Zionism 1897

Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity. While some critics call Zionism an aggressive and discriminatory ideology, the Zionist movement has successfully established a Jewish homeland in the nation of Israel.

What is Zionism?

Simply put, Zionism is a movement to recreate a Jewish presence in Israel. The name comes from the word “Zion,” which is a Hebrew term that refers to Jerusalem.

Throughout history, Jews have considered certain areas in Israel sacred—as do Christians and Muslims. The Torah, the Jewish religious text, depicts stories of ancient prophets who were instructed by their God to return to this homeland.

While the fundamental philosophies of the Zionist movement have existed for hundreds of years, modern Zionism formally took root in the late 19th century. Around that time, Jews throughout the world faced growing anti-Semitism.

Some historians believe that an increasingly tense atmosphere between Jews and Europeans may have triggered the Zionism movement. In one 1894 incident, a Jewish officer in the French army named Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused and convicted of treason. This event, which became known as the “Dreyfus Affair,” sparked outrage among Jewish people and many others.

Persecuted Jews who were struggling to salvage their identity began promoting the idea of returning to their homeland and restoring a Jewish culture there.

Theodor Herzl

Modern Zionism was officially established as a political organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897. A Jewish journalist and political activist from Austria, Herzl believed that the Jewish population couldn’t survive if it didn’t have a nation of its own.

After the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), a pamphlet that called for political recognition of a Jewish homeland in the area then known as Palestine.

In 1897, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress, which met in Basel, Switzerland. He also formed and became the first president of the World Zionist Organization.

Although Herzl died in 1904—years before Israel was officially declared a state—he’s often considered the father of modern Zionism.

The Balfour Declaration

In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter to Baron Rothschild, a wealthy and prominent leader in the British Jewish community.

In the brief correspondence, Balfour expressed the British government’s support for the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine. This letter was published in the press one week later and eventually became known as the “Balfour Declaration.”

The text was included in the Mandate for Palestine—a document issued by the League of Nations in 1923 that gave Great Britain the responsibility of establishing a Jewish national homeland in British-controlled Palestine.

Two well-known Zionists, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, played important roles in obtaining the Balfour Declaration.

Zionism and World War II

Many Jews living in Russia and Europe suffered horrific persecution and death during Russian pogroms and under Nazi rule. Most historians estimate that about 6 million Jews were killed in Europe during the Holocaust.

In the years before and during World War II, thousands of European Jews fled to Palestine or other regions to escape hostility. After the Holocaust ended, Zionist leaders actively promoted the idea of an independent Jewish nation.

With the end of Great Britain’s mandate in Palestine and the British army’s withdrawal, Israel was officially declared an independent state on May 14, 1948.

Jewish Resettlement in Israel

The rise of Zionism led to massive Jewish immigration into Israel. About 35,000 Jews relocated to the area between 1882 and 1903. Another 40,000 made their way to the homeland between 1904 and 1914.

Most Jews—about 57 percent of them—lived in Europe in 1939. However, by the end of World War II, only about 35 percent of the Jewish population still resided in European countries.

In 1949, more than 249,000 Jewish settlers moved to Israel. This was the largest number of immigrants to arrive in a single year.

The Jewish population in Israel increased from about 500,000 in 1945 to 5.6 million in 2010. Today, around 43 percent of the world’s Jews live in Israel.

The Current State of Zionism

Since it started more than 120 years ago, Zionism has evolved, and different ideologies—political, religious and cultural—within the Zionist movement have emerged.

Many self-proclaimed Zionists disagree with each other about fundamental principles. Some followers of Zionism are devoutly religious while others are more secular.

“Zionist lefts” typically want a less-religious government and support giving up some Israeli-controlled land in exchange for peace with Arab nations. “Zionist rights” defend their rights to land and prefer a government based strongly on Jewish religious traditions.

Advocates of the Zionist movement see it as an important effort to offer refuge to persecuted minorities and reestablish settlements in Israel. Critics, however, say it’s an extreme ideology that discriminates against non-Jews.

For example, under Israel’s 1950 Law of Return, Jews born anywhere in the world have the right to become an Israeli citizen, while other people aren’t granted this privilege.

