Anne Braden: Southern Patriot

Short Synopsis

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot is a television inquiry into the extraordinary if largely unsung life of Anne Braden, organizer, agitator, Southerner, journalist, feminist, teacher and mentor described as “one of the great figures of our time” by noted historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. 

Description/Treatment

Branded a communist and seditionist for buying a house in Louisville for an African American family in Cold War 1954, Anne Braden dedicated her life to awakening the consciousness of whites to the legacy of racial injustice, and demonstrated that racism is a social construct that can be deconstructed.

In this documentary Braden’s reflections on the history and significance of six decades of racial justice organizing will be interspersed with commentary and analysis from civil rights leaders, historians, community organizers, educators, environmental advocates, friends and foes. Audiences will be engaged with a uniquely southern and female voice for a provocative discourse on the continuum of struggle for civil rights and civil liberties from the founding of our democracy to the present, on the many undocumented grassroots struggles that took place alongside the more well-known narrative of civil rights movement history, and the linkages between issues of race and those of civil liberties, gender, sexuality, peace, and environmentalism. This program is especially timely as the Obama Presidency has brought to the fore the issue of race and apost-racial society, raising complex questions about many Americans’ acknowledgement of the history of racial injustice and white privilege, and the degree to which we have accepted and achieved true racial equality. Braden’s experience of anti-communist political repression beginning in the McCarthy era is also a significant cautionary note as our nation continues to struggle to define terrorism and the proper treatment of those we call terrorists.

The program will use a non-narrated documentary form that we feel is best suited to the subject, the subject matter, and the audiences we hope to reach. After many years of inquiry, Anne Braden agreed to participate in this documentary in 2004. We filmed the 80 year-old whenever possible – organizing, teaching, rallying for peace and justice, remembering,and reflecting. Anne died suddenly in March 2006. While we are deeply saddened by her passing, we had captured a great deal of material and are glad we can contribute to her legacy through this program. Other filmmakers have graciously donated high quality video of Braden to the project.

We will use a first person narrative from Braden as she actively participates in the social justice community. Juxtaposed will be her memories, reflections, analysis, and an exploration of ideas about politics, organizing strategies, social structures, history, and religion that she developed over 60 years of engaging theory withpractice. Anne was quite willing to enter into a lengthy discussion of anyidea, action, or social issue. She describes events with a writer’s precision, but also delves deeply into the world of political thought. Braden is articulate, insightful, challenging, self-effacing, and charming. The simplicity and power with which she speaks connects with all kinds of audiences, whether in a church basement, on a street corner, up a mountain creek, or inside a college classroom.

Braden was born in Louisville, the daughter of a socially if not always economically privileged family, and grew up in the segregated Mississippi and Alabama of the 1920s and ‘30s. In the early 1940s she attended women’s colleges in Virginia where she was influenced by a number of independent, intellectually curious, and politically sophisticated women. She began a career as a newspaper reporter in Anniston and then Birmingham but the horrors of the Jim Crow South that she witnessed as a court reporter began a wrenching process of breaking with the segregationist and privileged society to which she belonged. Fleeing the Deep South, she took a job with the Louisville Times. There she met and married Carl Braden, a working class German-Catholic and fellow reporter who was heavily involved in popular front and Progressive Party politics. Anne’s recollections of growing up, starting her journalism career, and beginning to see the South for what it was will be visualized with early photos and archival film of Alabama environs.

Braden vividly tells the story of an attempt to breach the color line in Louisville that ultimately led her to “the crossroads.” In 1954 at the height of the Cold War and the anti-communist crusade led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and a week before the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Anne and Carl Braden bought a house in an all-white neighborhood for a black couple, Andrew and Charlotte Wade, who were unable to purchase it due to racial restrictions in real estate. This act resulted in mob violence against the Wades and bombing of the house. Anne recounts: The Prosecuting Attorney said there were two theories.  One was that the house was bombed by the neighbors to get rid of the Wades. The other was that this was all a communist plot to foment race hatred in order to overthrow the government of the state of Kentucky.  Lew Lubka, a member of the Wade Defense Committee, recalls being pulled before the Grand Jury and asked, out of the blue, "Were you ever or are you now a member of the Communist Party?"  Although Carl Braden answered “No” he was found guilty of sedition and served 8 months of a 15 year sentence.  From that point on the Bradens vowed never to give that question legitimacy by answering it. Numerous photos and newspaper headlines as well a 1980s ABC News documentary interview with Andrew Wade and some of the angry neighbors illustrate this story.

During her first night in jail after the Sedition charge Anne wrote, “There come times in everyone’s life when he must go back to the crossroads – to determine who he is, from whence he came, what he believes in, and from this knowledge to draw the inner strength that he needs to meet the challenges of life.  This is a traumatic experience that has jolted me back to the crossroads.” That jolt led Anne Braden into a lifetime of social justice activism, but one in which she and Carl (who died in 1975) were blacklisted, red-baited, imprisoned and shunned, even by many in the civil rights and civil liberties movements, for over 30 years.

Nowhere in this country was the Cold War’s silencing so vivid as in the South. Anne’s account of these events is precise and chilling.  She demonstrates what happens when civil liberties are violated in a time of national fear, when dissent is equated with disloyalty. Dr. Catherine Fosl, Braden biographer, will dig deeply into this facet of Braden’s story, providing a searing analysis of how anti-communism buttressed white supremacy and the price paid by those who struggled against that deadly partnership. Professor/activist Angela Davis draws striking parallels between these events of the 1950s and the anti-terrorism actions of the government recently. Excerpts from a 1965  “educational” film produced by the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission pinpoint members of the alleged communist conspiracy within the civil rights movement, including the Bradens as well as every other prominent civil rights leader, and illustrate the intense red-baiting of the times.

Black-listed from employment, the Bradens went to work for the Southern Conference Education Fund, sharing one salary and traveling the South seeking support for the civil rights movement, especially in white communities. For almost 20 years Anne edited The Southern Patriot, developing SCEF’s monthly newsletter into the movement paper of that era and a major organizing tool. Southern Patriot headlines, photos, and recitations of Anne’s most important stories and editorials will highlight the impact of this work.

In the mid-60s as blacks sought greater leadership of the movement in the South, many young and idealistic whites looked for a place to continue the effort for social change, often turning to SCEF, where the Bradens’ increased efforts to organize working class whites in the belief they were logical allies of the civil rights movement through the GROW Project in Mississippi and Southern Mountain Project in Appalachian Kentucky. Organizing against coal interests in Kentucky led to a second sedition charge: this time the law was quickly ruled unconstitutional.

Undeterred by the attempts to marginalize her as a“subversive,” Braden lived as a freedom fighter whose unflagging drive, patience, and compassion showed other white people, and African Americans as well, what is possible in the struggle to end racism and white privilege. She describes finding her strength and endurance for 60 years of struggle through her participation in what she called “the Other America” – her vision of Dr.King’s “Beloved Community,” a physical and a moral network where people of all races, classes, genders, and creeds are engaged in a struggle for an America that lives up to its principles. She believed that in order to find the soul of that struggle, white people needed to give up the privileges they were born into. She fought for that transformation in her personal life and in our society.