Anne Braden
Encyclopedia
Anne McCarty Braden was an American advocate of racial equality. Born in Louisville, Kentucky
, and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama
, Braden grew up in a white middle-class family that accepted southern racial morals wholeheartedly. A devout Episcopalian, Braden was bothered by racial segregation
, but never questioned it until her college years at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia
. After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama
, she returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for the Louisville Times. There, she met and in 1948 married fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. She became a supporter of the civil rights movement
at a time when it was unpopular among southern whites.
's run on the Progressive Party
for the presidency. Soon after Wallace’s defeat, they left mainstream journalism
to apply their writing talents to the interracial left wing of the labor movement through the FE (Farm and Equipment Workers) Union, representing Louisville’s International Harvester employees.
Even as the postwar labor movement splintered and grew less militant, civil rights
causes heated up. In 1950, Anne Braden spearheaded a hospital desegregation drive in Kentucky. She endured her first arrest in 1951 when she led a delegation of southern white women organized by the Civil Rights Congress
to Mississippi
to protest the execution of Willie McGee
, an African American man convicted of the rape of a white woman, Willette Hawkins.
family who knew the Bradens through association, approached them with a proposal that would drastically alter all lives involved. Like so many other Americans after World War II
, Andrew Wade wanted to buy a house in a suburban neighborhood. Because of Jim Crow housing practices, the Wades had been unsuccessful for months in their quest to purchase a home on their own. The Bradens, who never wavered in their support for African American civil rights, agreed to purchase the home for the Wades. On May 15, 1954, Andrew Wade and his wife Charlotte spent their first night in their new home in the Louisville suburb of Shively, Kentucky
. Upon discovering that blacks had moved in, white neighbors burned a cross in front of the house, shot out windows, and condemned the Bradens for buying it on the Wades’ behalf. Their fears may have been stoked in part by the timing of the move which came only two days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark condemnation of school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education
, Topeka, KS. Six weeks later, amid constant community tensions, the Wades’ new house was dynamited one evening while they were out. While Vernon Bown (an associate of the Wades and the Bradens) was indicted for the bombing, the actual bombers were never sought nor brought to trial.
McCarthyism
affected the ordeal. The investigation turned from segregationist violence to the alleged Communist Party
affiliations of some of those who had supported the Wades in their housing quest. Segregationists charged that these Communists had engineered the bombing to provide a cause célèbre and fund-raising opportunity, but this was never proven. Nonetheless, on October 1954, Anne and Carl Braden and five other whites were charged with sedition
. After a sensationalized trial, Carl Braden—the perceived ringleader—was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. As Anne and the other defendants awaited a similar fate, Carl served eight months, but out on $40,000 bond after a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Pennsylvania v. Nelson in 1956) invalidated state sedition laws (Steven Nelson
had been arrested under the Pennsylvania Sedition Law but the federal Smith Act
superseded it). All charges were dropped against Braden, but the Wades moved back to Louisville.
, and became a runner-up for the National Book Award
. Although their radical politics marginalized them among many of their own generation, the Bradens were reclaimed by young student activists of the 1960s. They were among the civil rights movement’s most dedicated white allies.
The Bradens also had three children: James, born in 1951, a 1972 Rhodes Scholar, and a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School
(where he preceded Barack Obama
as editor of the Harvard Law Review), has lived and practiced law for over 25 years in San Francisco, California
. Elizabeth, born in 1960, has worked as a teacher in many countries around the world, serving as of 2006 in that capacity in rural Ethiopia
. Anita, born in 1953, died of a pulmonary disorder at age 11. While raising their children, the couple remained deeply involved in the civil rights cause and the subsequent social movements it prompted from the 1960s to the 1970s.
After Carl’s death in 1975, Anne Braden remained among the nation’s most outspoken white anti-racist activists. She instigated the formation of a new regional multi-racial organization, the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice (SOC), which initiated battles against environmental racism
. She became an instrumental voice in the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition of the 1980s and in the two Jesse Jackson
presidential campaigns, as well as organizing across racial divides in the new environmental, women’s, and anti-nuclear movements that sprang up in that decade.
