ABSTRACT
Stephen Biko became the leader of a new, more aggressive kind of opposition by blacks to white rule in South Africa, and in doing so he set in motion, at the cost of his own life, the destruction of apartheid. Since the time of European colonization in the early seventeenth century, South Africa had been a racially divided society. In this contentious environment, Biko entered high school in 1959. As a high school student, Biko began to protest against apartheid, resulting in his expulsion in 1963. In 1966, while at medical school, Biko joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), a moderate, multiracial organization that supported equal rights for blacks. Finding NUSAS too passive and dominated by whites, in 1969 Biko co-founded the all-black South African Students' Organization. South African Security forces arrested Biko four times between 1975 and 1977, often holding him for months without trial.
