2017 MLK KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Diane Nash on “Courage, Conflict and Creative Maladjustment: Speaking Truth to Power across Generations”

Event time: 
Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Location: 
Battell Chapel See map
College and Elm Sts.
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Diane Nash, a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement, will offer this year’s MLK keynote address on “Courage, Conflict, and Creative Maladjustment: Speaking Truth to Power Across Generations.” Sharing her insights on finding the courage to face conflict and resist injustice, Nash will speak on how we can face every rising sun with hope and conviction in order to better our world together, even in dark times and when facing an uncertain future.

One of the most respected leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, Diane Nash is a former student activist and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Nash is widely recognized for her leadership in the first successful campaign to integrate lunch counters in Nashville. While she was an undergraduate at Fisk University, she coordinated the Nashville Student Movement Ride, a critical branch of the Freedom Rides, which sought to desegregate interstate travel, and served as a liaison between the student movement, the press and the United States Department of Justice. Nash also played a key role in bringing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Montgomery, AL in 1961 in support of the Freedom Riders. Additionally, Nash was integral in the Birmingham desegregation campaign of 1963 and the Selma voting rights campaign of 1965, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Please be sure to visit the University’s MLK Day website to read Ms. Nash’s bio and to watch these short videos on her many achievements that impacted all of our lives and the course of our world. (http://www.makers.com/diane-nash)

Free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:30pm.

Website/Contact: http://mlk.yale.edu / nkosi.oates@yale.edu

Sponsors: Yale College Dean’s Office, The Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, the Office of the Secretary & Vice President for Student Life of Yale University.