Wally Nelson

Who was Wally Nelson?

Wallace Floyd Nelson was an American civil rights activist and war tax resister.

Wally Nelson died at the age of 93 after more than a half-century of war tax resistance and activism. He spent three and a half years in prison as a conscientious objector during World War II, was on the first of the “freedom rides” enforcing desegregation in 1947 and was the first national field organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality.

In 1948, he began his lifelong relationship with Juanita, who met him while she was working as a journalist and went to interview him in jail. Together, they began engaging in war tax resistance. “When we became tax resisters in 1948,” they wrote, “it included not filing, not answering notices to supply information and making sure we had something to refuse.”

Wally and Juanita Nelson spent a few months at the Koinonia Farm in 1957 and continued to work with that project for the next decade.

Over time, the Nelsons came to adopt the income-reduction method of war tax refusal. “Living on a reduced income is related to our refusal only as a progression of awareness, that our entire economic life is tied into violence. It seemed logical that the less we participated, the less we’d be giving to that system.”