Honoring Diane Nash, Civil Rights Freedom fighter, Instigator

I have an office in a building in Nashville that was a site of some of the lunch counter sit-ins in the early 1960s. I often think of the group of Nashville-based freedom riders and non-violent protesters and the physical courage and moral fearlessness that something as simple as eating lunch or riding a bus "in the wrong place" required. I remain in awe of their bravery and their perseverance in "keeping their eyes on the prize". Diane Nash is not as well recognized nowadays as she deserves to be.


http://hellobeautiful.com/2016/02/01/who-is-diane-nash-2/
....Going to school in Nashville, TN was quite the culture shock after Nash’s years growing up in Chicago and briefly studying at Howard University. She was infuriated by the racial segregation she saw in Nashville and aligned with James Lawson’s nonviolence movement, taking his workshops and learning Mohandas Gandhi’s nonviolence methods. Nash became so passionate about the work that she ended up dropping out of college and becoming the founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960.

“I did not want to be chairperson. I was afraid to be chairperson,” Diane Nash said in a MAKERS interview. “And I remember thinking, ‘We’re facing white racists businessmen and politicians and who are we? A group of students, 18, 19, 20 years old.'”

Though a reluctant leader, Nash put her fears aside to become a more confident and effective organizer. A turning point for her came on April 19, 1960 when Z. Alexander Looby’s home was bombed; Looby served as the students’ attorney. In response, Nash led thousands of students in a march to the Nashville courthouse. Nash became even more famous for her power to influence other students and affect change after leading Nashville lunch counter sit-ins. At the height of the protests, Nash confronted the Mayor Ben West about the racist attacks students were receiving during the sit-ins. After being confronted, West publicly stated that the attacks were wrong and within six weeks, Nashville became the first city to integrate its lunch counters.

“We presented Southern white racists with a new set of options,” Nash once said in an interview with USA Today. “Kill us or desegregate.”

Nash grew so fearless that she spent 30 days in jail in solidarity with the “Rock Hill Nine,” another group of students sent to prison for their lunch counter protests. She then went on to lead the freedom rides from Birmingham, AL to Jackson, MS even after the Ku Klux Klan had burned a bus along the route as a scare tactic. Nash worked alongside Bernard Lafayette and now congressman John Lewis to recruit volunteers for the rides—defying the Kennedy administration’s efforts to push her into another, less-incendiary platform of voting rights.

“It was clear to me that if we allowed the Freedom Ride to stop at that point, just after so much violence had been inflicted, the message would have been sent that all you have to do to stop a nonviolent campaign is inflict massive violence,” Nash said in Freedom Riders.

.......(more at link)