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Showing posts from March, 2007

MLK, Luthuli and Nonviolent Resistance

Introduction An undeniable link connected Martin Luther King and Albert Luthuli, two socially and politically active black leaders on separate continents in the twentieth century. The former, American, and the latter, South African, lived under the shadow of white supremacy in their nations. Both were members of economically and politically disadvantaged populations and saw solutions for the trials of their people in social and economic justice. For the two, the liberation of their people lay in Christian ethic and in the employment of non-violent methods of resistance. They were respectively committed to ending the racially divisive systems of segregation (in the American South) and apartheid (in South Africa), and replacing these with communities where racial and ethnic equality and tolerance prevailed. At the same time, the two sprang from the loins of unique cultures with particular socioeconomic and political concerns, separated by an ocean. Their responses to the s