As a schoolboy in 1972, Don Mullan was a witness to Northern Ireland’s infamous “Bloody Sunday” tragedy in which 14 unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot to death by British soldiers. A hasty review of the incident by the British government concluded that the soldiers only fired after being fired upon.

It was more than two decades later when Mullan’s own investigation and interviews with those there provided the basis for the best-selling 1997 book “Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth.” The book led the British government to re-open its investigation and ultimately to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s historic apology in June 2010 in which he described the events of Bloody Sunday as “unjustified and unjustifiable.”

Mullan, who received an honorary doctorate degree from DePaul University’s School for New Learning (SNL) on June 11, spoke to a gathering at DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus about how his struggle for justice in Ireland was influenced by other global struggles for justice, including the civil rights movement in the United States. Mullan, who has also authored several other books and co-produced a film based on “Bloody Sunday,” accomplished his impressive body of work after being diagnosed in his 30s with dyslexia.

“What made Bloody Sunday worse was the cover-up,” Mullan told his audience. “Within days of the incident, the lies had begun.” The British government was able to credibly maintain its whitewashed version of the Bloody Sunday events for decades because of “the power of the sound bite,” Mullan noted.  “It took us 40 years to catch up.”

But Mullan also related stories on the British soldiers who policed Northern Ireland and how it was clear that many of them did not want to be a part of it.  Mullan said it was through observing the work of other civil rights leaders around the world that he learned a key to fighting for justice is first to become “an expert in the art of finding the good in your enemy.” He credited the civil rights struggles in the U.S. as a key inspiration for Catholics in Northern Ireland.  “We owe a deep debt of gratitude to the black people of the United States …We saw ourselves as part of the global struggle” for civil rights.

In her introduction of Mullan, SNL Dean Marisa Alicea noted that many of those on the scene of the “Bloody Sunday” incident “turned to violence as a result” and joined the Irish Republican Army, “but Don did not.”

Mullan’s most recent work is the editing of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave,” which details the life and work of the famed abolitionist and was released to coincide with President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Ireland. Mullan also has been instrumental in getting a statue erected in Ireland commemorating Douglass, who spent months on the lecture circuit in Ireland in 1845 as the nation was plunging into the potato famine.