Ms. Nelson was jailed many times for her actions as a civil rights activist and war tax resister. She was first arrested in 1943, at some of the earliest lunch counter sit-ins. Ms. Nelson was a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizer, and worked on desegregation campaigns in Cincinnati and Washington, DC. In 1948, she co-founded the Christian pacifist group Peacemakers, and in 1959, she became the first woman to be apprehended for war tax refusal. She and her husband Wally moved to Woolman Hill, a Quaker conference center in Deerfield, MA. They built their own house of salvaged materials, grew most of their own food organically on 1/2 acre of land, and lived without plumbing or electricity. She remained in her off-the-grid home until 2011. Ms. Nelson died March 12, 2014, at age 91. "If there are winners in life, there have to be losers. Rather than be either, I refuse to play the game."
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