Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s greatest transformative figures for racial justice and forgiveness, died as he had lived, peacefully, today at the age of 95. Over almost a century Madiba, as he was also known, was a tribal warrior, lawyer, prisoner, Nobel Prize winner, president and national unifier. Born in 1918, Mandela came of age in a divided colony, and later a segregated independent nation stained by oppressive and brutal policies that not only separated races, but anachronistically denied Africans and others of the myriad basic freedoms and dignities that so many of us today in America take for granted. One of only of a handful of African lawyers, Mandela embraced politics at the African National Congress and turned to militancy after brutal crackdowns against African dissent by the white minority government. Mandela was acquitted in 1961 after a six-year trial, only to be convicted in another trial in 1964. He was incarcerated for 27 years, including many years in a small damp cell in one of the world’s most desolate and inhumane prisons on Robben Island. Upon his conviction he counseled:
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