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Diane Nash is a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. She participated in the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the SNCC, and the Selma Voting Rights Movement, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.
- Overview
- Early life and education
- Activism
- Legacy and awards
Diane Nash, (born May 15, 1938, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), American civil rights activist who was a leading figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, especially known for her involvement in sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. Nash’s efforts contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Nash grew up in Chicago as the daughter of Dorothy (née Bolton) Nash and Leon Nash; the couple later divorced. She had a middle-class upbringing and was educated in both public and Roman Catholic schools. She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., for a year and then transferred to Fisk University in Nashville. She graduated with an English degree in 1961.
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Having grown up in Chicago, Nash had had little experience with racial segregation. However, that changed while in Nashville, and she later said, “Every time I obeyed a segregation rule, I felt like I was somehow agreeing I was too inferior to go through the front door or to use the facility that the ordinary public would use.” In 1959 she began attending workshops led by civil rights activist James Lawson, who taught nonviolent resistance. Although initially a skeptic, Nash became a staunch believer in nonviolent tactics.
About this time, Nash became the leader of the Student Central Committee, which was staging a series of sit-ins at segregated store lunch counters and other facilities in Nashville’s downtown area. Although the events drew media attention, most businesses remained segregated. Nash took the issue to Nashville Mayor Ben West, and she served on the biracial committee he established to study the issue. Nash’s efforts paid off in May 1960, when Nashville began integrating its lunch counters. It was the first city in the segregated South to do so.
In 1960 Nash became one of the original members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The following year she and other SNCC members staged a sit-in in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and were arrested. It was the first of a number of times that Nash was jailed for her activism. She was a vocal advocate of the “jail, no bail” strategy, which called for people to serve time instead of paying bail to be released. It was thought that staying in jail would bring more attention to the cause. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., later said that Nash was the “driving spirit in the nonviolent assault on segregation at lunch counters.”
While continuing to stage sit-ins throughout the South, in 1961 Nash coordinated the Freedom Rides, in which Blacks and whites rode buses together to protest segregation in bus terminals, restrooms, and other facilities associated with interstate travel. The riders sought to provoke the federal government into enforcing Supreme Court rulings that barred segregated interstate bus travel. When one of the Freedom Ride buses was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan, Nash insisted that the rides continue, saying, “We can’t let violence overcome.” The Freedom Rides proved successful, as the U.S. federal government intervened and enforced stricter guidelines to uphold the Court’s decisions.
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Nash played a key role in the civil rights movement, organizing campaigns that were central to the cause. Her efforts helped raise national awareness about segregation in the South and contributed to the passage of two landmark pieces of legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Nash has been the recipient of numerous awards. In 1965 the SCLC granted her its highest honour, the Rosa Parks Award. Nash also received the Distinguished American Award from the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation in 2003. The following year she was given the LBJ Award for Leadership in Civil Rights from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. Nash was also the recipient of the National Civil Rights Museum’s Freedom Award, in 2008. In 2022 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jan 24, 2018 · African American civil rights leader Diane Nash was prominently involved in some of the most consequential campaigns of the movement, including the Freedom Rides and the Selma Voting...
Mar 8, 2018 · Learn how Diane Nash risked her life to desegregate the South through nonviolent protests, including the Freedom Rides. She was arrested dozens of times, faced violence and discrimination, and met with President Kennedy.
Jul 7, 2022 · Learn about Diane Nash, a leader of the 1960s fight against segregation and the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree. Discover her role in the Freedom Rides, sit-ins, Selma march and more.
- Lucia Cheng
Learn about Diane Nash, a founding member of SNCC and a key organizer of the sit-in and Freedom Rides movements. She was a champion of nonviolence and a leader in the Birmingham and Selma campaigns.
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Apr 20, 2024 · Diane Nash, a key figure in the Nashville desegregation movement, received a plaza named after her at the Historic Metro Courthouse. She shared her insights on nonviolent resistance and the power of people to change oppression.
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