As the sun rises at Tiananmen Square, protesters build a 10-meter (33-foot) Goddess of Democracy statue out of foam and paper-mache over a metal armature. In the early morning of June 4, soldiers backed by tanks and armored cars toppled the statue, which had stood directly facing the Mao portrait at the Forbidden City.

In the often tense days leading up to the Chinese government crackdown, local citizens often gave gifts to soldiers and police officials. Sometimes troops would sing patriotic songs with demonstrators. In this picture, a policewoman sings out loud in Tiananmen Square a few days before troops retook control of the area and crushed the democratic movement.

A woman is caught in the middle of a scuffle between pro-democracy protesters and People's Liberation Army soldiers near the Great Hall of The People on June 3, 1989, the day before one of the bloodiest military crackdowns of the 20th century. Later that night, the 38th Army would open fire on unarmed civilians overtaking the occupied Tiananmen Square.

Thousands of protesters surround a bus with a display of captured weapons just days prior to the crackdown. During the government's enforcement of martial law, soldiers and the public performed a delicate dance of give and take. Sometimes protesters offered gifts to soldiers and sometimes troops withdrew.

In the late evening of June 3, a group of protesters cornered an armored personnel carrier at the gates of the Great Hall of The People. It had just crashed through barricades of street dividers, which the crowds had put up to stop the advance of military vehicles. At the same time, soldiers were preparing to open fire on the demonstrators a short distance away.

On the late evening of June 3, protestors set fire to an armored personnel carrier on the Chang'an Avenue near Tiananmen Square. The picture was the last image before photographer Jeff Widener was struck in the face by a stray protestor brick. Though he sustained a serious concussion, The Nikon F3 titanium camera absorbed the blow sparing his life.

On June 4, a truck manned by People's Liberation Army troops patrol down the Chang'an Avenue in front of the Beijing Hotel the day after the bloody crackdown on student-led pro-democracy supporters. A similar truck full of soldiers had shot tourists standing in the lobby of the Beijing Hotel that day.

A lone man with shopping bags walks to the center of Beijing's Chang'an Avenue and temporarily stops the advance of Chinese tanks a day after the crackdown. Over two decades later, the fate of the man is still a mystery. The incident has come to symbolize the events at Tiananmen Square and is considered one of the most iconic images ever taken.

On June 5, a group of people at the Chang’an Avenue show a picture of protesters lying dead at a local morgue after having been shot by Chinese soldiers of the 38th Army during the recapture of Tiananmen Square. The troops used expanding bullets which created larger wounds. At least 300 civilians were killed, according to Amnesty International.

The remains of a burned-out bus on Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue as two women sweep up debris following the massacre. The demonstrations led to widespread burning of buses and military vehicles, which left several soldiers dead or injured.

Soldiers and a tank stand guard in front of the Forbidden City and across from the occupied Tiananmen Square a few days after the riots.

Associated Press photographers Jeff Widener (left) and Liu Heung Shing pose in front of Beijing's Forbidden City in late May 1989 just days before the Chinese government's military crackdown at Tiananmen Square.

This photo is a stark symbol of the peaceful Black Lives Matter protests in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Fearless, wearing a long sundress, the 28-year-old New Yorker Ieshia Evans stands in the middle of the street, facing a group of heavily armed police officers. The photographer Jonathan Bachman was in the right place at the right time to take this picture.

Shopping bag in hand, an unidentified man stood in the path of tanks on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989, just a day after the Chinese military had used force to quash the protests. The lone protester later became known as Tank Man, the Unknown Protester and the Unknown Rebel.

In October 1967, 17-year-old Jan Rose Kasmir presented a chrysanthemum to the soldiers facing her in an anti-Vietnam War protest in Washington, DC. "These were just young men," Kasmir said in an interview years later. "They could have been my date, they could have been my brother. And they were also victims of this whole thing."

In downtown Montgomery in December 1955, Rosa Parks was asked to give up her seat as the bus she was riding filled up. She refused. "It was not that day or bus in particular," Parks said later. "I just wanted to be free, like everybody else," She was arrested. A citywide bus boycott lasted for more than a year - until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was illegal.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two nonviolent protest performances that lasted a week each, their famous 1969 bed-ins for peace in Amsterdam and in Montreal, Quebec. They invited the press and gave interviews about their protests against the Vietnam War.

On January 25, 2014, in Kyiv, an Orthodox priest said a prayer between lines of police and demonstrators. Ukraine's anti-government protests spread beyond the capital, with many people demanding that the country seek better relations with the European Union.

A police officer used pepper spray on Occupy demonstrators cowering on the ground at the University of California, Davis in 2011. The students were peacefully protesting a rise in tuition. John Pike lost his job, and the protesters received a settlement.

Endlessly shared on social media, the photo turned Ceyda Sungur in her bright red summer dress into a symbol of the anti-government Gezi Park protests in May 2013 after a riot policeman turned on her with a can of tear gas.