From the Collections: Mandela visits the Monitor
June 24, 1990, saw a quiet Sunday morning at The Christian Science Monitor in Boston…until the staff received a surprise. While outside on the Christian Science Plaza, editorial assistant Faye Bowers spotted Nelson Mandela exploring, along with his entourage of guards and visiting party. “Wait right there,” she remembers asking him.1
Mandela had recently been released from prison on February 11.2 Soon afterward he began a world fundraising tour, with trips to eight American cities over 12 days, including Boston. Saturday, June 23, had included a six-hour concert and rally with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the city’s Charles River Esplanade.3 The following morning he walked by the reflecting pool at The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church).4
Bowers ran to alert her Monitor colleagues, and editor Richard Cattani hurried to meet him.5 He joined the future South African president on a tour of The Mother Church; it was early, before the Sunday morning service was to begin. He also gave Mandela a copy of Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
Mandela spoke to Monitor staffers, shook their hands, and thanked them for their work. “That was a very special moment,” Cattani later reflected. “We had a sense of sharing a mission and purpose.”6.
That day Monitor photographer Peter Main captured dozens of pictures, both in color and black and white. These reside in The Mary Baker Eddy Library’s archives.
Mandela was a prominent figure in the anti-apartheid struggle for equal racial rights in South Africa. Thirty years earlier, in March 1960, white South African police had fired on thousands of black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, leaving 69 dead and over 200 injured.7 Many protests followed the Sharpeville massacre. The white South African government banned black South African groups, including the African National Congress (ANC), and harassed or imprisoned their leaders.8 According to Monitor contributor Robert E. White, “Sharpeville convinced the ANC leaders that armed struggle must accompany and reinforce peaceful protest. The ANC’s military arm, Spear of the Nation, began to carry out punishing attacks against targets such as police stations and power lines.”9
Mandela’s involvement in the ANC and Spear of the Nation led to his arrest in 1962.10 He was imprisoned for the next 27 years.
What prompted Mandela to make his unplanned visit? According to a Monitor newsletter, he said this: “I had to see the interior of the Church that has had such an impact on the people of black Africa.” During his conversation with the staff, he reportedly described the paper as “one of the more important voices covering events in South Africa” and “revealed that it was one of the publications he was able to read in prison.” He also “expressed gratitude for the fairness and honesty of the paper” and “said, in substance, that the Monitor gives the kind of coverage that uplifts the spirit, that provides people a view of the world that gives them reason for hope.”11 “The Christian Science Monitor was well known to me during my 27 years in prison,” he told them. “It continues to give me hope and confidence for the world’s future.”12
Following Mandela’s death in 2013, Bowers remembered his visit: “What a wonderful man—courageous, gracious, humble, who stood for his beliefs and made such a difference in the world. I am grateful to have gotten a close glimpse of him, grateful he came to Boston.”13 These photographs of his visit, along with the accounts of Monitor staff, provide an interesting window on a pivotal figure in twentieth-century history.
- “Monitor writers celebrate ‘unique’ moments,” The Christian Science Monitor, 26 March 2009, https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2009/0326/monitor-writers-celebrate-unique-moments.
- John Battersby, “Mandela Release: Watershed for South Africa,” The Christian Science Monitor, 12 February 1990, 1.
- John Kifner, “The Mandela Visit; Education Is Mighty Force, Boston Teen-Agers Are Told,” The New York Times, 24 June 1990, 21; Catherine Foster, “A Rousing Party for African Hero,” The Christian Science Monitor, 25 June 1990, 18.
- “Monitor writers celebrate ‘unique’ moments.”
- “Monitor writers celebrate ‘unique’ moments.”
- “Nelson Mandela Visits Home of the Monitor,” Monitor Month, July 1990, 1.
- Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger, South Africa The rise and fall of apartheid, 3rd ed, (New York: Routledge, 2016), 65.
- A. Levine and J.J. Stremalud, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, “Apartheid,” (Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier, 2001), 577.
- Robert E. White, “South Africa: adding bite to US bark,” The Christian Science Monitor, 30 December 1985, 12.
- “Nelson Mandela: CIA tip-off led to 1962 Durban arrest,” BBC Africa. 15 May 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36296551
- “Nelson Mandela Visits Home of the Monitor,” Monitor Month, July 1990, 1.
- John Yemma, “Nelson Mandela at the Monitor: A memorable visitor on a quiet Sunday,” The Christian Science Monitor, 6 December 2013.
- Alia Malek, “If you were there, you remember Mandela’s 1990 tour of the US,” Aljazeera America. 12 December 2013.