Mohandas Gandhi, a child of relative privilege, who managed to obtain a law degree and went to South Africa to practice, witnessed firsthand the deprivations of the non-whites in his country. He was thrown off a train for refusing to yield his seat in the first-class compartment to a white man, even though he bought a first-class ticket. Inspired by those events, Gandhi dedicated his life to helping minorities across the world, from South Africa to India. In one of his more famous acts, he led a mass protest of 2,000 men, women and children against the policies of the South African regime.

On this day, November 6, in 1913, after a tax imposed on free laborers sparked widespread protests, leading to arrests of several women, Mohandas Gandhi channeled the popular outrage into a demonstration, which led to his arrest.

Gandhi was arrested for leading the protest that very evening. He was freed on bail, and returned to continue the protest. The next day he was arrested again, with the authorities hoping his imprisonment would throw the protests into disarray. That did not happen. Instead, Gandhi’s arrest energized thousand of oppressed Africans to take up his cause of nonviolent civil disobedience. Gandhi rightly observed that the South African government had to deal with his demands, whether or not he was free. He compared them to “a snake which has taken a rat in its mouth but can neither gulp it down nor cast it out.”