Arabs and Palestinians living in and around Israel typically oppose Zionism. Many international Jews also disapprove of the movement because they don’t believe a national homeland is essential to their religion.

While this controversial movement continues to face criticism and challenges, there’s no denying that Zionism has successfully bolstered the Jewish population in Israel.

State of Israel proclaimed 1948

On May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years. Ben-Gurion became Israel’s first premier.

In the distance, the rumble of guns could be heard from fighting that broke out between Jews and Arabs immediately following the British army withdrawal earlier that day. Egypt launched an air assault against Israel that evening. Despite a blackout in Tel Aviv—and the expected Arab invasion—Jews joyously celebrated the birth of their new nation, especially after word was received that the United States had recognized the Jewish state. At midnight, the State of Israel officially came into being upon termination of the British mandate in Palestine.

Modern Israel has its origins in the Zionism movement, established in the late 19th century by Jews in the Russian Empire who called for the establishment of a territorial Jewish state after enduring persecution. In 1896, Jewish-Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl published an influential political pamphlet called The Jewish State, which argued that the establishment of a Jewish state was the only way of protecting Jews from anti-Semitism. Herzl became the leader of Zionism, convening the first Zionist Congress in Switzerland in 1897. Ottoman-controlled Palestine, the original home of the Jews, was chosen as the most desirable location for a Jewish state, and Herzl unsuccessfully petitioned the Ottoman government for a charter.

After the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, growing numbers of Eastern European and Russian Jews began to immigrate to Palestine, joining the few thousand Jews who had arrived earlier. The Jewish settlers insisted on the use of Hebrew as their spoken language. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Britain took over Palestine. In 1917, Britain issued the “Balfour Declaration,” which declared its intent to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Although protested by the Arab states, the Balfour Declaration was included in the British mandate over Palestine, which was authorized by the League of Nations in 1922. Because of Arab opposition to the establishment of any Jewish state in Palestine, British rule continued throughout the 1920s and ’30s.

Beginning in 1929, Arabs and Jews openly fought in Palestine, and Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration as a means of appeasing the Arabs. As a result of the Holocaust in Europe, many Jews illegally entered Palestine during World War II. Jewish groups employed terrorism against British forces in Palestine, which they thought had betrayed the Zionist cause. At the end of World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a practical solution, referred the problem to the United Nations, which in November 1947 voted to partition Palestine.

The Jews were to possess more than half of Palestine, although they made up less than half of Palestine’s population. The Palestinian Arabs, aided by volunteers from other countries, fought the Zionist forces, but by May 14, 1948, the Jews had secured full control of their U.N.-allocated share of Palestine and also some Arab territory. On May 14, Britain withdrew with the expiration of its mandate, and the State of Israel was proclaimed. The next day, forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded.

The Israelis, though less well equipped, managed to fight off the Arabs and then seize key territory, such as Galilee, the Palestinian coast, and a strip of territory connecting the coastal region to the western section of Jerusalem. In 1949, U.N.-brokered cease-fires left the State of Israel in permanent control of this conquered territory. The departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel during the war left the country with a substantial Jewish majority.

During the third Arab-Israeli conflict—the Six-Day War of 1967—Israel again greatly increased its borders, capturing from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a historic peace agreement in which Israel returned the Sinai in exchange for Egyptian recognition and peace. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed a major peace accord in 1993, which envisioned the gradual implementation of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process moved slowly, however, and in 2000 major fighting between Israelis and Palestinians resumed in Israel and the occupied territories.

Nixon’s Invades Cambodia, 1970

How Nixon’s Invasion of Cambodia Triggered a Check on Presidential Power

Following months of secret U.S. bombings on Communist bases, American ground troops were deployed to northern Cambodia on April 28, 1970.

When President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. ground troops to invade Cambodia on April 28, 1970, he waited two days to announce on national television the Cambodian incursion had begun. With resentment already building in the country over the conflict in Vietnam, the incursion felt like a final straw.

The news unleashed waves of criticism from many who felt the president had abused his powers by side-stepping Congress. By November 1973, the criticism had culminated in the passage of the War Powers Act. Passed over Nixon’s veto, it limited the scope of the Commander-in-Chief’s ability to declare war without congressional approval.

