Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Like any other week night, I was watching National Geographic when the news of Nelson Mandela’s death came over the TV screen. Though I knew it was a matter of time, I was saddened to the point of tears … unusual for me. Recounting the death of Martin Luther King, I must say I felt no emotion at all. A lifelong resident of Gloucester County and being born into segregation, I was naïve to any disparity that existed in society. The only civil rights protest I had seen was on television.

But when I witnessed daily news broadcasts of unrest in South Africa and Rhodesia … the violent and bloodshed; every day I was drawn to the CBS television news hosted by Walter Cronkite. I’d come to understand why this rebellion had come into being. I kept hearing the word apartheid, not really knowing what it meant. But more than anything else, I kept hearing the name Nelson Mandela who I learned was a political prisoner accu...