>>It is not my intention to besmirch his memory but to point out that ever person, leader or layman, has many sides and usually a diverse and possibly controversial history.
>
>He was a complicated man. There is no question he did great things and was up against a terrible form of government that had to go.
>
>I have mixed feelings about some of his history - he advocated bombing buses that carried white school children and even advocated that AFTER his release. My initial reaction is to compare him to MLK....but then again, he was dealing with a level of physical force even worse than what we had in this country. So the bottom line is that he was a complicated man.

I'd known about apartheid for most of my life, but I didn't really get it until I read this book: http://www.amazon.com/When-She-Was-White-Divided/dp/0786868988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386421550&sr=8-1&keywords=when+she+was+white

"When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race"