Nelson Mandela shares a similar background to his hero Mahatma Gandhi. Both completed studies in law before finding themselves applying the lessons to fight the government. Both were reviled, arrested and jailed by the authorities and loved by their supporters. Both became world heroes for their actions. Mandela picked up Gandhi’s mantle in South Africa, using his education from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of South Africa to mount protests against the official government policy of apartheid. By 1955 his agitations reached a critical stage with the publication of the “Freedom Charter,” outlining the black South African demands for equality, and Mandela was arrested.

On this day, December 6, in 1956, Nelson Mandela, along with more than 100 other executive members of the African National Congress, the organization leading the freedom movement, were rounded up and arrested for treason.

The official charge against Mandela and the others was read as the “conspiracy to use violence to overthrow the present government and replace it with a Communist state.” The trial took a deliberately long time to unfold, with the number of defendants first whittled down to just over 90, and then dropped entirely in favor of new charges against Mandela and 29 others. Those charges were dismissed at trial, four years after the arrest, when the presiding judge ruled there was no evidence the defendants used or intended to use force.