Simon Nkoli

To a small crowd gathering on a city street, some of them holding brown paper bags.

This is the story of Simon Nkoli, a man who refused to choose between his freedoms.

Imagine, if you will, a Saturday morning in Johannesburg on the thirteenth of October, nineteen ninety.

The sky is low and gray.

He is not wearing a bag.

He has spent a long time learning not to hide.

His name is Simon Nkoli, and he has been walking toward this morning his whole life.

Let's step back from the rain and find out where that walk began.

And this was never only an American story.

In South Africa, Simon Nkoli was already organizing against apartheid in the townships south of Johannesburg by 1980, years before ACT UP existed.

In 1984, he was arrested alongside 21 others and charged with treason in what became known as the Delmas trial, a case that carried the death penalty and would run for nearly four years in court.

While he was awaiting trial, Nkoli came out to his fellow defendants.