From Selma to Soweto: Nelson Mandela and the Southern freedom struggle

[struggle4progress]

In 1994, at a speech celebrating his inauguration as the first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela glanced over to Coretta Scott King and echoed the words of her slain husband's address at the March on Washington more than 30 years earlier: "Free at last, free at last!"

After his release from prison in 1990 and rise to the presidency, Mandela would often pay homage to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern civil rights movement, which he said were an inspiration to him and other anti-apartheid activists in South Africa.

But the influence went both ways: Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle were also an inspiration to civil rights activists in the South, especially African-American organizers who, in the course of the 1960s, sought to link their fight against Jim Crow with liberation movements unfolding in Africa and around the world ...

In 1960, the Sharpeville massacre -- where South African police opened fire on black demonstrators in a Transvaal township, killing 69 people -- helped propel apartheid into the news headlines, inspiring more U.S. civil rights leaders to take action. In 1962, Dr. King and Albert Luthuli -- a leader of the African National Congress when Nelson Mandela became active -- issued an Appeal for Action Against Apartheid with ACOA signed by 150 world leaders ...

http://www.southernstudies.org/2013/12/from-selma-to-soweto-nelson-mandela-and-the-southe.html