Beginning in October 1984, demonstrations were held outside the home of the honorary South African consul in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood to protest the South African government's polices of racial segregation known as apartheid.

When South Africa’s National Party came to power in 1948, the white leadership put extreme laws in place forcing the country’s racial groups to live and develop separately. These laws caused much hardship and resentment. The growth of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950s brought attention to apartheid, and in the 1970s and 80s, groups began protesting at entities connected with South Africa.

In this image, a group of sign-carrying demonstrators protests outside the South African Consulate. Considered the largest protest so far, some 400 people marched in a long circle for several hours.

Caption information source: “Apartheid protesters march at S. African consulate here,” by Jerry E. Carson, The Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 9, 1984, page D5.
Caption information source: “23 seized at apartheid protest,” by Don Tewkesbury, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 10, 1984, pages A1 and A11.