Diane Nash, an amazing African American civil rights activist (I count Nash as one of those women I most admire), and one of the leaders of the 1961 Freedom Riders movement against segregation, to the judge when sentenced to two years in prison for civil disobedience.
This will be a black baby born in Mississippi, and thus where ever he is born he will be in prison ... If I go to jail now it may help hasten that day when my child and all children will be free.1
Mrs. Nash2 was pregnant at the time but refused to use her pregnancy to ask for leniency, an appeal, or to post bond.
1 Source of quote: “American Women in the 1960s” by Blanche Linden-Ward and Carol Hurd Green (1993).
2 Mrs. Nash was married to activist James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC].
