Anne Braden
Anne McCarty Braden | |
---|---|
Peace Movement | |
Spouse | Carl Braden |
Awards | American Civil Liberties Union's Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty |
External videos | |
---|---|
"Anne Braden: Southern Patriot", California Newsreel | |
A Riveting Biography of a Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden – Civil Rights (2003) |
Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 – March 6, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of
Background
Born in
After working on newspapers in Anniston and
Either you find a way to oppose the evil, or the evil becomes part of you and you are a part of it, and it winds itself around your soul like the arms of an octopus... If I did not oppose it, I was... responsible for its sins.
— Anne Braden[4]
While working at The Louisville Times, Anne met fellow newspaperman
Career
Early activism
In 1948, Anne and Carl Braden immersed themselves in
Even as the postwar
Wade case
In 1954, Andrew and Charlotte Wade, an
On May 15, 1954, Wade and his wife spent their first night in their new home in the Louisville suburb of
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. Instead of addressing the segregationists' violence, the investigators alleged that the Bradens and others helping the Wades were affiliated with the Communist Party, and made that the main subject of concern. White supremacists who were pro-segregation at the time charged that these alleged Communists had engineered the bombing to provide a cause célèbre and fund-raising opportunity, but this was never proven.[7]
Nonetheless, in October 1954, Anne and Carl Braden and five other whites were charged with sedition.[7] 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 got 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state sedition laws (Steven Nelson had been arrested under the Pennsylvania Sedition Law but the federal Smith Act superseded it).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 to the traditionally black west Louisville.[8]
Southern Conference Educational Fund
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.[2] 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.
Her 1958 book The Wall Between[7] helped place the Bradens among the civil rights movement's most dedicated white allies.
Anne Braden and her husband Carl were two of the most hated people of the 1950s and 1960s by the powers-that-were in the American south. As whites of impeccable southern credentials, they gave lie to the myth that all southern whites opposed the civil rights movement—and that drove the racists wild.—David Nolan[9]
Carl Braden died suddenly of a heart attack on February 18, 1975. After Carl's death, Anne Braden remained among the nation's most outspoken white anti-racist activists. She instigated the formation of a new regional multiracial organization, the
In 1977, Braden became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).[10] WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.
In 2005, she joined Louisville antiwar demonstrations in a wheelchair.[11] She cofounded the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and continued involvement in local activism addressing modern concerns of police brutality, environmental racism, and LGBT rights.[11]
Personal life and death
In 1948, she married fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist.[12]
The Bradens had three children: James, a
Anne Braden died on March 6, 2006, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville[14] and was buried at Eminence Cemetery in Eminence, Kentucky. Only three days earlier, she had completed a proposal for a local activist summer camp.[11] She was remembered by many in the civil rights movement, including Ira Grupper, Dorie Ladner, David Nolan, Efia Nwangaza, and Gwendolyn Patton.[15]
Awards
Braden received the American Civil Liberties Union's first Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty in 1990 for her contributions to civil liberties.[16] 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 University of Louisville and Northern Kentucky University.[17]
Legacy
After her death, 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.[18]
The
Works
In 1958 Anne wrote The Wall Between, a memoir of their sedition case.[7] 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 Roosevelt, and became a runner-up for the National Book Award.
From the 1980s into the 2000s, Braden wrote for
- Braden, Anne (1958). The wall between. New York: Monthly Review Press.
- Braden, Anne (1964). House Un-American Activities Committee: Bulwark of Segregation. Los Angeles, California: National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.[20]
- Braden, Anne (1981). "Preface". In Reed, David (ed.). Education for building a people's movement. Boston, MA: South End Press.
- Braden, Anne (June 30, 1965). "The Southern Freedom Movement in Perspective". Monthly Review. 17 (3): 1. .
- Anne Braden : Southern Patriot (1924-2006) Directed by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering; Peter Pearce - camera; Dirk Powell - score; Appalshop Film & Video,; California Newsreel (Firm). San Francisco, Calif. : California Newsreel, [2012].
Archives
- Anne Braden papers, 1920s–2006, University of Louisville Libraries
- Braden (Anne McCarty) papers, 1920s–2006 1970s–2006 at the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center
- Carl and Anne Braden papers at the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center
- Anne Braden Oral History Project, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington, Kentucky
- Anne Braden papers, The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories, Library of Congress
- Southern Conference Educational Fund Records, L1991-13, Southern Labor Archives. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia
- SNCC Digital Gateway: Anne Braden, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
See also
References
- JSTOR 4316680.
- ^ a b c "Ann Braden Biography". Veterans of Hope. Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
- ^ Hobson, Fred (1999). But Now I See: The White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative. Baton Rouge: LSU Press.
- ^ a b Fosl, C. (2008). "Anne Braden, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Rigoberta Menchu: Using Personal Narrative to Build Activist Movements" (PDF). In Solinger, R.; Fox, M.; Irani, K. (eds.). Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims. New York: Routledge. pp. 217–226. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 21, 2017. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
- OCLC 1115100274. Archivedfrom the original on January 26, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2022.
- ^ ISBN 0-312-29487-5.
- ^ a b c d Braden, Anne (1958). The wall between. New York: Monthly Review Press. Archived from the original on December 24, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
- ^ Talbott, Tim. "Civil Rights Struggle, 1954/Wades: Open Housing Pioneers". ExploreKYHistory. Kentucky Historical Society. Archived from the original on February 17, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
- ^ Nolan, David (March 15, 2006). "Remembering Anne Braden". Tompaine.com. Archived from the original on April 19, 2009. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
- ^ "Associates". The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press. Archived from the original on August 10, 2017. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
- ^ a b c "Anne Braden: Southern Patriot – Stories". annebradenfilm.org. Archived from the original on March 13, 2016. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
- ^ Fox, Margalit (March 17, 2006). "Anne Braden, 81, Activist in Civil Rights and Other Causes, Dies". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 7, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
- ^ "James M. Braden". Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
- ^ "Ann Braden Biography". Kentucky Educational Television. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
- ^ "Ann Braden (1924–2006)". Civil Rights Movement Archive. Archived from the original on May 25, 2019. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
- ^ "Activist Wins New $25,000 ACLU Award". The Washington Post. January 21, 1990. Archived from the original on August 27, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
- ^ "Who was Anne Braden?". University of Louisville. Archived from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
- ^ "Welcome to the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research". Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research. Archived from the original on December 10, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
- ^ "Anne Braden". Flobots (song). 2008.
- ^ Braden, Anne (1963). House Un-American Activities Committee: Bulwark of Segregation (PDF). Los Angeles, California: National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved April 22, 2020.