An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 10/29/2020
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"We presented Southern white racists with a new set of options: Kill us or desegregate."
Strategist Diane Nash was catapulted to notoriety in her early twenties, when she stepped up and organized sit-ins at lunch counters in the South during the civil rights era. Nash was born into relative privilege in 1938 Chicago, eventually attending Howard University in Washington, D.C., and then transferring to Fisk University in Nashville. It was in Tennessee that she had her first real life experience colliding with institutionalized racism --in this case "Coloreds Only" restroom signage at a state fair. Much like high school student Barbara Johns (see Lesson #16 in this series), Nash internalized these realities at an early age, and in short order was coordinating nonviolent student protests at Fisk, handing out leaflets, and studying other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Alongside Fannie Lou Hamer (see previous lesson in this series), Nash emerged as another key figure in organizing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), training and preparing student protestors for the inevitable harassment that they would face. Alongside John Lewis and other CORE Freedom Riders, Nash routinely faced arrest and opted not to pay bail money, so as to force the legal system to officially acknowledge and confront its own policies. During the summer of 1961 when the Freedom Riders faced their greatest and bloodiest surge of mob violence in Birmingham, Dr. James Farmer (see Lesson #17 in this series) was on the verge of calling off the rides. Nash arranged for students to fill the buses and coordinated the remainder of their trip the rest of the way to Jackson, Mississippi. It bought the movement sufficient time for then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy to take official notice of the situation. Nash would later be a member of President John F. Kennedy's civil rights commission, from which ultimately arose the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Nash's poise, striking good looks, and easy presence in front of television cameras made her an invaluable asset. In what is perhaps her most famous moment, Nash once confronted the then-mayor of Nashville, Ben West, on the front steps of City Hall and asked --with cameras rolling-- if he felt it was wrong to discriminate against a person based solely on skin color. Mayor West candidly admitted the moral injustice, and less than a month later Tennessee lunch counters were serving black customers.
Recommended reading: Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970, by Lynne Olson, 2001.
Homework: view "American Experience" PBS documentary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2p5zvQlQ0k
Next page - Lesson 53: Ella Baker