Juanita Morrow Nelson Quotes

I did go to Howard University, and that was where I was arrested for the first time. I went with two of my friends who were undergrad coeds, downtown in Washington, DC, which was about as segregated as anyplace in the United States at that time. I went to Howard in 1941. This was in '43 though, at the beginning of the year, I think. And we went to a drugstore that had a lunch counter-asked for some hot chocolate. We were told, "We don't serve Negroes." We said, "Well, we'd like to see the manager." "The manager isn't in." And we said, "Well, we have plenty of time. We'll just sit here." And finally they brought the hot chocolate, but they gave us tickets, bills for 25 cents, when it clearly stated on the board that hot chocolate was ten cents a cup, so that's what we put down. And I always like to say that's probably all we had anyway. But, then we walked out and were met by-my recollection is-seven of DC's finest, that is, the police. And they put us in the paddy wagon and took us to jail. After we had this incident, a woman who became a very dear friend, Pauli Murray, was there. She was about ten years older than us coeds. She was in law school, and she knew about CORE that had started. And we formed the Howard's—I think it was called "Civil Rights Committee" and actually opened up a restaurant on the edge of campus in one week, less than a week. I never had such a quick victory, never since that time. It was just a sort of a greasy spoon restaurant, but it was a heady victory for us. We had a picket line; we had a sit–in; lots of people agreed with us, and he capitulated. (By "opened up") I mean we desegregated it.

Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes. Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?

how can one have respect for others without self-respect?

because I believe that it is more important to do what is right than what is lawful or expedient, I have declined to pay the tax.

We had a friend who lived in Philadelphia, and he was doing what they called "interracial housing." Now Wally would never let anybody say that; he said, "Interracial, you mean, a monkey and a human being," et cetera, they might be different races.

We were interested in how we lived every day, not just going out to a demonstration, not just voting, and not just writing letters.

Here was I, still struggling with the meaning of my own life and standing, it seemed sometimes, on dead center. How, then, did I have the effrontery to question a whole way of life that had been evolved slowly and painfully through the ages by the accumulated wisdom of mankind? How could I presume to have so much of the truth that I would defy constituted authority? What made me so certain of myself in this regard? I was not certain. But it seemed to me that if I could see only one thing clearly, it was not necessary to see all things clearly in order to act on that one thing.

That's the only way you can stop war, stop participating in it, and stop so much consumption that requires war, at least that's the way I look at it.

It was in 1970 during the Viet Nam War. We were refusing to pay taxes; we were working in CORE [Congress of Racial Equality]; we were working with the great brokers, Cesar Chavez and those. Wally fasted for twenty–three days once in front of one of the big chain stores to try to get them to stop using, either grapes, or something, whatever it was that they were doing. And yet, we began to feel, and I in particular, that our whole lives were tied up in war stuff, because we live on this war system.

I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes. I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes. I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable.

I believe that I have every right, nay, every responsibility, to act according to my best judgment, not waiting for one-hundred and fifty million others to concur. This one act may not lead inevitably to a good end, but I do not see that it can lead to a bad one. Why should I expect or accept punishment for exercising my best judgment?

I didn't ever miss school until I was sixteen years old and I went with my mother to visit her parents in Georgia. That's where I guess I did my very first action, because our train was late for changing in Cincinnati and we were rushed into a car. By the time we got settled, I recalled, I looked around and saw that we were in a Jim Crow car. Now I'd heard of these things, and I knew about that sort of thing...This was at a time when all people who had darker-colored skin, or part dark African ancestry, were seated in a particular place and could not go anywhere else-in streetcars and so forth. In the South particularly they had fountains that said, "whites," "colored," all that sort of thing. It was a very much division in talking about races, which I don't like. I think there's one race anyway, as far as I'm concerned. So I asked my mother if we couldn't change cars and she said, "Oh Nita, I'm just tired." And I think that was true. And I sat and fumed, and finally I got up and sat in every car in that train because I was so upset, and my recollection-this was a long time ago, of course-is that nobody bothered me except the porter, and he was afraid that something would happen to me, because he had the same color skin that I had. Then I went back and sat by my Mother and I felt better because I had expressed myself.

a group called Peacemakers was formed (in 1948). They saw nonviolence as a way of life, not just a tactic, or different campaigns, and one of the things that was a hallmark of Peacemakers was refusing to pay taxes for war, and so I say that that was a very pivotal year in my life, '48. Wally and I started living together; I became a tax refuser; we became tax refusers. You see, he spent thirty–three months in prison because he wouldn't go; how was he going to pay for somebody else to go and kill people? We just had no problem with that.

I had already been involved in CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, that helped to start a chapter of CORE in Cleveland, along with a man named George Howser