Rosa Parks, whose refusal to yield her bus seat to a white ignited America's civil rights movement nearly 30 years ago, protested South Africa's white minority rule in Washington where six demonstrators were arrested. Another 14 people were arrested in New York.
Those arrested Monday in anti-apartheid rallies in both cities included two congressmen, an anti-Vietnam War activist and an actor.
In Oslo, Norway, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu accepted the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize and said the prize meant 'a new hope has been kindled in the breasts of the millions who are voiceless, oppressed, dispossessed, tortured by the powerful tyrants.'
Authorities in Johannesburg, South Africa, said they canceled detention orders against 14 black and Indian political leaders, but dissident leaders charged six were immediately rearrested on treason charges.
Those arrested in Washington were three Jewish leaders, including actor Theodore Bikel, 60, Georgetown, Conn., who is also vice president of the American Jewish Congress; Theodore Mann, 56, Philadelphia, president of the organization; and Henry Siegman, 53, New York, the group's executive director.
Also arrested were Rep. Mickey Leland, D-Texas; James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality; and Bishop Adam DeBaugh, a Washington religious leader.
The 14 arrested in New York included Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y., and the Rev. William Sloan Coffin, a major figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Hundreds of people since Nov. 21 have rallied outside the Washington embassy against South Africa's policy of racial separation, generating other demonstrations across the nation that have resulted in scores of arrests.
'Jewish tradition and historical experience require that we speak out against all forms of injustice,' said a joint statement by the AJC and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Washington.
Leland said 'black people have never had the right to be treated as human beings' in South Africa.
'I plan not to give up until all are free ... Wherever there is no peace and goodwill and love for all mankind,' Parks, 71, said in Washington. She was not arrested.
Owens and Coffin were among 14 demonstrators arrested at the start of the second week of protests at the South African Consulate in New York. Rallies outside the consulate were expected to continue for at least two days, a spokeswoman for the protest said.
Parks was a 43-year-old seamstress in 1955 when she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Ala., for a 15-minute ride home and was later fined $5 for refusing to give up her seat to a white patron.
The incident sparked a black boycott and is generally considered the beginning of the American civil rights movement.
