Juanita Nelson, a longtime civil rights activist, war tax resister and farmer, has died at the age of 91 in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She was first arrested in the early 1940s protesting lunch counter segregation in Washington, D.C. During World War II, she met her future husband, Wally Nelson, while he was in jail for refusing to fight in the war. In the late 1940s, they worked with CORE, Congress of Racial Equality, and helped organized the first freedom rides in the South. At the same time, they stopped paying taxes for war.
In the 1970s, the Nelsons moved to New Mexico. "Fueled by a desire to live more simply in the face of U.S. war in Vietnam and to be less involved in the economic milieu that spawns war, they made their living by growing and selling produce and attempting to become as self-sufficient as possible," reads her obituary. "They learned to heat and cook with wood, preserve food, and make their own soap."
They later moved to Woolman Hill, a Quaker conference center in Deerfield, Massachusetts. She helped found the Valley Community Land Trust, Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters, and the Greenfield Farmers' Market. In 2005, Amy Goodman interviewed Juanita Nelson in Northampton, Massachusetts.