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Metro Parks Board won’t alter its rules to name a park after civil rights icon Diane Nash

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Black leaders march down Jefferson Street in 1960.
The history of the Civil Rights Movement in Black leaders march down Jefferson Street at the head of a group of 3,000 demonstrators April 19, 1960, and heading toward City Hall on the day of the Z. Alexander Looby bombing. In the first row, are the Rev. C.T. Vivian, left, Diane Nash of Fisk, and Bernard Lafayette of American Baptist Seminary.
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Some members of the Metro Parks Board were unwilling to waive a rule to rename Nashville’s Public Square Park after Diane Nash.

The rule states that a park can’t be named after someone who is still alive.

Councilmembers Nancy VanReece and Sharon Hurt requested an exception be made for Diane Nash — a Civil Rights icon who helped organize Nashville’s lunch counter sit-ins. The naming proposal has been floated in recent months and sought to change the name for the small, prominent park space immediately next to Metro’s historic courthouse and city hall.

VanReece says she is disappointed in Tuesday’s result, but won’t stop pushing for Nash to be honored.

“I move now to collaborate with anyone that welcomes the opportunity to recognize Diane Nash properly and with full honor while she is still here to receive it,” VanReece says.

Tari Hughes was the only member of the parks board who voted to waive the rule. She says she had more of an interest in seeing Nash honored prominently in this way.

But members who denied the request were concerned about the precedent it might set. In an emailed statement, board member Jeff Haynes says that there are other opportunities in the city to honor Nash while she is still alive.

Paige Pfleger, Criminal Justice Reporter

Paige Pfleger covers criminal justice for WPLN News. She has investigated guns and juvenile justice as a fellow with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, and her investigation into domestic violence and firearms dispossession won a regional Edward R. Murrow award and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and a Livingston Award. She previously covered criminal justice and addiction in Ohio and was named the state's reporter of the year by the Associated Press. Her work has appeared nationally on NPR, The Washington Post, Marketplace, and PRI's The World, and she has worked in the newsrooms of The Tennessean, Michigan Radio, WHYY, Vox and NPR headquarters in DC.

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