Ridenhour later became an award-winning investigative journalist.
In 1994 at Tulane
University explained his decision to begin talking to soldiers and taking notes
about what happened at My
Lai.
"It's hard for me to really describe exactly what my reaction was, because it's difficult to, the language doesn't quite, at least I haven't found a way to capture it, but it was I guess you would say, an epiphany. It was an instantaneous recognition and collateral determination that this was something too horrible, almost, to comprehend and that I wasn't gonna be a part of it. Just simply having the knowledge, I felt, made me complicit, unless I
acted on it."
In his acceptance speech for the Reidenhour Courage Prize, Kalven spoke of unfinished work. "Issues of police accountability are embedded in the great unfinished business of American life, the blood knot of race. If reform is to run true, we must construct a path forward akin to South Africa emerging from apartheid that leads over time to a different kind of
society."
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission encouraged full disclosure, holding both white and black accountable for violence in exchange for amnesty. It worked, due to what South Africans call Ubuntu --a belief that the essence of being human appears in a delicate network of interdependence.
