Diane Nash is organizing all your protests
Diane Nash. What’d she do. If you’ve watched a documentary on the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, you’ve probably heard of SNCC: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. You’ve probably also heard of Freedom Riders. And maybe the Alabama Voting Rights Project and the Selma Voting Rights Movement. Diane Nash was the leader of Nashville sit-ins, which eventually spread to 69 cities. She was one of the founders of SNCC. She organized Freedom Riders, finding new Riders to take the place of the first wave.
She was arrested, harassed, and threatened, while maintaining her belief in the power of nonviolent action. Look at her face in that photo. That is an “I’m done” face, but she channeled that power through nonviolence, to tremendous effect.
“It took many thousands of people to make the changes that we made, people whose names we’ll never know. They’ll never get credit for the sacrifices they’ve made, but I remember them.” - Diane Nash
To see more about Diane Nash, check out the movie Selma, where she’s played by the perennially awesome Tessa Thompson. To read more about women in the Civil Rights Movement, check out Lighting the Fires of Freedom by Janet Dewart Bell, and to read more about the Freedom Riders, check out Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Raymond Arsenault or Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Movement by Diane McWhorter.