If it had happened today, it would break the Internet a little.
On February 11, 1990, after having served 27 years for “treason against the state,” Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison a free man. The international press had been staking out the prison for days, in anticipation of his release. One journalist, who covered the event for the South African Press Association, recalls just beating a Reuters reporter to a phone to file the story. Mandela’s “walk to freedom,” from the gates of the jail to the front of Cape Town’s City Hall with his then-wife Winnie Mandela, was broadcast live on TV channels around the world.
Suddenly, a man who hadn’t been seen in public in a quarter century — whose image had been banned in South Africa for more than two decades — became one of the most famous and revered faces of our time.
Here are a few snapshots from American press coverage of Mandela’s release:
I distinctly remember that day.
Our daughter, who was nearly four years old at the time, and I watched this event on television and were deeply moved.
In July 1993, we heard him speak in Chicago.
I lifted her up on the stage after the speech, and she handed him a drawing she did, with the message: "To Nelson Mandela. From Carrie Mandela Nyden."
He hugged her.
There are many inspirational people in the world. Nelson Mandela is on the very top of that list.
Last summer my wife and I visited Capetown and Stellenbosch, where another of our daughters, Katharine Allende Nyden, was taking her last semester as an undergraduate in an exchange program with West Virginia University.
Perhaps the greatest moment on the trip was when I got to kiss one of the bars on the prison cell on Robben Island where Mandela spent so many years.
#1 Posted by Paul J. Nyden, CJR on Mon 11 Feb 2013 at 01:37 PM