Bedtime Biography: Long Walk to Freedom

Bedtime Biographies are best when listened to. Check out the audio version to get the full experience!

Are you willing to give up everything to fight injustice – are you willing to give up your freedom, your family, your future? Nelson Mandela would face this question time and time again. And throughout the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, his answer was always “yes.” He dedicated his life to fighting apartheid and endured decades of public persecution, living underground, and thirty long years of imprisonment.

When he walked out of prison on February 11, 1990, the world watched in awe as the system he’d fought all his life started to crumble. Though apartheid wasn’t broken by his efforts alone, his imprisonment had come to symbolize the injustice of this regime – and it didn’t survive long once he was free. In 1991, the legal structures that supported apartheid were repealed, and 3-years later the country held it’s first free elections. All South Africans, both Black and white, were finally allowed to vote. In that same year, at the age of seventy-five, Nelson Mandela became president of a new, hopeful, and free nation. 

Where did he find the strength to fight for as long and as hard as he did? What drove the twentieth century’s most famous freedom fighter? In this Bedtime Biography, we’ll take a reflective journey through his long walk to freedom.