Diane Nash was a founding member of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). She started her activist career when she attened Fisk University in Tennessee. While there, she, along with NAACP leader Ella Baker, organized successful lunch counter sit-ins in downtown Nashville. Fueled by the triumph of the sit-ins, they moved on to set up Freedom Rides to integrate interstate bus companies in 1961
Diane
She met and married the Rev. James Bevel, a fighter in the cause like her and they moved to Jackson, Mississippi to oversee Black voter registration and school desegregation. She became the liaison between SNCC and Rev. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was on the front line during the march on the calamitous Edmund Petus Bridge (March 7, 1965) which became known as "Bloody Sunday" due to the violence unleashed by law enforcement that day on the marchers. Tensions were high as Blacks had come together and were not using the transit system to get around until it was integrated. That strike put a hole in the transit system's pocket. Defiant, those opposed to the wanted change, set a bus on fire to emphazise their displeasure but Nash kept the Freedom Rides going, undeterred by the perturbed or by then President Lyndon B. Johnson's advisors. They'd told her to cease and desist but she igged them. LOL.
early and later James Bevel
She was had successes in civil rights agendas but not in her personal life. The Bevels divorced after 7 years and 2 children.. Still, they held to the cause separately. Diane did not re-marry; James went on the wed 3 more times, endured a messy, salacious family court case and passed at the age of 72 in 2008.
Now 81 years of age, Diane has persevered and holds to her beliefs.
Diane now
She and James were depicted in the Ava Duvernay film "Selma" by actors Tessa Thompson and Common.
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