Mamphela Ramphele - Judith Harlan

This South African activist's story introduces children to the injustices of apartheid and to real-life heroism. In 1977, when Mamphela Ramphele was banned to a remote corner of South Africa, the nation’s white apartheid government was inflicting some of the worst repression in its history. Yet she, like millions of black South Africans, continued protesting against the government’s system of racial segregation and injustice. Years earlier, when Mamphela had decided to study medicine, many people told her that her dreams were unrealistic: after all, she was black and a girl. Mamphela proved them wrong. As a doctor, educator, and leader in the fight against apartheid, she would face hardships and suffer the loss of loved ones, but she would also see the birth of new dreams as freedom was achieved at last in South Africa.