Five Historic Student Protests Across the World, from US to South Africa

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The ongoing student protests in the United States against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza have garnered global attention and inspired similar movements on college campuses across the world. This series of student protests are part of a larger history of student-led activism dating back to the civil rights and anti-apartheid of the 1970s. Time and again student protests throughout history have led to crucial social changes.

1. The Greensboro Four

In 1960, four black college students protested segregation by peacefully sitting at a “whites-only” lunch counter in North Carolina, US. The movement eventually led to a wider sit-in movement organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

On February 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four – all students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University - entered Woolworth’s general merchandise store and requested service at the dining area but were denied by the staff.

The group had already alerted local media, however. A photo of the Greensboro Four appeared in local newspapers, and the protest quickly spread. Within weeks, national media coverage of the protest led to sit-ins being staged in cities across America. By July 1960, the lunch counter at the Greensboro Woolworth’s was serving the Black community, and dining facilities were soon integrated in the South. The Greensboro sit-in marked an early success for the civil rights movement.

2. Tlatelolco Massacre

In October 1968, when Mexico was preparing to host the Olympics, students used the global media attention to stage protests against government repression. Around 10,000 students marched on a Tlatelolco neighborhood plaza in Mexico City.

The student-led manifesto encompassed basic demands such as civil liberties and human rights including free speech. However, tanks bulldozed through the plaza as soldiers shot into the crowd. The Mexican government initially claimed around 25 people had died during the crackdown, but some experts today say forces killed as many as 400.

The massacre led to major changes in civil liberties that would expand over the next decades.

3. The Soweto Uprising

During the 1970s, the all-white government in apartheid South Africa had enforced racial segregation. The apartheid government started to issue a mandate requiring teachers to start using Afrikaans, which Black South Africans and prominent rights activists like Desmond Tutu called the “language of the oppressor” in class. 

In response,  an estimated 20,000 students peacefully marched in the protests on June 16, 1976, but apartheid South African security forces fired tear gas and live bullets into the crowd. The incident sparked weeks of nationwide protests against apartheid.

The protest was followed by an exodus of young people from South Africa as many joined the African National Congress (ANC), the chief organization resisting the apartheid government, in exile. The movement amplified the anti-apartheid sentiment that eventually ended in 1994.

4. Kent State shooting

Following the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon issued orders to expand the fighting into Cambodia. This ignited student protests across the US, including those at Kent State University in Ohio. The National Guard troops, called in to suppress demonstrators, fired on the crowd and killed four students.

The confrontation, sometimes referred to as the May 4 massacre, was a defining moment for a nation sharply divided over the war, in which more than 58,000 Americans died.

It sparked a strike of 4 million students across the US, temporarily closing some 900 colleges and universities. The protests laid the foundation for future campus activism.

5. Free Speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley

In 1964, students at the University of California, Berkeley protest restrictions on free speech enacted in earlier years.

The student protestors, later known as the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, staged a sit-in protest inside the school’s administration building. Soon, colleges across the US lifted the free speech restrictions.

The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley was a watershed moment in 1960s student organizing. The movement rejected the expansion of McCarthyist-inspired rules to silent political activities on campus.

AL ARABIYA

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