While the act was an unusual challenge, presidents since have exploited loopholes in the War Powers Resolution, raising questions about executive power, especially during states of emergency.

READ MORE: The US and Congress Have Long Clashed Over War Powers

Why Did the U.S. Invade Cambodia?

LISTEN: Nixon Orders Invasion of Cambodia

Cambodia was officially a neutral country in the Vietnam War, though North Vietnamese troops moved supplies and arms through the northern part of the country, which was part of the Ho Chi Minh trail that stretched from Vietnam to neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

In March 1969, Nixon began approving secret bombings of suspected communist base camps and supply zones in Cambodia as part of “Operation Menu.” The New York Times revealed the operation to the public on May 9, 1969, prompting international protest. Cambodia wasn’t the first neutral country to be targeted by the United States during the Vietnam War—the United States began secretly bombing Laos in 1964, and would eventually leave it the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world.

The Cambodian Incursion (April-June, 1970)

Nixon approved the use of American ground forces in Cambodia to fight alongside South Vietnamese troops attacking communist bases there on April 28, 1972. Recent political developments within Cambodia worked in Nixon’s favor. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had led the country since its independence from France in 1954, was voted out of power by the Cambodian National Assembly on March 18, 1970. Pro-U.S. Prime Minister Lon Nol invoked emergency powers and replaced the prince as head of state in what became known as The Cambodian Coup of 1970.

On May 8, 1970, Nixon held a press conference to defend the invasion of Cambodia. He argued that it bought six to eight months of training time for South Vietnamese forces, thereby shortening the war for Americans and saving American lives. He promised to withdraw 150,000 American soldiers by the following spring. But Vietnamization was not going well, and the American public was fed up with the war in Vietnam. The invasion of Cambodia proved to be a tipping point.

Public Reaction to the U.S. Invasion of Cambodia

Daily News front page on May 1, 1970 showing demonstrators on campus of Ohio State University in Columbus standing their ground against national guardsmen.

Antiwar protests intensified across the country, particularly on college campuses. One hundred thousand people marched on Washington in protest. Approximately 400 schools had strikes while more than 200 closed completely. On May 4, 1970, the protests turned violent: National Guardsmen fired on anti-war demonstrators at Ohio’s Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine. Ten days later, two students were killed at Jackson State University. The Kent State Shooting and the shooting at Jackson galvanized the country against the Cambodian incursion.

In Cambodia, the American bombing and invasion were weaponized as a recruiting tool by the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian Communist guerrillas who would later come to power in a brutal regime that would kill over two million people.

Congressional Reaction to the Invasion of Cambodia

Article 8, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution grants the power to declare war to the legislative branch of the U.S. government—a purposeful departure from the British tradition of granting war-making powers to the king.

But the term “declare” has been open to interpretation for centuries. In practice, American presidents have been going to war without congressional approval for centuries. James Polk’s 1846 occupation of Texas helped kick off the Mexican-American War; Abraham Lincoln even authorized early military action in the Civil War without first seeking congressional approval.

The Cold War era saw new breaches in war-making protocol from the executive branch. “Congress had become increasingly active in the years prior to the passage of the War Powers Act,” says Fredrik Logevall, Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. President Harry Truman did not seek Congressional approval before sending American troops to Korea, and when it came to the quickly-escalating Vietnam War, Congress was determined to play a larger role.

In late 1969, the Senate approved—by an historic vote of 78 to 11—the Cooper-Church Amendment named after Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-Kentucky) and Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), prohibiting U.S. combat troops or advisers from operating in Laos or Thailand. “This was really the first time since U.S. involvement in Vietnam began that Congress had found the votes to limit the president’s ability to wage war in Southeast Asia,” Logevall says.

In June 1970, Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in a vote of 81-10, reasserting their control over the president’s ability to make war. That December, Congress passed an amended version of the Cooper-Church Amendment. While neither action put an end to the bombing campaigns in Laos or Cambodia, they set a strong precedent for congress to reign in the president.

