In 1977, the Rev. Leon Sullivan wrote what came to be known as the Sullivan Principles, a set of ethical guidelines for corporations operating in apartheid-era South Africa. Many American corporations adopted these principles, including equal pay, to signal to their customers, competitors and employees their unwillingness to abide by the nation’s brutal system of discrimination. These principles were an important recognition that private institutions are complicit if they do not resist unjust policies. Some companies and organizations went further, choosing to divest entirely. By the late 1990s, the apartheid government had been toppled, replaced by a functional democracy.