Diane Nash (1938-)

Name

Diane Nash (1938-)

Date of Birth

May 15, 1938

State Assigned Gender

Female

Occupation

Real Estate Agent & Lecturer

Biography

Diane Nash was a key Catholic and Female Civil Rights activist.

Diane Judith Nash was born May 15, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. Both parents were World War II veterans: Her father, Leon, was a clerical worker; her mother, Dorothy, worked as a keypunch operator. Nash spent her first seven years of life with her grandmother, Carrie Bolton. After being discharged from the military, the couple separated. Dorothy eventually married a Pullman car waiter named James Baker. She grew up Catholic and attended Catholic schools until high school. As a teen, Nash was a renowned beauty queen. After graduating in 1956, she attended Howard University as a law student. She transferred to Fisk University in 1959, where she would begin her activism.
After experiencing Jim Crow laws in Nashville, she learned that James Lawson conducted nonviolent direct action workshops at the First Baptist Church, and she later joined. In 1960, she participated in the Nashville sit-ins in February. In April, she co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the spring of 1961, Nash and her soon-to-be husband, James Bevel, participated in the Freedom Rides, resulting in her becoming the head of SNCC’s direct action campaigns that summer. Bevel and Nash joined the SCLC in Mississippi as field staff organizers in 1962. They contributed to the Selma Campaign, Birmingham Campaign, and March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Nash would leave SCLC in 1965 due to the organization’s departure from nonviolence. Nash and Bevel divorced in 1968, and she moved back to Chicago to advocate for equal housing and worked in real estate.

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Student Researcher

Kendoll Hayes