Nelson Mandela Museum, Mthatha, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, Michigan

In early 2007, Gregory Reed, the personal lawyer of the late Mrs. Rosa Parks, announced a planned gift to the Michigan State University Museum of a collection of letters written by children to Mrs. Parks and included in Mr. Reed's and Mrs. Parks' award-winning book Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today's Youth. A similar collection of letters to another civil rights hero, former South African President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela, exists at a young museum in rural South Africa, the Nelson Mandela Museum in Eastern Cape Province. Staff from these two museums had become acquainted while participating in a South African National Cultural Heritage (SANCH) training program and were interested in collaborating. The donation of the Rosa Parks letters to Michigan State University (MSU) provided the perfect opportunity. It seemed logical that these two parallel collections of children's responses to a hero in each country could be used together to emphasize the universality of the struggles for non-racialism, equity and justice and the role of people of conscience in this universal struggle.

With MCCA funding, the MSU Museum and the Nelson Mandela Museum will use the collections of letters written to these two champions of human rights to develop a portable touring exhibition targeted at school-age children entitled Dear Mr. Mandela, Dear Mrs. Parks: Children’s Letters, Global Lessons. The exhibit will debut in the US and in South Africa during 2008, the year of Mr. Mandela’s 90th birthday. Local schoolchildren will be encouraged to write new letters to their own heroes who embody the values of Mr. Mandela and Ms. Parks. These letters will be posted on the virtual version of the exhibition and added to the exhibition at each venue. Additionally, a CD-ROM of traditional and new music from each nation will be commissioned to accompany the exhibition.

Through this participatory project teachers in both nations will have a rare chance to work with primary materials in museum collections to build learning experiences. Students in both nations will gain increased awareness of the contributions of these two champions of human rights, be able to identify leaders in contemporary society who embody their values, and understand important parallels between US and South African history and experience.