Sharpeville Massacre
On March 21st in Sharpeville, South Africa, a group of protesters arrived at a police station unarmed and without passes. Without thinking or hesitation, police shot into the crowd and killed 69 people while wounding 180 others. This created an uproar and angered many political figures including Mandela himself, and they felt that they could no longer protest peacefully.
Umkhonto we size
After the Sharpeville massacre Nelson Mandela and the ANC created the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), an underground military branch of the ANC in order to take matters into their own hands. In January of 1962 Mandela traveled to an ANC meeting located in Ethiopia and learned guerilla warfare techniques in Algeria to utilize in the MK. Once he returned he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for illegally leaving South Africa, little did he know that was miniscule to what would happen later that year.