a group which eventually became involved in many resistance activities. One movement the ANC got involved in was a defiance campaign in the Black suburb of Sharpeville. This eventually led to the Sharpeville massacre, where 69 Black South Africans were killed, and 180 more were injured. This event resulted in the bloodiest apartheid protest that South Africa would see, and in the moment the Black South African community was horrified. In response, the following week was full of demonstrations, protests and marches. Because of this, the South African government saw fit to declare a state of emergency, and arrested thousands of people who had been protesting. Numbers approached 10,000 people by May, and many of these people were not released for months afterwards. Also in the fallout of the Sharpeville massacre, the South African government banned any organisations that were considered a threat to public safety or public order. This included organisations such as the ANC and the PAC (another organisation that was committed to activism for Black South Africans through peaceful protesting). Under apartheid, black women were affected to an extreme degree due to discriminatory racial and gender laws. There were not many opportunities for women to become political leaders, as many organisations allowed male membership only, so not many women did get very involved with politics. There were several organizations that let women join, or had entirely separate organizations there for women to join, one such being the ANCWL or ANC Women's League. In a protest of the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act of 1952 as mentioned above and several other pieces of legislation, many women participated in movements against the government for the first time in the form of the Defiance campaign. The defiance campaign was a movement organized in part by the ANC because of new apartheid legislation from the government. Women were not the only people to take part in this campaign, but the inclusion of women is noteworthy because this was the first campaign to see major participation from women. The movement itself involved thousands of Black citizens doing nonviolent things that would normally be considered as civil disobedience, such as going into areas that only White People were allowed into, or burning their pass books. The idea behind the movement, was that if enough Black people flooded the South African prison and judicial system, then it would force the