THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An ongoing legacy of resistance: Diane Nash on civil rights

by Meredith Alt

“Oppression always requires the cooperation of the oppressed,” civil rights leader Diane Nash said during her speech in the Memorial Union April 12.  And when the oppressed refuse to cooperate any longer, the relationship changes.

 A veteran of the civil rights movement and an ongoing proponent of nonviolent action, Nash’s speech addressed the 1960s civil rights movement and its legacy for contemporary struggles against oppression.  What we did in the south, she said, referring specifically to the African Americans who created a movement during that time, was to make ourselves people who could no longer be segregated.  “Kill us or don’t,” she recalled the changing sentiment, “but you can’t segregate us.”

Nash’s speech, titled “Civil and Voting Rights in the 1960s: A Legacy for the 21st Century,” was part of a series of University of Wisconsin events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. More than simply remembering the passage of the Voting Rights Act, however, civil rights activists, scholars, community members, local political figures, and students talked about lessons learned and paths that still need to be paved.

 Attacks on civil liberties continue to exist today, Nash observed. With the high degree of success the nonviolent movement achieved in the 1960s, Nash said she was surprised the strategies had not been used more recently. She explained that she was talking about a specific philosophy and strategies that had been very successful during the civil rights movement.

 When Nash spoke about nonviolence, the phrase encapsulated more than simply the absence of violence. She outlined principles and multiple phases of “agapic energy,” which she stated draws on productive power and love of humankind.

Nash’s phases of nonviolent resistance emphasize that people are not the enemy. Unjust political and economic systems are the enemy, she said, and resisting these forms of oppression requires strategizing. The sequentially-ordered strategies she outlined, which included educating other activists and selecting the most effective forms of resistance, revealed Nash’s belief in the power of organized groups rather than individual heroism.

One of a number of determined organizers during the 1960s, Nash spoke about her leadership while also challenging the idea that individual leaders propelled the movement. She respectfully noted that Martin Luther King  Jr. was not the leader, but rather a very important spokesperson. “It was a people’s movement,” she said, and it developed skills in people or brought skills out of people that they didn’t know they had.

Nash’s own contributions to the civil rights movement include co-founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), helping coordinate the 1961 Freedom Rides protesting segregated interstate travel, and working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to develop the Selma, Ala. campaign for voting rights.

Response to Nash over the years may well bespeak her point that nonviolent action in fact poses powerful challenges. Nash had her phone wiretapped, her mail opened every day for a period of time, and she was arrested multiple times. Her first child was almost born in jail.

Ultimately, Nash’s speech expanded the notion of “legacy” to make social justice work of the past 50 years seem more fluid. People now, as they did fifty years ago, need to recognize that “no one will solve the problems [of the world] except you and me,” she stated.  The lessons to remember are that civil rights struggles are ongoing.  

 Nash also made clear that the significance of what they were beginning was known to people during the civil rights movement. “My contemporaries had you in mind when we did work in the 1960s,” she said. The numerous activists knew what was at stake and that people were risking their lives as they continued to march.

 “In a number of cases, people began to freak out,” she said, pausing thoughtfully. “I guess that’s the best way to put it. They would freak out. And someone would slip an arm around the person and say, ‘we are doing this for future generations.’”