For those of you ladies that may not have heard of Diane Nash before, please be prepared to be inspired by her story. She is described as soft spoken but a force to be reckoned with at the same time. Diane was a leader of the Nashville Student Movement in 1961. On her 23rd birthday, Diane Nash agreed to coordinate a second wave of Freedom Rides in order to keep the movement alive. This was after several days of bloodshed, the original group of Freedom Riders were stranded in Alabama. No bus drivers were willing to take them any further, and they were surrounded by a hostile, racist mob
—the Freedom Rides were thought to be over and unsuccessful. In the middle of final exams, 21 students from various Nashville colleges left school to join the fight for equality. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy heard that more students were continuing the Freedom Rides, he called his assistant, John Seigenthaler and opened the phone call with, 'Who the hell is Diane Nash? Call her and let her know what is waiting for the Freedom Riders.'" Seigenthaler called Diane to try to stop the Freedom Riders from Nashville. He told her that they would be killed. Diane responded to him by letting him know that the students knew of the danger that lay ahead. The night before they left Nashville, Diane told him they all signed their last wills and testaments. Diane chose to lead the Nashville Freedom Rides because she'd had enough.
"If you went downtown in Nashville during the lunch hour, blacks would be sitting on the curb eating their lunch that they had brought from home or had bought from a restaurant on a take-out basis. It was humiliating, and I hated it." - Diane Nash
1 comment:
I first heard of the Freedom Riders on Oprah. I grew up in Nashville and remember a time when blacks were outside eating. I was also the child that would ask why we couldn't go into a restaurant.
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