Tonight, the issues and the controversy,

a thousand people have gathered at the City College of New York

for a town meeting with Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela.

In June of 1990, Nelson Mandela visited the United States. He had only recently been released from prison, where he'd spent the better part of 30 years

for resistance to the government of apartheid South Africa, a government and a system which

had not yet fallen at the time of this visit. During his tour of the United States, Mandela sat

down with ABC News for a town hall discussion at the Harlem campus of the City College of New

York, with Spike Lee, Harry Belafonte, and Stevie

Van Zandt looking on from the crowd.

In our time, Mandela is known and remembered as a celebrated, almost a political figure,

somebody on the right side of history.

But his appearance at City College, again, before apartheid had yet fallen,

it quickly turned combative, sometimes downright hostile.

Some people questioned him warily over whether he aimed to turn South Africa into a socialist

state.

Some condemned his demand to sanction the South African government as dogmatic and hard line.

ABC even teleconed in an angry Afrikaner, who warned Mandela against nationalizing white people's assets

and implementing communistic policies.

One question came from Ken Adelman, a former U.S. ambassador and high-level advisor during the Reagan

administration, and a future member of the Project for the New American Century, an advocate for the

Iraq War.

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