Heroes of Forgiveness

Mahatma Ghandi

(1869-1948), Indian nationalist leader, who established his country’s freedom through a nonviolent revolution and whose teachings inspired nonviolent movements elsewhere, notably in the United States under civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

 Martin Luther King, Jr.

(1929-1968), American clergyman, one of the principal leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest. King’s challenges to segregation and racial discrimination helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States.

Nelson Mandela

(1918- ), South African activist and statesman, who was elected the first black president of South Africa in 1994. He was born in Umtata. In 1944 Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC), a civil rights group promoting the interests of black Africans. In 1962 he was sentenced to five years in prison; in 1964 he was further sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and treason. Mandela soon became a worldwide symbol of resistance to apartheid, South Africa’s policy of rigid racial segregation.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu

(1931- ), South African clergyman, civil rights activist, and Nobel laureate. Born in Klerksdorp, in what is now North-West Province, Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. He was named dean of Johannesburg in 1975 and bishop of Lesotho in 1977; the following year, he became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. In 1984 Bishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of “the courage and heroism shown by black South Africans in their use of peaceful methods in the struggle against apartheid.” Apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separatism, has since been dismantled.