Diane Nash

Hello, loves. It's the first of February and I am so excited to announce the beginning of Black History Month. I want to share one of my favorite inspirational individuals with you, the beautiful and brave Diane Nash.

Diane was born in 1938 in Chicago to Dorothy and Leon Nash, a World War II veteran. She grew up in a sheltered Catholic home, where her grandmother placed an emphasis on etiquette and manners. She competed in beauty pageants and, when she was fifteen, had the opportunity to attend a Chicago modeling school, but was turned away when she told them she was colored. She attended college for a year at Howard University before transferring to Fisk University in Nashville in 1959. It was in Tennessee that she became aware of how the Jim Crow laws affected the lives of African-Americans. Disgusted with segregation, Diane expressed a longing for leadership and soon began attending workshops with the Nashville Student Movement.

In February 1960, Diane became the leader of the Nashville sit-ins, when she and other students would sit at "whites only" lunch counters downtown, where African-Americans were permitted to shop but had to take their lunches to go. The groups of students dressed to the nines, prepared to go to jail for disturbing segregation. Violent white mobs attacked them, but they stood their ground with dignity and determination. Diane became somewhat of a spokesperson for the sit-ins, due to her well-spoken, composed manner when speaking to the press and the authorities. Unfortunately, the spotlight sometimes led to Diane being singled out by angry mobs as "the one to get."

Matthew Walker, Peggy Alexander, Diane Nash, and Stanley Hemphill at the Post House Restaurant in 1960

As the city of Nashville began to lose tourism dollars as a result of the sit-ins, mayor Ben West stepped in to negotiate a compromise. On camera, Diane asked the mayor if he believed that it was wrong to discriminate against a person solely because of their skin color. Mayor West answered that it was not morally right to sell African-American shoppers merchandise but refuse them service at the lunch counters. A few weeks later, Nashville became the first Southern city where blacks and whites sat together for lunch.

Diane helped to establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and left college to work for the organization full-time. She worked to organize Freedom Rides from Birmingham to Jackson, tirelessly working to challenge the Jim Crow system. The Freedom Riders were savagely attacked in Alabama during which the Ku Klux Klan set a bus on fire.

After the shocking Klan bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church which killed four young girls in Birmingham, Nash was recruited by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Since the Reconstruction Era, it had been very difficult for African-Americans to vote in the south, although they had the legal right to. Jim Crow laws allowed southern states to amend their constitutions and pass legislation to impose absurd voting restrictions, including literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements, moral charatcer tests, and grandfather clauses which allowed otherwise ineligible people to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded most African-Americans due to many of their grandfathers having been slaves).

The SCLC, joined by organizers from SNCC, planned a march of hundreds of protesters from Selma to Montgomery. Diane and other marchers attempted to cross the Pettus bridge before being attacked by Alabama State Troopers with clubs and tear gas. The gruesome images were broadcast worldwide, shocking the nation. Soon afterward, President Lyndon Johnson enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the ability to vote to all citizens regardless of race. 

Diane is an absolute inspiration and heroine to me. She has beauty, brilliance, and bravery... she helped to change the nation by fighting for her rights, my rights - all of our rights. What a beautiful person, inside and out.