Soweto schoolchildren shot

June 16, 1976

South African police opened fire on Black schoolchildren protesting being forced to learn in Afrikaans, the language they associated with their oppressors. Thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson's body, carried by another boy with Hector's sister running alongside, became the iconic photograph of apartheid's cruelty. Hundreds more died in the following weeks of unrest. Apartheid was losing its last international defenders.