to apartheid. However, although the ANC's armed wing started its campaign in 1962, no victory was in sight by the time that Steve Biko was a medical student in the late 1960s. This is because the organization was banned in 1960, preventing it from having a strong influence in South African politics for approximately two decades. During this same time, students of colour "marched out" of the National Union of South African Students organization which, although it was multiracial, was still "dominated" by white students. Even as the nation's leading opposition groups like the ANC proclaimed a commitment to armed struggle, their leaders had failed to organise a credible military effort. If their commitment to revolution had inspired many, the success of the white regime in squashing it had dampened the spirits of many. It was in this context that black students, Biko most notable among them, began critiquing the liberal whites with whom they worked in anti-apartheid student groups, as well as the official non-racialism of the ANC. They saw progress towards power as requiring the development of black power distinct from supposedly "non-racial groups". This new Black Consciousness Movement not only called for resistance to the policy of apartheid, freedom of speech, and more rights for South African blacks who were oppressed by the white apartheid regime, but also black pride and a readiness to make blackness, rather than simple liberal democracy, the rallying point of unapologetically black organisations. Importantly, the group defined black to include other "people of color" in South Africa, most notably the large number of South Africans of Indian descent. In this way, the Black Consciousness Movement provided a space for the "unity of South Africa's oppressed" in a way that the students defined for themselves. The movement stirred many blacks to confront not only the legal but also the cultural and psychological realities of Apartheid, seeking "not black visibility but real black participation" in society and in political struggles. The gains this movement made were widespread across South Africa. Many black people felt a new sense of pride about being black as the movement helped to expose and critique the inferiority complex felt by many blacks at the time. The group formed Formation Schools to provide leadership seminars, and placed a great importance on decentralisation and autonomy, with no person serving as president for more than one year (although Biko was clearly the