Paul Martin Kingery

Before the Peace Paul Martin Kingery

On May 1, 1977, twenty-year-old American Paul Kingery arrived in apartheid era South Africa as a missionary. What he saw shocked him, and changed him into an activist for oppressed groups. He knew then that he was seeing only part of the story of apartheid, at a time when the government limited free speech and action. His own actions to resist the visible aspects of apartheid that he witnessed were the humble first attempts of a youth, but they set his life on a course as a change agent promoting international peace. By the time he turned 60, history had provided him with details of the rest of the story, allowing him to weave that into his experience as a youth. Start contrasts thus came into sharper focus between the lives of whites and blacks living in South Africa in that era. The causal chain of separation, bias, discrimination, violence, revolution, and its aftermath is a warning for all places and eras.