Video: '1960: Be A Man- Sell Out (1970 documentary narrated by Peter Jennings)' (Sharpeville massacre at 16:06)

(Monday, March 21, 1960, 1:20 p.m. South Africa Standard Time; during the Sharpeville massacre) — White police at the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal (today part of Gauteng) fired their guns into a crowd of unarmed black protesters today, killing 69 people and wounding 180.

After a day of demonstrations against pass laws, a form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, a crowd of about 5,000 to 7,000 protesters had gone to the police station.

Sources disagree as to the behavior of the crowd; some state that the crowd was peaceful, while others state that the crowd had been hurling stones at the police, and that the shooting started when the crowd started advancing toward the fence around the police station.

Subsequent investigations would determine that two policemen had fired their guns, and that 50 others then began shooting into the crowd as they fled. Within 40 seconds, 705 rounds were fired.

Of 155 bullets extracted from the dead and wounded, only 30 were frontal entry wounds. Most of the victims had been shot in the back as they ran.

Of the dead, 31 were women, and 19 were children.

Since the end of white minority rule, South Africa observes Human Rights Day annually on March 21.