MURFREESBORO
— Diane Nash is using her history-changing work for civil rights to advise
and encourage those today who want to help America ensure freedom and justice
for all.
"It was an interesting time and I'm glad I got
to see it," the trailblazer for equality said Wednesday, Sept. 14, at
MTSU’s Constitution Day celebration while discussing those frightening but
uplifting days.
"I wish young people today could see their
grandparents involved in that movement, with its discipline and strategy and
courage. We were brilliant."
Nash, who helped integrate Nashville lunch counters
with peaceful sit-ins in 1960 and desegregate bus travel with the Freedom
Riders and ultimately aided passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, recalled
the segregated Nashville of the 1950s and '60s, when she was a student at Fisk
University.
The sight of black citizens sitting on downtown
curbs, forced to eat their noon meals brought from home or bought from
restaurants' side windows and back doors while their white co-workers dined in
indoor comfort, both infuriated her and broke her heart.
"I found that dehumanizing and humiliating,"
the Chicago native said, noting that Fisk students were relatively insulated
from racism on campus but faced it almost as soon as they stepped off the
university grounds.
"It wasn’t even possible to go downtown with a
girlfriend and window-shop and treat yourself to a quick lunch. I found segregation
very limiting. … When I obeyed a segregation rule, I felt like I was agreeing
that I was too inferior to other people to do what the rest of the public did.
I found that intolerable.”
During the Sept. 14 MTSU event in Tucker Theatre,
which included a post-lecture discussion led by public history doctoral student
Torren Gatson, Nash told the full house that she “enthusiastically” supports
efforts to bring justice and equality by groups that include the Black Lives
Matter network. You can watch a brief video from the event at http://youtu.be/RnIKpu_n6_w.
She cautioned, however, that “there’s a difference
in just protesting and in conducting a nonviolent campaign,” referring to the
extensive training that she and other activists underwent in workshops with the
Rev. James Lawson. Lawson, who visited MTSU last year for the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Voting Rights Act, studied
and shared Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of civil resistance through nonviolence,
self-discipline, truth, fearlessness, respect and economic strategies.
“I think they’re doing what they saw, which were
the demonstrations and the marches,” Nash said of today’s activists working for
change. “They did not see the workshops, where we were really trained in
philosophy and strategy and really thinking through what we wanted to
accomplish and what love is.
“They didn’t see the door-to-door canvassing to get
the community involved. They didn’t see many of the educational meetings,” she
continued. “We educated the community in civics and in government and the role
of citizens in government. Demonstrating constituted about 20 percent of what
we did.
“We were not just protesting. … Very often, the
powers that be know you don’t like what they’re doing, but they’re determined
to do it anyway. … You can’t build good will in a beloved community by visiting
violence on someone. The unjust political system is the enemy, an unjust
education system. Ignorance, racism, sexism, mental illness — those are the
enemies.”
Nash’s talk was one of the highlights of the
daylong celebration across campus in observation of the 229th anniversary of
the Constitution’s signing.
Students, faculty, staff and visitors read the
historic document at multiple sites across MTSU throughout the day, and voter
registration tables were set up in busy locations to help citizens prepare for
the Nov. 8 federal and state elections. Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter
Tracy Nelson, the blues-rock icon who fronted Mother Earth in the 1960s and
’70s and now sings across the country, also performed in the McWherter Learning
Resources Center.
MTSU observes the
Constitution’s 1787 signing every year with special events and programs
organized by the university chapter of the American Democracy Project.
Tuesday, Oct. 11, is the
final voter registration deadline in Tennessee to cast a ballot on Nov. 8.
For more information
about American Democracy Project events at MTSU, email amerdem@mtsu.edu or visit http://www.mtsu.edu/amerdem.
No comments:
Post a Comment