workingclasshistory:

On this day 21 March 1960, the Sharpeville massacre took place in apartheid South Africa. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway faction from the larger African National Congress (ANC), began a leading campaign against the pass laws, a series of laws designed to manage internal segregation and racial domination. On the morning of 21 March, around 5000 PAC demonstrators gathered around the Sharpeville police station. They were met by 300 police officers who were supported with small arms and armored cars in the front of the police station. Tensions boiled over when reports of stones being thrown by protestors led to police, without any warning to disperse, to open fire on the crowd leaving 69 dead and 180 seriously injured, many shot in the back. News of Sharpeville would draw condemnation the international community against the apartheid government and become an watershed moment for Black South Africans struggle for freedom and majority-rule. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1677306909121119/?type=3