Diane Nash, a civil rights activist and Hyde Park Academy graduate, was honored for her activism last weekend by former classmates in an intimate celebration at the school.
The plaque honors Nash’s contributions to the civil rights movement, including her role organizing a series of Nashville student sit-ins in 1960 and Selma marches for voting rights in 1965. Nash is also credited with keeping the Freedom Rides alive in 1961, and is one of the co-founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that organized student participation in the civil rights movement across the South.
Nash’s work in the civil rights movement was pivotal in securing the desegregation of lunch counters and interstate bus travel, as well as the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Because of your brains, bravery and commitment to nonviolent social change, the world is a different place and a better place,” said Nash’s longtime friend Sylvia Anderson. In addition to dozens of Hyde Park Academy classmates, several other friends and family of Nash were also in attendance.
Nash was born in Hyde Park in 1938 to Leon and Dorothy Bolton Nash. In 1956, she graduated from what was then called Hyde Park High School, an integrated public school. When she left Hyde Park for Fisk University in Nashville in 1959, she was immediately confronted with the appalling treatment of Black people living under racist Jim Crow laws in the South, an experience that propelled her to act.
“Who knew, when she walked the halls of Hyde Park High School, that she had great leadership potential,” said Anderson. “(But) when Diane got to Fisk … her leadership gene went full throttle.”
Anderson detailed how Nash’s observation of and subjugation to the rampant discrimination in the South catalyzed her early protests against segregation. Though her involvement in sit-ins, marches and the Freedom Rides was nonviolent, these protests frequently put her in harm’s way.
“She was compelled to find a way to break down the segregation laws that demean Black citizens daily, and deprive them of their most basic rights to live freely and enjoy the fruits of their labor,” Anderson said. “(But) every participant in an act of nonviolent resistant to the segregation laws put their bodies and their very lives on the line every single time they took action.”
In 1961, CORE moved to discontinue its Freedom Rides due to extreme brutality against some of its riders. Nash, however, was determined to continue them, recruiting more than 400 new riders to step in. When then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy got the message that Nash would keep them going, he famously exclaimed, “Who in the hell is Diane Nash?”
“We not only know who she is, we know where she is. And she is right here with us,” Anderson said, just before presenting Nash with the plaque.
Roberta Siegel, another member of the class of 1956, said she started planning the ceremony last summer, right after Nash was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“This is just a first step in honoring her,”Siegel said, noting that some teachers have expressed interest in developing curriculums about Nash.
The plaque was designed by classmate and graphic designer Richmond Jones; its text was written by Anderson. Mounted on a wooden base, the plaque features a photo of President Joe Biden awarding Nash the Medal of Freedom, and is surrounded by six other photos of Nash during the civil rights movement.
Nash, who now lives in South Shore, also had a few words to share at the ceremony.
“The placing of this plaque is very important,” she said. “Students tend to think of historical figures as different and remote from them. The plaque will show them that a student just like them can make a difference.”
She recounted a catalyzing moment in her path to civil rights organizing. It wasn’t until after high school that she first read about Black history, and when she did, she would often have to put the book down to cry.
“I saw that Black people began fighting for freedom from the moment they got off of the slave ships,” Nash recalled. “I decided then that I wanted to be in that multi-generational continuum of freedom fighters.”
At 85 years old, Nash is also looking to the future. Concluding her remarks, she spoke of the importance of restoring voting rights across the country and fighting for electoral reform.
Of particular note was her advocacy for the restoration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. A decade ago, the Supreme Court gutted the act, which has allowed states to further pass their own restrictive laws.
Nash also called for the elimination of the Electoral College, superdelegates and the partisan congressional redistricting process known as gerrymandering.
“The six steps towards achieving what you want to achieve are investigation, education, negotiation, demonstration, resist and take steps to make sure that the problem does not reoccur,” she said. “Resistance is when you no longer will collaborate with the unjust system.”
The plaque will live in Hyde Park Academy’s library, where acting principal Dr. Rosette Edinburg said it will be incorporated into the school’s curriculum and student programming.
“(Its purpose) is to remind students about the game changers that have walked the halls of Hyde Park, to motivate them to continue making a connection between education and their next pathway,” Edinburg said.
Source : HydeParkHerald
