"Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president..."

"... becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance, died Thursday. He was 95."

Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace.