Friday's Labor Folklore
Who the hell is Diane Nash? 
The narrative of John Seigenthaler
Assistant to the Attorney General, 1961

My phone in the hotel rings and it's the Attorney General and he opens the conversation, "who the hell is Diane Nash? Call her and let her know what is waiting for the Freedom Riders."

So I called her and said, "I understand that there are more Freedom Riders coming down from Nashville. You must stop them if you can."

Her response was, "they're not going to turn back. They are on their way to Birmingham and they will be there shortly."

You know that spiritual, "like a tree standing by the water, I will not be moved?" She would not be moved.

And I felt my voice go up another decibel, and another and soon I was shouting, "young woman, do you understand what you are doing? You understand you're going to get somebody killed?"

And there's a pause and she said, "sir, you should know we all signed our last wills and testaments last night before they left. We know someone will be killed but we cannot let violence overcome non-violence." That's virtually a direct quote of the words that came out of that child's mouth.

Here I am, an official of the United States government representing the president and the attorney general, talking to a student of Fisk University and she, in a very quiet but strong way, gave me a lecture.

(video: PBS, 2 min.)  
Diane Nash & other sit-in leaders of the
Nashville Student Movement, 1960 
Photo: SNCC digital gateway
Standing on the steps of City Hall
Diane Nash confronts Mayor Ben West of Nashville by asking a soul-searching question.    
Click here.
(video: 3.45 min.)
  • Diane Nash was born in Chicago in 1938 to a middle-class family; she attended Catholic schools.
  • Her father was a World War 2 veteran; her mother worked as a keypunch operator during the war.
  • Diane attended Howard University in Washington, DC then transferred to Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn.
  • She participated in workshops led by James Lawson, an advocate of direct action and non-violent civil disobedience. (Lawson trained many future leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including John Lewis.)
  • In Nashville she became a leading activist in the first successful campaign to integrate lunch counters. She was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) At age 22 she was arrested and went to jail in support of students who were imprisoned after a lunch counter sit-in (1961)
  • She married James Bevel who she met in the local civil rights movement. After seven years of marriage the couple divorced; Nash never remarried.
  • Arrested dozens of times for her civil rights activities, she sometimes refused bail. She helped coordinate the Freedom Ride protests.
  • Nash was active in the Selma Voting Rights Campaign which laid the groundwork for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which protected African-Americans and other minorities registering and voting in elections.
  • While in the vanguard of the national civil rights movement she, along with Dr. King, opposed the Vietnam War. Later she would become a vocal opponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Featured in numerous documentary films about the civil rights movement; received the Award for Leadership in Civil Rights by the LBJ Library and Museum in 2004. On July 1, 2022 President Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  • Diane Nash continues to believe in the power of nonviolent action to solve conflicts.
Diane Nash has a message for young activists.
Click here. 
(video: 1.20 min.)
Joe and Eddie
Joe Gilbert and Eddie Brown, both born in 1941, appeared on more than 20 major television shows and recorded eight albums. Both were born and raised in the South -- Joe, in New Orleans and Eddie in Norfolk, Virginia.

By the mid-1950s each of their families migrated to Berkeley, California. It was there - at the Willard Middle School - that the two boys met, when they joined an a cappella choir. At the Berkeley High School Talent Show (1956) they sang as a duo and won first place; they recorded their first album in 1962.

Their career ended in 1966 when Joe was killed in an auto accident while driving home from a gig at the Cosmos Club in Seal Beach, California.
by
Joe and Eddie
Black history is American history.
Sources from which I summarized, paraphased or quoted directly: Wikipedia; White House Briefing, 7/1/2022, press release; Blessed are the Peacemakers by Daniel L. Buttry, 2011.

forward to a friend