7 Times in History When Students Turned to Activism<br />But even as questionable police shootings happen, convictions of officers remain rare,<br />and protests on the streets continue, Black Lives Matter has had a fundamental impact on the national conversation about racial bias and the use of excessive force by the police.<br />Images of police brutality — particularly a photograph of a high school student carrying the body of Hector Pieterson (12<br />or 13 years old; accounts differ) — drew international attention to the broader cruelty of South Africa’s government.<br />The lunch counter sit-ins that would change American history began with four teenagers who<br />walked up to a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and refused to leave.<br />Those young men — Ezell Blair Jr., 18; Franklin McCain, 19; Joseph McNeil, 17;<br />and David Richmond, 18, all students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University — made their stand on Feb. 1, 1960.<br />The students were protesting two things — the construction of a university gym in Morningside Park in Harlem<br />that would provide only limited access to Harlem residents, and Columbia’s Vietnam-era contract with a weapons research think tank — and Columbia canceled both.<br />From Columbia University to the University of California, protests compelled administrators<br />to withdraw billions of dollars in investments from companies tied to South Africa.
