Giving Compass' Take:

• Joe McCarthy recounts how an image of a protester carrying a dead boy away from the peaceful demonstration students had set up galvanized the world and contributed to the end of Apartheid.

• What does this say about the power of images? What lessons can modern movements take from this? 

• Find out how the LGBTQ movement gained momentum in the United States. 

Apartheid had been going on for decades by the time students in Soweto, South Africa, decided to stage a peaceful protest on June 16, 1976.

Up until that point in their lives, the violence of apartheid had been mostly structural, according to Time. The political system stripped them of their rights and sunk them into poverty, while infecting government institutions with racism.

They were angered by a recently decreed federal policy that required schools to use Afrikaans as the language for certain subjects like math and science. Afrikaans was the language spoken by Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch settlers who engineered apartheid. Many students in Soweto didn’t know the language, and it was often associated with the oppression of apartheid.

Students saw the policy shift as an attempt to both further marginalize them and force them to accept their degraded place in the system, according to Time.

On the morning of June 16, students gathered in school courtyards to create signs to protest the new policy. Their numbers soon swelled to the tens of thousands, and they generated a buoyant momentum as they made their way down main streets, according to the Guardian.

But the authorities had been notified of the protest, and police were waiting for the students.

When they arrived, police began firing tear gas and live ammunition at the peaceful protesters. By the day’s end, dozens of people were killed and many more were injured.

Hector Pieterson was one of the victims. He had been excited by the fervor of older students and joined the protests that morning, Sithole, his sister, told Time. A bullet pierced his body, killing him almost instantly. He was only 12 years old.

Nearby, 18-year-old Umbiswa Makhubo saw Pieterson fall. He ran over, picked him up, and rushed to the closest hospital.

That’s when South African photographer Sam Nzima snapped a photograph that would galvanize the world into action.

Read the full article about Apartheid by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen.