Diane Nash
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Diane Judith Nash (born May 15, 1938 in Chicago) was a founder of the now defunct SNCC, a key force in the American civil rights movement.
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[edit] Early life
Nash was raised on the south-side of Chicago. She attended public and Catholic schools,and one day dreamed of becoming a nun. However, she went on to study English at Howard University in Washington, DC before transferring to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1959.
Nash felt degraded by the racial prejudice she experienced in Nashville, but did not know what she could do about it. She began attending non-violent civil disobedience workshops led by the Rev. James Lawson. In 1960 at age 22, she became the unofficial leader of the Nashville sit-ins. Inspired by sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Nashville sit-ins lasted from February to May of 1960 and helped desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.
After being arrested, Nash, with John Lewis, led the protesters in a policy of refusing to pay bail, on principle. Sentenced to pay a $50 fine for sitting at a whites-only lunch counter, Nash was chosen to represent her fellow activists when she told the judge, "We feel that if we pay these fines we would be contributing to and supporting the injustice and immoral practices that have been performed in the arrest and conviction of the defendants." When Nash provocatively asked the mayor on the steps of City Hall, "Do you feel it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their race or color?", the mayor admitted that he did. Within a few weeks, six lunch counters in Nashville were serving blacks.
[edit] SNCC
In April 1960 Nash helped to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and quit school to lead its direct action wing. In 1961, she took over responsibility for the Freedom Rides from Birmingham, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi. The rides had been conceived by the Congress of Racial Equality, but after severe attacks, CORE's leader James L. Farmer, Jr. wanted to cancel them. Nash argued that, "We can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the movement is dead."
Nash also designed the strategy used by the SNCC in the Selma, Alabama "Right to Vote" campaign, and was an important organizer for the 1963 campaign in Birmingham. Originally fearful of jail, Nash was arrested dozens of times for her activities. She spent 30 days in a South Carolina jail after protesting segregation in Rock Hill in February 1961. In 1962, although she was four months pregnant, she was sentenced to two years in prison for teaching nonviolent tactics to children in Jackson, Mississippi, where she and husband James Bevel were living, but was released on appeal after serving a shorter term.
President, John F. Kennedy, appointed her to a national committee that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr. and others from 1961 to 1965, serving as an organizer, strategist, field staff person, race-relations staff person and workshop instructor. Nash later questioned the SCLC because of its dominance by males, especially clergymen.
In 1965, Martin Luther King gave the SCLC's highest award, the Rosa Parks Award, to Diane Nash and James Bevel. In 2003, Nash received the "Distinguished American Award" from the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation, and in 2004, the LBJ Award for Leadership in Civil Rights from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.
- Lisa Mullins, "Diane Nash: The Fire of the Civil Rights Movement", Barnhardt & Ashe Publishing, Inc., 2007, ISBN 978-0-9715402-8-6
[edit] Family life
Nash and James Bevel had two children before their divorce, Sherri and Douglass. Returning to Chicago, Nash worked in fair housing advocacy and real estate, and as an educator and lecturer. She appears in the award-winning documentary film series Eyes on the Prize and is featured in David Halberstam's book The Children.
