The African National Congress (ANC) led the antiapartheid defiance campaign in December 1951 (Bloemfontein, South Africa) . The protests were largely non-violent, nevertheless it resulted, in 1952, in the arrest of approximately eight thousand people for planned acts of civil disobedience against recently enacted apartheid legislation. The demonstrations were the first "large-scale, multi-racial political mobilization against apartheid laws under a common leadership."
The Defiance Campaigns, served as an inspiration to Civil Rights Activists in the United States.