Donald Woods: Cry Freedom

A person that I would like to bring up is Donald Woods. He was the editor of South Africa's Daily Dispatch news paper and he had a lot of impact on the turn out of Modern South Africa. What I find kind of interesting is that the reason that he even got involved with the civil rights movement of South Africa was because he published something in his news paper about Steve Biko that was incorrect. Steve Biko was another major contributor to helping black africans get their rights. But anyway, Woods said something negative about Biko and a woman that is friends with Biko came and confronted him about it. She said that the only way to actually know Biko and be able to publish truth about him is if you actually meet him. So that is what Donald Woods did and that is how me became involved with racial equality in South Africa. But Donald Wood went to great lengths to help the black africans. He got banned and basically was put on house arrest for five years. He could only talk with family members or one person that is not a family member at a time. And he could not leave his house without guards. How was he supposed to support his family if he doesn't have a job? The reason that he got banned was because he took photos of the dead Steve Biko so that he could publish them and show the world that the police killed him. The police were saying that Biko went on a hunger strike in jail and that is how he died but the photos proved otherwise. But another thing that he did was escape South Africa so that he could publish a book about what really happened to Biko and what was happening in South Africa. The Apartheid and South Africa wasn't getting very much international attention and this book helped to bring awareness. I can't imagine leaving my house and country to go to England just to publish  a book. It just shows that Donald Woods was a very dedicated person and had a very good sense of what is right and what is wrong.