On the first day of school his teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of the students an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of education. That day, Miss Mdingane told him that his new name was Nelson.
Rosa Parks's stand against segregation on a public bus led to the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the violence targeted toward the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s drew the nation's attention to racial hatred in Alabama.
