[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well, I must say that you are a black woman who
takes matters into your hands.
When I saw you climb that flagpole--
[LAUGHTER]
--and take that flag down, I said,
" She handles things directly."
[LAUGHTER]
I read about you in history books.
I have seen you in documentaries.
And, I mean, your work has been such an inspiration to me.
So it just really is an honor to meet you.
Thank you.
How did you get started in activism?
DIANE NASH: I was a student at Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee, in 1959.
I felt outrage when I obeyed segregation signs.
So I started looking for an organization that was
trying to combat segregation.
I found James Lawson's workshops.
He was teaching community people and students,
anyone who wanted to come, Gandhi's philosophy
and strategy of nonviolence.
I was at the right place at the right time,
and got an excellent education.
And from there, I took part in the sit-ins,
and later the Freedom Rides.
Bree, how did you become an activist?
For me, it wasn't that I said to myself, OK,
I'm going to be an activist.
It was that I witnessed an injustice.
The US Supreme Court struck down key parts
of the Voting Rights Act.
And then at that same time, while that was going on,
we had the Trayvon Martin case.
And so it was this strange kind of juxtaposition
of this attack on voting rights and this modern day Emmett
Till.
And I said, I need to take action.
You were obviously an outspoken black woman, an organizer,
an activist, at a time where people were still
uncomfortable in a lot of ways with the idea
of black women leadership.
What were those dynamics like?
DIANE NASH: The Civil Rights Movement
preceded the women's movement.
And so that was a problem.
In the student movement in Nashville,
I was the third chairperson.
The first two were men.
They missed meetings.
They missed demonstrations.
And we said we could get somebody
killed or injured if we don't have an efficient officers.
And I won't be modest.
They elected me because I was efficient.
Although I had opposition sometimes,
they had to respect my work.
Particularly with the Civil Rights Movement everybody
knows kind of like the key events, you know, key people.
But the movement as it existed really
was a lot of everyday people, right, the foot
soldiers of the movement.
Can you speak a little bit more to that reality
of how things happened?
DIANE NASH: It was ordinary people who did everything.
The local dentist took over the task of being
the movement's accountant.
The history books that we have in the schools
talk a lot about wars, generals, presidents.
They say very little about the history that citizens make.
The truth is that ordinary citizens make history.
BREE NEWSOME: In the leadup to scaling
the flag pole, when I reflected on to what extent the rights
that I have today is because of the courage
that you all exercised in your time.
I mean, that was a large part of what gave me
the courage to do what I did.