New Movie on RFK in South Africa

I have written before about Robert Kennedy’s trip to South Africa in 1966 (that post is here).   A movie has just been made about that trip and the connections between the anti-apartheid and American civil rights movements.   “RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope”  is directed by Tami Gold and Larry Shore and their website says the following about the movie:

RFK IN THE LAND OF APARTHEID… follows Senator Kennedy to the site of his famous “Ripple of Hope” speech at the University of Cape Town and his encounter with Afrikaans students at Stellenbosch, the pro-Apartheid university. A high point of the film is Kennedy’s meeting with one of the unknown giants of African history – the banned President of the African National Congress, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chief Albert Lutuli – living under house arrest in a remote rural area. The film travels with Robert Kennedy to Soweto, South Africa’s largest black township, where he meets thousands of people and gives voice to Chief Lutuli’s silenced call for a free South Africa. We witness Kennedy publicly challenging the dominant Cold War ideology that anti-Communism, espoused by repressive regimes like that in South Africa, should be the only factor determining American foreign policy.

The website also has excellent background information (speeches, maps, documents and educational resources) here and a trailer.  It is very difficult to find much of the original footage from Kennedy’s trip and that alone makes this film worthwhile – but there is  much more here to recommend it to students, professors and anyone interested in this understudied piece of late 20th century history.

Last month the film was screened at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston and John Bohrer has a nice review in Huffington Post.