A small but much-prized soccer trophy on display in a cell of Robben Island prison is a reminder of how football touched the lives of the activists locked up there by the apartheid regime.

Mandela first went to Robben Island Prison in May 1963, after being sentenced the previous October to five years for sabotage, as he led a campaign against the apartheid government in South Africa.

Organized chronologically and divided by the four venues in which he was held as a sentenced prisoner, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela begins in Pretoria Local Prison, where Mandela was held ...

Vaclav Havel’s Letters to Olga turned his confinement into a philosophical diary. Martin Luther King Jr., scribbling on scraps of newspaper in Birmingham Jail, fashioned a manifesto for civil rights.

Mandela first went to Robben Island Prison in May 1963, after being sentenced the previous October to five years for sabotage, as he led a campaign against the apartheid government in South Africa.