Caroline Hunter, the young chemist who was working for the Polaroid Corporation in 1970 when she stumbled upon evidence that her employer was providing the camera system to the South African state to produce photographs for the infamous pass books. Along with her partner, Ken Williams, she formed the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement to campaign for a boycott. By 1977, Polaroid finally withdrew from South Africa.
Caroline Hunter talking:
I learned about apartheid in 10th grade at Xavier University Preparatory High School, where I graduated in ’64. And our social studies teacher, Mr. Valder, introduced us to Cry, the Beloved Country. And the book resonated with me; the suffering and the pain induced by apartheid moved me at that time as a 10th-grader. I saw apartheid again with the Sharpeville massacre, and then it was out of my mind until that moment at Polaroid. And all I knew then was it was a bad—South Africa was a bad place for black people. We had to educate ourselves. We studied Verwoerd and Malan, the creators and the architects of apartheid, the legislation and the history, traced it back to Nazi Germany, and the fact that population registration and control was a tool. And Polaroid had the technology that made that tool effective and brutal.
The Polaroid campaign was the very beginning campaign in 1970. The Krugerrand campaign developed in the ’80s as we increased the education of the movement. So we presented Polaroid with three demands: that Polaroid get out of South Africa, that they announce in the U.S. and South Africa simultaneously their abhorrence for apartheid, and that they turn over their profits to the liberation movements. That then went on to engaging students and workers in the Cambridge and Boston area to support our demands and to boycott Polaroid and begin to say to other organizations, churches and universities, “Don’t have anything to do with them. Disinvest. Don’t buy stock. Don’t use the cameras. Don’t buy the film.”
In February of 1971, the day before we testified at the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid, Ken and myself and the workers attended a conference of the International Chemists and Physicists at which Edwin Land, the president of Polaroid, was the main speaker. We had a teach-in with Science of the People, and we got on the stage before he spoke, with signs and banners, and talked about the brutal oppression in South Africa that Polaroid had been profiting for, for many, many years. The study committee was just a way to continue doing business in South Africa. And South Africa made it very clear that under no circumstances would a white ever supervise a black in South Africa, and no matter how much Polaroid raised their wages, the system of apartheid would continue.
I was suspended and eventually fired for misconduct detrimental to the best interest of a corporation, calling an international boycott. The study committee was just, again, another corporate delay strategy, another strategy to cover up the fact that in a police state, which is what South Africa was, you could not speak against apartheid. You could not even say the name Nelson Mandela. You couldn’t say Polaroid shouldn’t take these pictures. So, to go and interview people who were imprisoned by your system was just disingenuous.
firing me gave me more time to devote myself to the campaign to get Polaroid out of South Africa. As one of our leaflets said, our—for Polaroid and the 650 corporations doing business in South Africa, “Apartheid is our business, and business is good.” South Africa was mineral-rich and had the most cheap labor pool at that time. And so, many, many U.S. corporations profited, kept their dealings secret and continued to be in South Africa until the pressure in the United States grew, the international pressure grew. We got the City Council in Cambridge and the City Council in Boston to begin the sanctions movement. And eventually, Congressman Ron Dellums—our group visited Ron Dellums in the Black Caucus—he began to file the national legislation which after 15 years was enacted, over presidential veto.
We had received information from the ANC throughout our campaign that they were aware of our activities and encouraged us to continue. But in 1990, myself and my late husband went to a reception in the evening with Nelson Mandela. And if you—we had the pleasure of meeting him, receiving his thanks, his acknowledgment that our efforts made a difference in South Africa.
I’m actually a retired public school educator. I retired from 34 years of public teaching in administration in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2001, I received the National Education Association’s Rosa Parks Memorial Award, which was quite an honor to be associated with her, for my anti-apartheid work.
– source democracynow.org
Caroline Hunter, young chemist working for the Polaroid Corporation in 1970 when she stumbled upon evidence that her employer was providing the camera system to the South African state to produce photographs for the infamous passbooks. Along with her partner Ken Williams, she formed the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement to campaign for a boycott.