In June, 1971, Nixon received another blow to his war-making powers: The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers revealing that the U.S. government had secretly increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

War Powers Resolution of 1973

Men of the U.S. First Cavalry Division in a jungle area 10 miles from the Cambodian border during a six-hour fight on March 30, 1970, shortly before President Nixon gave his approval for U.S. troops to cross over into Cambodia.

Toshio Sakai/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The War Powers Resolution, also known as the War Powers Act, is a congressional resolution that limits the U.S. president’s ability to initiate or mount military actions abroad without the express approval of Congress. It passed in November of 1973 over Nixon’s veto and requires the president, as Commander-in-Chief, to notify Congress whenever armed forces are deployed and imposes a limit of 60 days on any engagements initiated without congressional approval. While it does not outright forbid presidents from taking military action, it does create some sense of accountability.

The War Powers Act allows the president to declare war under three circumstances: (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces. Since Nixon resigned less than a year after its passage in the wake of the Watergate scandal, it was up to future presidents to test its limits.

Did the War Powers Act Work?

“Since it was passed, the War Powers Act has been honored in the breach—that is, presidents have reported to Congress what they intend to do anyway and have mostly ignored the War Powers Act when it would have inconvenienced their plans,” says Andrew Preston, professor of American History at Cambridge University and co-author with Logevall of Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977.

“Indeed, presidents have almost dared Congress to do something about the lack of respect they’ve shown to the War Powers Act. If Congress’s intention with the War Powers Resolution was to reduce American military intervention and to restore the balance between executive and congressional war powers, then it can only be seen as a failure,” Preston says.

Yet in 2008, a bipartisan movement to repeal the War Powers Act did not succeed. “In the power of the purse, Congress already has the power it needs to regulate presidential war plans,” says Logevall. “Congress has simply failed to use that power.”

Oscar Wilde’s Trial Ruined His Life 1895

How Oscar Wilde’s Libel Trial Backfired and Ruined His Life

The playwright was the toast of London in early 1895—until he decided to sue his lover’s father.

With their heady brew of famous names, dirty secrets and Victorian moral outrage, it’s no wonder the court trials involving renowned playwright Oscar Wilde enthralled the general public during the final decade of the 19th century.

Wilde, an Anglo-Irish playwright and bon vivant, was known for his acerbic wit and celebrated works, including Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. In early 1895, the husband and father of two was at the height of his fame and success; his play, Earnest, had debuted to great acclaim in February that year, making him the toast of London.

By the end of May, Wilde’s life would be turned upside down. Convicted of gross indecency, he was sentenced to two years of hard labor in jail. Three years following his release from prison, he would die, impoverished, in France.

Oscar Wilde with his lover Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, known as a spoilt dandy. Photo: Getty Images

His lover’s father was disgusted by the liaison

Wilde (1854–1900) met Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas in the summer of 1891 and the two soon became lovers. It was an affair of the heart that would span years, and continents, and would ultimately lead to Wilde’s very public downfall. Douglas, the third son of the Marquess of Queensberry, was 16 years Wilde’s junior. Reportedly a dissolute, extravagant dandy, he was practically inseparable from Wilde until the latter’s arrest four years later.

It was Douglas’s father’s reaction to the whole affair that prompted the fateful court proceedings. Queensberry (John Sholto Douglas) was a Scottish nobleman best known for promoting rules for amateur boxing, the “Queensberry Rules.” By early 1894, Queensberry was certain the flamboyant Wilde was a homosexual and demanded his son cut off contact with the writer. (The Victorian era was especially known for its culture of sexual repression, and carnal activity between men was a criminal offense in the United Kingdom until the late 1960s.)

“Your intimacy with this man Wilde must either cease or I will disown you and stop all money supplies,” Queensberry wrote to his son in April of 1894. Douglas ignored his father’s growing condemnation of Wilde, incensing Queensberry and fueling his hostility toward his son’s alleged lover.

First, Queensberry attempted to disrupt the debut of The Importance of Being Earnest, where he planned to present the playwright with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and inform theatergoers of Wilde’s alleged scandalous lifestyle. Thwarted, he then visited London’s Albemarle Club, of which Wilde and his wife, Constance, were members.

