Robert Van Lierop papers 1968-1988

ArchivalResource

Robert Van Lierop papers, 1968-1988

Robert Van Lierop papers 1968-1988

http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20846

African-American filmmaker, political activist and Permanent Representative of the Republic on Vanuatu at the United Nations. Robert VAn Lierop began his professional career in 1967 as an Assistant Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the areas of civil rights and school desegregation. He travelled to Africa in 1971 and produced his first film on the struggle for independence in Mozambique, "A Luta Continua." A second film, "O Povo Organizado," was completed in 1976. As co-producer of "Like It Is," a weekly black television new and documentary program, he produced several documentaries, including an analysis of the United Nations and a conference on Southern Africa. He also conducted two delegations of African-American activists and professionals to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Cuba in 1978 and 1979. Personal papers documenting Robert Van Lierop's activities as a political activist on behalf of liberation movements in Southern Africa and East Timor, as an independent filmmaker and television producer, and as the Permanent Representative of Vanuatu at the United Nations. The collection consists, for the most part, of correspondence, reports, memoranda, draft articles and speeches, research materials and printed matter. Organizations represented in the collection include: the American Committee on Africa, the Pan-African Solidarity Committee, and the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, a group that opposed Polaroid's and other American corporate investments in South Africa. More recent files relate to East Timor and its struggle against Indonesian aggression, to Zimbabwe and Vanuatu, and to the tenth Pan-African Festival of Cinema, held in Burkina Faso in 1987.

4.2 lin ft.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archives Section