March 21, 1937
The colonial military governor revoked a permit for the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico to march in Ponce on Palm Sunday in support of Puerto Rican independence. The marched anyway and were fired upon as they began. Eighteen Nationalists and 2 policemen died; 200 others, Nationalists and bystanders, were injured, 150 arrested. This incident is known as Masacre de Ponce.
March 21, 1960
South African police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in the black township of Sharpeville near Johannesburg. The demonstrators were protesting the establishment of apartheid pass laws which restricted movement of non-whites. Sixty nine were killed and 176 wounded when police fired on the crowd, 63 of them shot in the back.
March 21, 1965
3,200 civil rights demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr., begin a historic march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery. Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents were on hand to provide safe passage for the march, which twice had been turned back by Alabama state police at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.