Queensberry left a card with the porter of the club, asking that it be handed to Wilde. Written on the card was, “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite [sic].” Affronted and embarrassed, Wilde wrote to Douglas, saying he believed there was nothing left to do but criminally prosecute Queensberry for libel. “My whole life seems ruined by this man. The tower of ivory is assailed by the foul thing,” Wilde wrote.

Wilde went on the offensive

During preparations for his case against Queensberry, Wilde’s lawyers asked him directly whether there was any truth to the allegations of homosexuality. According to Wilde, the allegations were “absolutely false and groundless.” Ahead of the April 1895 trial date, Wilde and Douglas journeyed together to the south of France.

Wilde’s first trial (Wilde v. Queensberry) began April 3 at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly known as Old Bailey. Attempting to get ahead of Queensberry’s accusations, Wilde’s attorney Sir Edward Clarke, included the reading of one of the playwright’s letters to Douglas that could suggest a homosexual relationship between the correspondents. While Clarke admitted the wording may seem “extravagant,” he reminded the court that Wilde was a poet, and the letter should be read as “the expression of true poetic feeling, and with no relation whatever to the hateful and repulsive suggestions put to it in the plea in this case,” according to trial transcripts.

Wilde soon took the stand, telling the court of the harassment he had endured from Queensberry. Asked publicly if any of the allegations were true, Wilde replied: “There is no truth whatsoever in any of the allegations, no truth whatsoever.”

Cross-examined by Queensberry’s attorney Edward Carson, Wilde was called upon to defend his published works on the basis they contained immoral themes, or had homosexual overtones. He was then questioned about past relationships he had had with young men.

The ever-eloquent Wilde displayed a dexterous command of the English language—and a penchant for witticisms that would eventually incriminate him in court. On the second day, Wilde was questioned about a 16-year-old male acquaintance named Walter Grainger and whether or not he had kissed the teen. “Oh, dear no. He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was, unfortunately extremely ugly. I pitied him for it,” Wilde replied.

Pressing Wilde over his response, Carson continued to ask if that was the sole reason he didn’t kiss the boy, simply because he was ugly. “Why, why, why did you add that?” Carson demanded. Wilde’s reply? “You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously.”

The same afternoon, the prosecution closed its arguments without calling Douglas to testify as planned. It was not looking good for Wilde.

Oscar Wilde Photo By Napoleon Sarony via Wikimedia Commons

One trial beget another

In defense of Queensberry, Carson announced in his opening speech that he intended to call to testify a number of young men with whom Wilde had had sexual encounters. Such accusations were more than just words in 1895, when it was a crime in England for any person to commit “gross indecency,” as the law had been interpreted to criminalize any type of sexual activity between members of the same sex. That evening, fearful of where the trial could lead, Clarke urged Wilde to drop the case. The following morning, Clarke announced the withdrawal of Wilde’s libel suit against Queensberry. A verdict of “not guilty” was the court’s final decision in the matter.

During the trial, Queensberry’s attorney had forwarded copies of statements by the young men scheduled to appear as witnesses to the director of public prosecutions, resulting in a warrant for Wilde’s arrest on charges of sodomy and gross indecency the same day Queensberry’s “not guilty’ verdict was handed down.

Wilde would very quickly be back in court—this time in the role of the accused.

The first criminal trial of Wilde (The Crown v. Wilde) began April 26. Wilde and Alfred Taylor, the man accused of procuring young men for the playwright, faced 25 counts of gross indecencies and conspiracy to commit gross indecencies. Wilde pleaded “not guilty” to the charges. Numerous male witnesses testified for the prosecution, detailing their participation in sexual acts with Wilde. Most expressed shame over their actions.

Unlike his appearance at Queensberry’s trial, a more subdued Wilde took the stand on the fourth day. He continued to deny all charges against him. During his testimony, Prosecutor Charles Gill asked Wilde about the meaning of a line in a poem by Douglas: “What is ‘the love that dare not speak its name’?”

“‘The love that dare not speak its name’ in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare,” Wilde answered. “It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are… It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older man and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamor of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.”

Though Wilde’s answer appeared to reinforce the charges against him, the jury reportedly deliberated for three hours before deciding they could not reach a verdict. Wilde was released on bail.

A third trial sealed the writer’s fate

Three weeks later, on May 20, Wilde was back in court to face the same charges. The government was pushing for a verdict.

