Twenty Thousand Students Walk Out of Apartheid’s Schools, June 16, 1976

On the morning of June 16, 1976, schoolchildren in Soweto, the sprawling township southwest of Johannesburg, left their classrooms and gathered in the streets. They were ten, fifteen, and eighteen years old. They carried hand-painted cardboard signs. They were on their way to Orlando Stadium to hold a rally. Before they got there, police met them with dogs, teargas, and live ammunition. The post…