NONVIOLENT STUFF

"In 1800 slaves led by Gabriel Prosser would attempt an insurrection in Richmond , Virginia. The rebellion failed, but before being sentenced to death, one of the rebels proclaimed while standing in chains before the judge, 'I have nothing more to offer than what General [George] Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life in endeavoring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and I am a willing sacrifice in their cause.' This important commingling of Afro-American desire for freedom, willingness to sacrifice to gain it, and Euro-American idealism as defined by the eighteenth century U.S. Independence movement continues to be under appreciated even though it reverberated across the centuries and into the twentieth century 's southern freedom rights struggle . In 1962, for example, Diane Nash--a twenty-three year old civil rights activist then six months pregnant with her first child, was on trial in Jackson, Mississippi , for training high school students to engage in nonviolent protests. The judge offered her two choices: pay a fine or be jailed for two years. She chose jail. '[My] child will be a black born in Mississippi, and thus whether I am in jail or not, he will be born in prison.... If I go to jail now it may help hasten that day when my child and all children will be free,' she told the judge. Nash eventually served ten days in jail because she refused to move from the white side of the courtroom." P. 35-36, THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF'LL GET YOU KILLED by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. (2016)