There was no talk about proximate justice—that little bit of justice that whites dole out to blacks when they get ready. God’s justice called for black people to bear witness to freedom now, even unto death. That was why Fred Shuttlesworth, the movement’s most courageous freedom fighter, said, “You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live.” This justice language was defined by a love of freedom derived directly from Jesus’ cross, and it led more than forty martyrs to their deaths in the civil rights movement.
