Diane Nash says she shares her Presidential Medal of Freedom with everyone who ‘sacrificed so much for the cause’

President Biden presented Nashville Civil Rights leader Diane Nash with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on Thursday.

As a student at Fisk University, Diane Nash staged sit-ins to desegregate Nashville’s lunch counters and helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. When she got a call from the U.S. Attorney General’s top deputy, warning her about violence at the next stop on her Freedom Ride, Nash said, “We know someone will be killed, but we can’t let violence overcome non-violence.”

“And yet she is the first to say the medal is shared with hundreds of thousands of patriotic Americans who sacrificed so much for the cause of liberty and justice for all,” President Joe Biden said during the ceremony. “And by the way, she asked me to make sure to add that because she didn’t want to take all the credit herself.”

Nash has also been honored locally. Last year, Metro renamed the plaza in front of the city’s historic courtroom for her. More than six decades prior, Nash had joined thousands on those steps in protest of violence against a fellow civil rights activist.

Watch the ceremony for Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients on July 7, 2022. Diane Nash is honored at 41:30. 

Happening Now: President Biden, alongside Vice President Harris and the Second Gentleman, awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to seventeen recipients. https://t.co/NWnDkg5SWH

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 7, 2022