Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. never met, but they fought for the same cause at the same time on two continents. Mandela said he was prepared to die to see his dream of a society where blacks and whites were equal become reality. King was assassinated in 1968 while working for that same dream.
"I think both of them were moral leaders. Both were people who had very strong principles, stuck to those principles even in the face of criticisms, and in Mandela's case being in prison for such a long time," said Carson.
Denis Goldberg, a close Mandela friend who spent two decades in prison while Mandela was incarcerated, noted that one major difference between America's and South Africa's racial equality struggle was that U.S. blacks were a minority in their country while blacks in South Africa"were an oppressed majority."
Unlike King, whose non-violent ways were rooted in his deep religious faith, Mandela gave reasoned arguments for why violence should be used as a means to bring about change, said Charlene Smith, an authorized biographer of Mandela. Mandela received training from the Algerian National Liberation Front in Morocco in 1962, according to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.
"The only way you're going to get anything is by making your enemy your friend," Smith said."And he shows it over and over again when he comes out of prison."
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