Desmond Tutu

1931 – 2021

Activism & Social Change

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first Black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from Black theology with African theology.

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Contemporaries

Their World

Global Events

1933 Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany

1936 Spanish Civil War begins

1939 World War II begins

1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor; US enters WWII

1944 D-Day: Allied invasion of Normandy

1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; WWII ends

1945 United Nations founded

1947 India and Pakistan gain independence

1948 State of Israel established

1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted

1949 People's Republic of China proclaimed

1950 Korean War begins

1953 Watson and Crick discover DNA structure

1955 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1957 Sputnik launched; Space Age begins

1959 Cuban Revolution; Castro takes power

1961 Berlin Wall constructed

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

1963 Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

1964 Civil Rights Act signed in the United States

1969 Apollo 11: first humans walk on the Moon

1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and independence

1973 1973 oil crisis

1975 Fall of Saigon; Vietnam War ends

1979 Iranian Revolution

1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

1989 Tiananmen Square protests

1990 Nelson Mandela released from prison

1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union

1994 Rwandan genocide

1994 End of apartheid; South Africa holds first free elections

1997 Dolly the Sheep cloned

1998 Good Friday Agreement signed in Northern Ireland

2001 September 11 attacks

2003 Human Genome Project completed

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

2008 Global financial crisis

2010 Arab Spring begins

2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster

2015 Paris Agreement on climate change adopted

2016 United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union

2020 COVID-19 pandemic declared

In Their Field

1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted

1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott begins

1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivers 'I Have a Dream' speech

1964 Civil Rights Act signed into US law

1969 Stonewall riots spark LGBTQ rights movement

1973 American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee

1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines

1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China

1990 Nelson Mandela released; apartheid dismantled

2011 Arab Spring uprisings spread across Middle East

2017 #MeToo movement gains global momentum

2018 Greta Thunberg begins school strikes for climate