ABSTRACT
By the mid-1970s, South Africa's sporting teams had been banned from international competition by nearly every governing sporting body due to the nation's apartheid policies. Yet, South Africa remained eligible to play in the Davis Cup, the prestigious international team tennis tournament. Thus, tennis became one of the last frontiers in the global sport boycott, a critical component of the transnational anti-apartheid struggle. At the same time, apartheid had moved from an issue on the fringe of American society at the beginning of the decade to an increasingly mainstream and influential protest movement taking place in various arenas across the United States, from labour unions to churches to college and university campuses. This article examines the efforts of Richard Lapchick, the American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society (ACCESS), and other activists in the United States to force the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to ban South Africa and its athletes from competition in the Davis Cup. It explores the place of sport in the struggle against apartheid in the United States at the end of the 1970s.
