Editor, Gazette-Journal:“Since my child will be a black child, born in Mississippi, whether I am in jail or not he will be born in prison.”— Diane Nash
(One month only for “Women’s History”? HerStory. We males are still too glib/smug/spiteful/comfortable in America.)
Among the boldest Civil Rights thinkers and nonviolent youth activists was Diane Nash (later Bevel), 21-year-old co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. A key strategist and participant in sit-ins and Freedom Rides throughout the South, she helped spur elder, famous males such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to stretch their wings of ethical courage even wider to take America’s justice movements for universal dignity to greater heights than ever.
Yet for decades she never received proper recognition. In a May 2011 five-day conference in Jackson, Mississippi, recognizing the Freedom Riders’ 50th anniversary, nowhere did her name appear. If that’s not sexism, I’ve never been a sexist. Her principled ...