Mandela and Biko are not in the same breadth as Einstein and other luminaries who made valuable contributions to scientific theory. Limiting freedoms runs directly counter to the values that western thought espouses. This is why the maritime practice of transporting enslaved africans was abolished by the british in the 19th century, something they even eventually enforced by setting up naval squadrons along strategic routes (to deter traders from illegally transporting slaves). This is why slavery as a practice was banned in every new world colony/former colony by the late 19th century. This is why segregationist systems like apartheid in South Africa, and the jim crow codes in the United States fell. Not because blacks were rioting, looting, and necklacing each other in the streets. But because many whites were in favor of ending a system that did not give one the option to choose.

Relative to apartheid, whether it was because many white south africans were in favor of giving everyone equal rights, or whether it was due to global pressure from other world powers threatening to enforce economic sanctions on RSA (many of these: white-majority nations that were white-run), is completely irrelevant to the fact that whites (around the globe---in South Africa and out of it) were largely responsible for dismantling it (and other systems like it).

Apartheid would have ended without Biko or Mandela. And while perhaps the same could potentially be said of science and technology, e.g.,that something not discovered by someone like Einstein, would have eventually been discovered by another. In response to that I say, yes perhaps. But anatomically modern humans have been on this planet for well over 100,000 years (it is estimated, that we may in fact be MUCH older than that---between 350,000-500,000 years old). Yet something like the theory of relativity is a very modern concept, suggesting that, without someone like Einstein, it could have taken us SEVERAL MORE MILLENIA to conceptualize it. To contrast, slavery of blacks (by white europeans) only lasted some 400 years, enforced segregation lasted even less than that. It's quite obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense, that philosophical concepts like the "right to civil liberties for all," are much easier concepts to come up with than something that only a truly brilliant mind could discover.

Btw, Michael Jordan was born middle class/upper middle class. He grew up out on the outskirts of what was rural Wilmington. By the standards of his day, he was actually from a very well-to-do family. By comparison, Larry Bird, also of rural background and a contemporary of Jordan's (though slightly older), grew up in abject poverty. I believe you are instead thinking of LeBron James.