"Only mass education [Mr. Sidelsky, one of the lawyers in the law firm] used to say would free my people, arguing that an educated man could not be oppressed because he could think for himself," Mandela recalled in his autobiography.

Those around him recognized his vision and looked to him as a leader.

"He has faith in ideas and faith in a vision no matter what the consequences," said Robert Z. Lawrence, Williams professor of international trade and investment. "He is an immense moral authority."

Mandela joined the Youth League of the ANC in 1944, rising in the ranks to National President of the Youth League in 1950.

He was then arrested under the Suppression of Communism Amendment Act and sentenced to nine months in prison. The government lashed out, initiating a treason trial against its main opponents, which after five years in 1961 ended in acquittal of Mandela and the other 155 who were accused.

The government banned the ANC, and Mandela went under-ground, most frequently disguised as a chauffeur, chef or garden boy. Continuing his peaceful resistance, he traveled abroad to gather support for the civil rights cause.

"One has to plan every action, however small and seemingly insignificant. Nothing is innocent. Everything is questioned," Mandela writes of his experience underground. "I became a creature of the night."

When he returned, he was sentenced to prison for his continued involvement in the ANC--at first for five years and later for life.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., another civil rights leader with whom Mandela often identifies himself, he was prepared to give his life as an example for the cause. He never rebelled against his fate, accepting prison as a necessary price to fight for what he believed in.

"This conferred a new status of moral dignity on his leadership," says an article on Time's 100 leaders and revolutionaries of the century. "His major response to the indignities of the prison was a creative denial of victimhood, expressed most remarkably by a system of self-education, which earned the prison the appellation of 'Island University."'

From prison, Mandela began negotiations with the government to end apartheid and ensure his release from prison.

By Feb. 1990, he was free. While King died in the midst of the American civil rights struggle, Mandela became a beacon of hope that change was on its way.

A Legacy of Liberation

Like Winston Churchill and George Washington who received the Harvard honorary degree before him, Mandela conferred his own personality on a nation, liberating with the force of personality and will.

"They defined their age," says Robert H. Bates, Eaton professor of the science of government, and acting chair of the African Studies committee. "Each of them were liberators. They fought against tyranny."