Rhetorics of Motherhood

Appendix

127 Appendix: “A Message from Diane Nash Bevel to Individuals and Organizations Working for Civil Rights” (30 April 1962) Note: Nash incorporated her press release into this document, positioning it in paragraphs three and four. I am surrendering today in Hinds County Court, Jackson, Miss., to serve the sentence imposed on me on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of minors. This charge was filed last summer after I conducted workshops on the philosophy of nonviolence among Jackson youths, preparing them to go on Freedom Rides. I have issued a brief statement to the press in which I attempt to explain my basic reason for taking this step. This statement says: “I have decided to surrender myself, abandon further appeal, and serve my sentence of two years, plus as much additional time as it will take to work out my $2000 fine. To appeal further would necessitate my sitting through another trial in a Mississippi court, and I have reached the conclusion that I can no longer cooperate with the evil and unjust court system of this state. I subscribe to the philosophy of nonviolence; this is one of the basic tenets of non-violence—that you refuse to cooperate with evil. The only condition under which I will leave jail will be if the unjust and untrue charges against me are completely dropped.” “Some people have asked me how I can do this when I am expecting my first child in September. I have searched my soul about this and considered it in prayer. I have reached the conclusion that in the long run this will be the best thing I can do for my child. This will be a black child born in Mississippi and thus wherever he is born he will be in prison. I believe that if I go to jail now it may help hasten that day when my child and all children will be free—not only on the day of their birth but for all of their lives.” Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1954–1970. Pt. 1. Ed. Randolph Boehm and Blair Hydrick. Bethesda: University Publications of America, 1995. Part 3, Reel 4, Box 126 (0769), 123:43. 1–3. Appendix 128 This is what I said to the press. To you who also are working in this effort for integration, I would like to say more. I believe the time has come, and is indeed long past, when each of us must make up his mind, when arrested on unjust charges, to serve his sentence and stop posting bonds. I believe that unless we do this our movement loses its power and will never succeed. We in the nonviolent movement have been talking about jail without bail for two years or more. It is time for us to mean what we say. We sit in, demonstrate and get beaten up. Yet when we are arrested we immediately post bond and put the matter entirely into the hands of the courts even though we know we won’t get justice in these courts. This is first of all immoral, because the Southern courts in which we are being tried are completely corrupt. We say this is a moral battle, but then we surrender the fight into the legal hands of corrupt courts. The immorality of these courts involves several factors. They are completely lacking in integrity because we are being arrested and tried on charges that have nothing to do with the real issue. The real reason we are arrested is that we are opposing segregation, but the courts are not honest enough to state this frankly and charge us with this. Instead they hide behind phony charges—breach of peace in Jackson, criminal anarchy in Baton Rouge, conspiracy to violate trespass laws in Talladega, Ala., and so on. We could cite many other examples in many places. Furthermore, in most places we are forced to go on trial in a courtroom that is completely segregated and in a courthouse where all the facilities —drinking fountains, rest rooms, everything—are segregated. Thus the hours that we give to the state for these trials are hours of humiliation and oppression, hours that defile our worth as persons. And then we are asked to pay the bill for this humiliation in court costs. In addition, in many places, the courts are completely corrupt in that they refuse to admit Negroes to the juries. But over and above the immorality of cooperating with...