Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr.

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Section A
Two significant social and political changes that occurred as the result of Nelson Mandela’s actions are abandoning peaceful protest in favor of violence and the ending of apartheid (classification and segregation based on race). Mandela was born in 1918, began his life as part of a tribal clan – the Thembu people. Mandela’s father was a respected counselor to the Thembu royal family. Mandela’s father died in 1927 when Mandela was just nine years old and was then raised by the Thembu chief while attending local boarding schools. Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943 at the age of 25 and began his long journey to end white dominance and make South Africa a democratic state with equal rights for both white and black South Africans ("Frontline: Mandela," n.d.).
In 1944 Mandela and his associates form the ANC Youth League to organize mass support for the ANC. New apartheid policies were implemented by The National Party in 1948 and the following year the “ANC Youth League drafts a Program of Action calling for mass strikes, boycotts, protests, and passive resistance” against the apartheid policies ("Frontline: Mandela," n.d.). Mandela became the president of the ANC Youth League in 1951 and the following year more than 8,500 people take part in a nonviolent mass resistance. After his arrest later that year (1952) his sentence was suspended, he was banned, and was ordered to resign the ANC. In 1956 Mandela and over 150 others were tried for high treason. In 1960 anti-apartheid protesters gathered to challenge laws of segregation and after police open fire on the crowd, 69 people were killed, most with bullet wounds in their backs. Mandela fled South Africa and traveled around Africa and Euro...

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 but his legacy lives on with the legislation passed in 1964 and 1965 due to his organized non-violent resistance of racial segregation in the United States and ultimately led to the first African-American president who began his first term in 2009 ("King," 2012).

References
About Dr. King. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king
Nelson Mandela. (2009). In Biography Reference Bank (). Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com.wguproxy.egloballibrary.com/ehost/detail?sid=0cf67e60-243b-476d-9ff4-7650264d1504%40sessionmgr12&vid=1&hid=4&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=brb&AN=203044194
Nelson Mandela. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/nelson-mandela
The long walk of Nelson Mandela. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/

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