Today in History, Tuesday, February 11

1990: Nelson Mandela is released from prison

On Feb. 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, was released after 27 years of imprisonment. Mandela was a lawyer who joined the African National Congress, the oldest Black political organization in South Africa, in 1944. He rose through the ranks of ANC, advocating nonviolent resistance to apartheid – South Africa’s institutionalized system of racial segregation and white supremacy. After peaceful Black demonstrators were massacred in Sharpville in 1960, however, Mandela helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white minority government. Mandela was arrested for treason in 1956 and acquitted in 1961, but was later arrested for leaving the country, and in 1964 he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, a worldwide anti-apartheid movement grew, also focused on freeing Mandela and his fellow prisoners. Clamor for change continued to increase, and in 1990, the South African government agreed to open negotiations regarding apartheid legislation, and Mandela was released from prison. In 1994, Mandela won a landslide victory in South Africa’s first election open to all citizens, becoming South Africa’s first black president, marking the official end of apartheid.