![Diane Nash, right, represented the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the White House in 1963.](https://ibw21.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Diane-Nash-Southern-Christian-Leadership-Conference-at-the-White-House-1963.jpg)
These women didn’t stand on ceremony; they accepted the risks of activism and fought for worlds where others might have freedoms that they themselves would never enjoy. By Janet Dewart Bell — During the civil-rights movement, African Americans led the fight to free this country from the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow. Though they all too often were—and remain—invisible to the public, African-American women played significant roles at all…