Diane Nash – The Blog of Awesome Women

Diane Nash: A Leader for Freedom

Diane was born in 1938 and raised in Chicago, Illinois by her parents Leon and Dorothy Nash. After she finished high school in Chicago, she went to attend Howard University in Washington, DC. After one year, she transferred to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. While Diane was living in Nashville, she was exposed to the Jim Crow Laws and their effects on the lives of Black people for the first time. The unfair treatment angered her and made her heart wrench, so Diane decided to join the civil rights movement, and this moved her to start several campaigns. Some of her campaigns included the integration of lunch counters in Nashville, the Freedom Riders, and the desegregation of interstate travel. She helped facilitate several voting rights initiatives, including the Alabama Voting Rights Project and the Selma Voting Rights Movement—both of which helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in congress.

“Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders.”

—Diane Nash

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Girls by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Diane Nash: Freedom Rider

Diane Nash is a civil rights activist and was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the civil rights movement. She cofounded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was instrumental in many of the student-led civil rights protests of the era. Nash was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a Catholic neighborhood. After graduating from high school, she attended Howard University before transferring to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In Nashville, Nash experienced Southern-style racial segregation for the first time in her life. She took part in the 1959 lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville that led Tennessee to become the first Southern state to desegregate its lunch counters. In 1960, she helped organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which would become a major force in the civil rights era. In 1961, she helped coordinate and participated in the Freedom Rides across the Deep South. Later that year, she became a full-time instructor, strategist, and organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She married and moved to Mississippi. There she helped organize voter registration drives and desegregation campaigns in the schools for the SCLC. She was arrested dozens of times for her actions in protests, and in 1965, she received the Rosa Parks Award from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1966, she joined the Vietnam Peace Movement. In the 1980s, she fought for women’s rights. Nash continues to be an outspoken advocate for change even now.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Black Women by Becca Anderson and MJ Fievre, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.