Civil Rights icon, Chicago native awarded Medal of Freedom

President Joe Biden awards the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to civil rights leader Diane Nash during a ceremony Thursday in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, played a key role in the Freedom Rides and the 1965 Selma voting rights campaigns. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press)

Chicago native Diane Nash was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor on Thursday by President Joe Biden in Washington D.C.

Nash was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work organizing “some of the most important civil rights campaigns of the 20^th century,” the White House said in a statement. “Nash worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., who described her as the ‘driving spirit in the nonviolent assault on segregation at lunch counters.’”