From the 1980s into the 2000s she wrote for Southern Exposure, Southern Changes, and the National Guardian and Fellowship.
No longer a pariah, Anne received the American Civil Liberties Union
’s first Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty in 1990 for her contributions to civil liberties. As she aged, her activism focused more on Louisville, where she remained a leader in anti-racist drives and taught social justice history classes at local universities. Anne Braden died on March 6, 2006. The Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research was established at the University of Louisville in November, 2006 and was officially opened on April 4, 2007. The institute focuses on social justice globally, but concentrates on the southern United States and the Louisville area. Over her nearly six decades of activism, her life touched almost every modern U.S. social movement, and her message to them all was the centrality of racism and the responsibility of whites to combat it.
group Flobots
paid tribute with the song "Anne Braden" on their 2007 album Fight With Tools
. The track includes several audio samples of Anne Braden (Courtesy of Dr. Vincent Harding and the Veterans of Hope Project), describing her life and thoughts on race in her own words.
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
, and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama
Anniston, Alabama
Anniston is a city in Calhoun County in the state of Alabama, United States.As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is 24,276. According to the 2005 U.S. Census estimates, the city had a population of 23,741...
, Braden grew up in a white middle-class family that accepted southern racial morals wholeheartedly. A devout Episcopalian, Braden was bothered by racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
, but never questioned it until her college years at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
, she returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for the Louisville Times. There, she met and in 1948 married fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. She became a supporter of the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
at a time when it was unpopular among southern whites.
Early activism
In 1948, Anne and Carl Braden immersed themselves in Henry WallaceHenry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
's run on the Progressive Party
Progressive Party (United States, 1948)
The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...
for the presidency. Soon after Wallace’s defeat, they left mainstream journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
to apply their writing talents to the interracial left wing of the labor movement through the FE (Farm and Equipment Workers) Union, representing Louisville’s International Harvester employees.
Even as the postwar labor movement splintered and grew less militant, civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
causes heated up. In 1950, Anne Braden spearheaded a hospital desegregation drive in Kentucky. She endured her first arrest in 1951 when she led a delegation of southern white women organized by the Civil Rights Congress
Civil Rights Congress
The Civil Rights Congress was a civil rights organization formed in 1946 by a merger of the International Labor Defense and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. It became known for involvement in civil rights cases such as the Trenton Six and justice for Isaiah Nixon. The CRC...
to Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
to protest the execution of Willie McGee
Willie McGee (convict)
Willie McGee was an African American from Laurel, Mississippi, who was sentenced to death in 1945 for the rape of Willette Hawkins, a white housewife....
, an African American man convicted of the rape of a white woman, Willette Hawkins.
The Wade case
In 1954, the Wades, an African AmericanAfrican American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
family who knew the Bradens through association, approached them with a proposal that would drastically alter all lives involved. Like so many other Americans after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Andrew Wade wanted to buy a house in a suburban neighborhood. Because of Jim Crow housing practices, the Wades had been unsuccessful for months in their quest to purchase a home on their own. The Bradens, who never wavered in their support for African American civil rights, agreed to purchase the home for the Wades. On May 15, 1954, Andrew Wade and his wife Charlotte spent their first night in their new home in the Louisville suburb of Shively, Kentucky
Shively, Kentucky
Shively is a city in Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 15,157 at the 2000 census. It is located southwest of Louisville, Kentucky and directly adjoins the larger city. Shively is centered around the junction of US 60 and the Dixie Highway.-History:Shively was first...
. Upon discovering that blacks had moved in, white neighbors burned a cross in front of the house, shot out windows, and condemned the Bradens for buying it on the Wades’ behalf. Their fears may have been stoked in part by the timing of the move which came only two days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark condemnation of school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
, Topeka, KS. Six weeks later, amid constant community tensions, the Wades’ new house was dynamited one evening while they were out. While Vernon Bown (an associate of the Wades and the Bradens) was indicted for the bombing, the actual bombers were never sought nor brought to trial.
McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
affected the ordeal. The investigation turned from segregationist violence to the alleged Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
affiliations of some of those who had supported the Wades in their housing quest. Segregationists charged that these Communists had engineered the bombing to provide a cause célèbre and fund-raising opportunity, but this was never proven. Nonetheless, on October 1954, Anne and Carl Braden and five other whites were charged with sedition
Sedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
. After a sensationalized trial, Carl Braden—the perceived ringleader—was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. As Anne and the other defendants awaited a similar fate, Carl served eight months, but out on $40,000 bond after a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Pennsylvania v. Nelson in 1956) invalidated state sedition laws (Steven Nelson
Steve Nelson (activist)
Stjepan Mesaros, best known as Steve Nelson was a Croatian-born American political activist. Nelson achieved public notoriety as the political commissar of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and a leading functionary of the Communist Party, USA...
had been arrested under the Pennsylvania Sedition Law but the federal Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
superseded it). All charges were dropped against Braden, but the Wades moved back to Louisville.
Later activism
Blacklisted from local employment, the Bradens took jobs as field organizers for the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), a small, New Orleans-based civil rights organization whose mission was to solicit white southern support for the beleaguered southern civil rights movement. In the years before southern civil rights violations made national news, the Bradens developed their own media. Both through SCEF’s monthly newspaper, The Southern Patriot, and through numerous pamphlets and press releases publicizing major civil rights campaigns. In 1958 Anne wrote The Wall Between, a memoir of their sedition case. One of the few books of its time to unpack the psychology of white southern racism from within, it was praised by human rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor RooseveltEleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, and became a runner-up for the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
. Although their radical politics marginalized them among many of their own generation, the Bradens were reclaimed by young student activists of the 1960s. They were among the civil rights movement’s most dedicated white allies.
The Bradens also had three children: James, born in 1951, a 1972 Rhodes Scholar, and a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
(where he preceded Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
as editor of the Harvard Law Review), has lived and practiced law for over 25 years in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
. Elizabeth, born in 1960, has worked as a teacher in many countries around the world, serving as of 2006 in that capacity in rural Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
. Anita, born in 1953, died of a pulmonary disorder at age 11. While raising their children, the couple remained deeply involved in the civil rights cause and the subsequent social movements it prompted from the 1960s to the 1970s.
After Carl’s death in 1975, Anne Braden remained among the nation’s most outspoken white anti-racist activists. She instigated the formation of a new regional multi-racial organization, the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice (SOC), which initiated battles against environmental racism
Environmental racism
Environmental racism is a sociological term referring to policies and regulations that disproportionately burden minority communities with negative environmental impacts....
. She became an instrumental voice in the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition of the 1980s and in the two Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
presidential campaigns, as well as organizing across racial divides in the new environmental, women’s, and anti-nuclear movements that sprang up in that decade.
From the 1980s into the 2000s she wrote for Southern Exposure, Southern Changes, and the National Guardian and Fellowship.
No longer a pariah, Anne received the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
’s first Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty in 1990 for her contributions to civil liberties. As she aged, her activism focused more on Louisville, where she remained a leader in anti-racist drives and taught social justice history classes at local universities. Anne Braden died on March 6, 2006. The Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research was established at the University of Louisville in November, 2006 and was officially opened on April 4, 2007. The institute focuses on social justice globally, but concentrates on the southern United States and the Louisville area. Over her nearly six decades of activism, her life touched almost every modern U.S. social movement, and her message to them all was the centrality of racism and the responsibility of whites to combat it.
Popular culture
The alternative hip hopAlternative hip hop
Alternative hip hop is a sub-genre of hip hop music. Allmusic defines it as follows: -Origin:...
group Flobots
Flobots
The Flobots are a political rock and hip hop musical group from Denver, Colorado, formed in 2000 by Jamie Laurie. Flobots found mainstream success with their major label debut Fight with Tools , featuring the single "Handlebars", which became a popular hit on Modern Rock radio in April 2008.-Early...
paid tribute with the song "Anne Braden" on their 2007 album Fight With Tools
Fight with Tools
Fight with Tools is the debut album by Flobots released in October 2007 and re-released on May 20, 2008. It features the single "Handlebars", which became a popular hit on Modern Rock radio the following April...
. The track includes several audio samples of Anne Braden (Courtesy of Dr. Vincent Harding and the Veterans of Hope Project), describing her life and thoughts on race in her own words.