Nelson Mandela was born in a small South African village and trained as a lawyer. As a young man he became a leader in the African National Congress, fighting against apartheid - the laws that kept Black South Africans poor, separated, and without the right to vote.
In 1962 he was arrested for plotting against the government and sentenced to life in prison. He spent 18 of those years on Robben Island, breaking rocks in a lime quarry. He could only see his family for a few minutes a year. But he kept reading, studying, and quietly leading even from inside his cell.
The whole world demanded his release, and in 1990 the South African government finally gave in. He walked out of prison at age 71, helped guide his country away from civil war, and in 1994 became South Africa’s first Black president in its first fully democratic election. He won the Nobel Peace Prize a year before.
