents subscribed, outlining methods of classifying race in the country, particularly through hair texture. In college, Palmer mentions a deepened awareness of the issues in South Africa, which propelled her student activism during the boycott against the Krugerrand. Palmer also describes her involvement in organizing the Free South Africa Movement with other Chicago-based activists. She describes the demonstrations between November 1984 and March 1985 in front of the South African Consulate on South Michigan Street to urge divestment from the city. She explains how, after being arrested in one of the January protests, she and eight other protestors were put on trial and eventually acquitted based on the Law of Necessity, based on their need to demonstrate for the people in South Africa and the international atrocity of the Apartheid regime. She describes protesting outside of the South African Consulate to correct misinformation published by the Chicago Tribune