Through researching civil rights leaders, Lauren Martin ’10 has found her own voice. As a McNair scholar, Lauren has spent summer 2009 completing her research project, which is titled “Emerging Leadership: Diane Nash and the Freedom Rides.” She says one of the many benefits of summer research is the amount of time to focus on her project.

“I’m taking a comparative look at the leadership styles of Ella Baker and Martin Luther King Jr. in order to locate the relevancy of Diane Nash's activism during the Freedom Rider era,” the Bloomfield, CT, native and Bloomfield High School graduate explains. “Last spring, on SLU’s exchange program with Fisk University, I learned about the role of women in the civil rights movement.  I was motivated to research Nash, an emerging student leader at Fisk who came from a Northern state, wanted to take immediate action and did so by becoming a critical part of the Freedom Rides,” Lauren says.

“She wanted to know what people could do to make society better in a peaceful way and saw the movement as part of a greater social issue, rather than just a racial issue. My research breaks down the rise of black power and focuses on Baker’s role in the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Movement, as well as how she developed a multiracial base.”

Lauren, a global studies major and African-American studies minor, is working with professors in both global studies and history, and hopes to continue her research into her Senior-Year Experience (SYE).  “It’s been great collaborating with both professors; they’ve allowed me to develop my thinking organically,” she says.