Israeli Aparthied Week: George Houser

“Israel & Apartheid” a presentation by George Houser
Location: RCNV 515 Broadway, Santa Cruz, CA
“Israel & Apartheid”
a presentation by
George Houser
Thursday March 11 7:30 p.m.
at the Resource Center for Nonviolence
515 Broadway, Santa Cruz

George Houser is founder of the CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality in ) and the American Committee on Africa and traveled to Israel & Palestine in December 2009.

$5-$20 suggested (sliding-scale donation). For more information 831.423.1626. http://www.rcnv.org

George Houser, the son of a Methodist minister who spent much of his early life in the Far East, became a pacifist while studying at the Theological Seminary in Chicago. Houser joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters League and in 1940, he was arrested for resisting the draft and sentenced to a year imprisonment. He served on the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the 1940s and ’50s. On release from prison Houser helped organize the March on Washington in 1941 against racial discrimination in the armed forces that was called off when President Roosevelt barred discrimination issuing the Fair Employment Act).

In 1942 Houser, James Farme, Bayard Rustin and others established the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Members of CORE had been deeply influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign against British rule in India. In early 1947, CORE organized and Houser co-led ”the Journey of Reconciliation,” the first interracial interracial Freedom Ride that sent eight white and eight black men into the Deep South to test the Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in interstate travel unconstitutional in “Irene Morgan vs. Virginia” the previous Year. In the 1950s Houser turned his attention to African liberation struggles when he helped found Americans for South African Resistance (AFSAR) to organize support in the U.S. for the ANC-led Defiance Campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

Houser was a founder in 1953 of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA). In 1954 he took his first trip to Africa, visiting West Africa and South Africa, the only time he got into that country until 1991. He served as Executive Director of the ACOA from 1955-1981 and of The Africa Fund from 1966-1981. At ACOA he spearheaded numerous campaigns supporting African struggles for liberation and independence from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Since 1954 he has made over 30 trips to Africa and his support of liberation movements led him to develop close ties with many African leaders including Amilcar Cabrall, Julius Nyere, Eduardo Mondiane, Kwame Nkrumah, Kennth Kaunda and Oliver Tambo.

He is the author of many articles and No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggle (1989) and, with Herbert Shore, I Will Go Singing: Walter Sisulu Speaks of his Life and the Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (2000). Houser traveled to Israel and Palestine on a delegation organized by the Resource Center for Nonviolence and Peaceworkers in December of 2009.