Morris Isaacson High School is a government secondary school in Soweto. Founded in 1956, the school took an important role at the start of the Soweto Uprising in 1976.HistoryThe school was named for Morris Isaacson who was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant in 1896. He had become wealthy by trading and he set up a fund for black students to complete their education to university level. It was Isaacson who funded this school. Isaacson gave enough money to build a school with ten classrooms and it opened in 1956 with 300 pupils when it was called "Mohloding School".On 8 June 1976, the South African Police attempted to arrest Enos Ngutshane at Naledi High School. He was the local leader of the South African Students Movement. He had sent a letter to the government about the imposition of Afrikaans as the language to be used in schools. The police failed to apprehend him, and the police were stoned and a Volkswagen Beetle was set on fire by the students.On 16 June, students had gathered at Naledi High School to walk to Morris Isaacson High School in Jabavu. Tsietsi Mashinini, a student at this school was a leader of the march of protest. The plan was to gather at Orlando Stadium, but before that the Police arrived and school children were shot.On 1 May 1993, Nelson Mandela visited the school to celebrate the school's role in the Soweto Uprising and nation's transformation.
