Soweto, 16 June 1976

Vilakazi Street, Orlando West · Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa · 1976-06-16

On 16 June 1976 thousands of Soweto schoolchildren marched against the decree making Afrikaans a language of instruction; police opened fire, and the photograph of dying Hector Pieterson being carried down Vilakazi Street went around the world. The uprising spread nationwide and marked the beginning of apartheid's end-game. The street is now a memorial precinct — and the only street on earth that housed two Nobel Peace laureates, Mandela and Tutu.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of South Africa, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Films are matched to this event editorially or by search; if one is wrong, tell us and we will replace it.