Alexander Defense Committee

The Alexander Defense Committee (ADC) was an international organization which was established to protest South African apartheid and to assist South African political prisoners and their families. The event that spurred the formation of the ADC was the arrest in July 1963 in Cape Town of Dr. Neville Alexander, a young black literary scholar, and ten other South Africans. All were charged with the crime of opposition to the government and its policy of apartheid, and with membership in the National Liberation Front. After a trial in November 1963, Alexander and four other defendents were sentenced to ten years in prison. In September 1964, the Alexander Defense Committee was formed in London. The American branch was established in New York City on February 6, 1965. The organization was disbanded in 1968.