The prosecution, spearheaded by solicitor general Frank Lockwood, had tightened its case against Wilde, reportedly dropping weaker witnesses from the first criminal trial. Summing up, Lockwood stated: “You cannot fail to put the interpretation on the conduct of the prisoner that he is a guilty man, and you ought to say so by your verdict.”

Hours of deliberation passed before the jury handed down their conclusion: guilty on the majority of counts. Reports of the time say Wilde’s face turned gray when the verdict was read.

Wilde and Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor, the maximum allowable for the crime. When the sentence was handed down, shouts of “Shame!” erupted in the courtroom. “And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?” Wilde responded, but the court was adjourned.

After his conviction, Wilde’s wife Constance changed her and her sons’ last name to Holland, in an effort to distance themselves from the much-discussed scandal, and moved to Switzerland where she died in 1898. The couple never divorced.

Following his two years in prison, Wilde was physically reduced and bankrupt. He went into exile in France, residing with friends or staying in cheap accommodation, writing little. Wilde died of meningitis on Nov. 30, 1900. He was 46.

BY  COLIN BERTRAM

Colin Bertram is a writer and editor specializing in entertainment and news journalism.

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the antiapartheid movement both within his country and internationally. Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa, forming a multiethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. after retiring from politics in 1999, he remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world until his death in 2013 at the age of 95.

Nelson Mandela’s Childhood and Education

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo, where his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (c. 1880-1928), served as chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s four wives, who together bore him nine daughters and four sons. After the death of his father in 1927, 9-year-old Mandela—then known by his birth name, Rolihlahla—was adopted by Jongintaba Dalindyebo, a high-ranking Thembu regent who began grooming his young ward for a role within the tribal leadership.

Did you know? As a sign of respect, many South Africans referred to Nelson Mandela as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name.

The first in his family to receive a formal education, Mandela completed his primary studies at a local missionary school. There, a teacher dubbed him Nelson as part of a common practice of giving African students English names. He went on to attend the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Healdtown, a Methodist secondary school, where he excelled in boxing and track as well as academics. In 1939 Mandela entered the elite University of Fort Hare, the only Western-style higher learning institute for South African blacks at the time. The following year, he and several other students, including his friend and future business partner Oliver Tambo (1917-1993), were sent home for participating in a boycott against university policies.

After learning that his guardian had arranged a marriage for him, Mandela fled to Johannesburg and worked first as a night watchman and then as a law clerk while completing his bachelor’s degree by correspondence. He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand, where he became involved in the movement against racial discrimination and forged key relationships with black and white activists. In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and worked with fellow party members, including Oliver Tambo, to establish its youth league, the ANCYL. That same year, he met and married his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase (1922-2004), with whom he had four children before their divorce in 1957.

Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress

Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, which introduced a formal system of racial classification and segregation—apartheid—that restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them from government while maintaining white minority rule. The following year, the ANC adopted the ANCYL’s plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans through boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and other nonviolent methods. Mandela helped lead the ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, traveling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory policies, and promoted the manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by the Congress of the People in 1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africa’s first black law firm, which offered free or low-cost legal counsel to those affected by apartheid legislation.

On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and went on trial for treason. All of the defendants were acquitted in 1961, but in the meantime tensions within the ANC escalated, with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). The next year, police opened fire on peaceful black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people; as panic, anger and riots swept the country in the massacre’s aftermath, the apartheid government banned both the ANC and the PAC. Forced to go underground and wear disguises to evade detection, Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance.

Nelson Mandela and the Armed Resistance Movement

In 1961, Nelson Mandela co-founded and became the first leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), also known as MK, a new armed wing of the ANC. Several years later, during the trial that would put him behind bars for nearly three decades, he described the reasoning for this radical departure from his party’s original tenets: “[I]t would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.”

