Nelson Mandela: South Africa's Founding Father: How a freedom fighter and outlaw became president.

• Position: Biography

In May 1994, Nelson Mandela, once South Africa's most famous political prisoner, became the country's first democratically elected president.

Mandela was born in 1918 in the village of Mvezo, where his father was a tribal chief. In 1941, Mandela moved to Soweto, a huge black slum on the outskirts of Johannesburg. There he met Walter Sisulu, the local leader of the African National Congress (A.N.C.), a group that opposed apartheid.

Sisulu arranged for Mandela to study law, and in 1949 Mandela became one of the A.N.C.'s leaders. Six years later, the organization issued a declaration of principles that called for racial equality. The government saw it as treason and arrested Mandela and other A.N.C. leaders.

They were acquitted, but the trial put Mandela at the top of the government's enemies list. In 1961, Mandela became head of the A.N.C.'s new military wing, and he was arrested the next year. In 1964, he was convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state and sentenced to life in prison.

But as international condemnation of apartheid grew, Mandela became a symbol of South African oppression. By the mid-1980s, many democracies and international companies refused to do business with South Africa until it ended apartheid. Under pressure from these sanctions, the white government began to meet secretly with...