Under Mandela’s leadership, MK launched a sabotage campaign against the government, which had recently declared South Africa a republic and withdrawn from the British Commonwealth. In January 1962, Mandela traveled abroad illegally to attend a conference of African nationalist leaders in Ethiopia, visit the exiled Oliver Tambo in London and undergo guerilla training in Algeria. On August 5, shortly after his return, he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for leaving the country and inciting a 1961 workers’ strike. The following July, police raided an ANC hideout in Rivonia, a suburb on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and arrested a racially diverse group of MK leaders who had gathered to debate the merits of a guerilla insurgency. Evidence was found implicating Mandela and other activists, who were brought to stand trial for sabotage, treason and violent conspiracy alongside their associates.

Mandela and seven other defendants narrowly escaped the gallows and were instead sentenced to life imprisonment during the so-called Rivonia Trial, which lasted eight months and attracted substantial international attention. In a stirring opening statement that sealed his iconic status around the world, Mandela admitted to some of the charges against him while defending the ANC’s actions and denouncing the injustices of apartheid. He ended with the following words: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Nelson Mandela’s Years Behind Bars

Nelson Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison, a former leper colony off the coast of Cape Town, where he was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and compelled to do hard labor in a lime quarry. As a black political prisoner, he received scantier rations and fewer privileges than other inmates. He was only allowed to see his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936-), who he had married in 1958 and was the mother of his two young daughters, once every six months. Mandela and his fellow prisoners were routinely subjected to inhumane punishments for the slightest of offenses; among other atrocities, there were reports of guards burying inmates in the ground up to their necks and urinating on them.

These restrictions and conditions notwithstanding, while in confinement Mandela earned a bachelor of law degree from the University of London and served as a mentor to his fellow prisoners, encouraging them to seek better treatment through nonviolent resistance. He also smuggled out political statements and a draft of his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” published five years after his release.

Despite his forced retreat from the spotlight, Mandela remained the symbolic leader of the antiapartheid movement. In 1980 Oliver Tambo introduced a “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign that made the jailed leader a household name and fueled the growing international outcry against South Africa’s racist regime. As pressure mounted, the government offered Mandela his freedom in exchange for various political compromises, including the renouncement of violence and recognition of the “independent” Transkei Bantustan, but he categorically rejected these deals.

In 1982 Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland, and in 1988 he was placed under house arrest on the grounds of a minimum-security correctional facility. The following year, newly elected president F. W. de Klerk (1936-) lifted the ban on the ANC and called for a nonracist South Africa, breaking with the conservatives in his party. On February 11, 1990, he ordered Mandela’s release.

Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa

After attaining his freedom, Nelson Mandela led the ANC in its negotiations with the governing National Party and various other South African political organizations for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. Though fraught with tension and conducted against a backdrop of political instability, the talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993. On April 26, 1994, more than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections in history. An overwhelming majority chose the ANC to lead the country, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy.

As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and political violations committed by both supporters and opponents of apartheid between 1960 and 1994. He also introduced numerous social and economic programs designed to improve the living standards of South Africa’s black population. In 1996 Mandela presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution, which established a strong central government based on majority rule and prohibited discrimination against minorities, including whites.

Improving race relations, discouraging blacks from retaliating against the white minority and building a new international image of a united South Africa were central to President Mandela’s agenda. To these ends, he formed a multiracial “Government of National Unity” and proclaimed the country a “rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” In a gesture seen as a major step toward reconciliation, he encouraged blacks and whites alike to rally around the predominantly Afrikaner national rugby team when South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

On his 80th birthday in 1998, Mandela wed the politician and humanitarian Graça Machel (1945-), widow of the former president of Mozambique. (His marriage to Winnie had ended in divorce in 1992.) The following year, he retired from politics at the end of his first term as president and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki (1942-) of the ANC.

Nelson Mandela’s Later Years and Legacy

After leaving office, Nelson Mandela remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around the world. He established a number of organizations, including the influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human suffering. In 2002, Mandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and treatment programs in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma and ignorance. The disease later claimed the life of his son Makgatho (1950-2005) and is believed to affect more people in South Africa than in any other country.

Treated for prostate cancer in 2001 and weakened by other health issues, Mandela grew increasingly frail in his later years and scaled back his schedule of public appearances. In 2009, the United Nations declared July 18 “Nelson Mandela International Day” in recognition of the South African leader’s contributions to democracy, freedom, peace and human rights around the world. Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013 from a recurring lung infection.