Anne Braden
Wikipedia
Civil Rights Activists
Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 – March 6, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of racial equality.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 28, 1924, to Gambrell N. McCarty & Anita D. (Crabbe) McCarty and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama, Braden grew up in a white, middle-class family that accepted southern racial mores 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 Lynchburg, Virginia. As she grew older she experienced what has been framed as a "racial conversion narrative", "a conversion of almost religious intensity" "turning myself inside out and upside down".
After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, Anne Braden returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for The Louisville Times. She became a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement at a time when it was unpopular among southern whites.
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
While working at The Louisville Times, Anne met fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. The couple married in 1948. Both were deeply involved in the civil rights cause and the subsequent social movements it prompted from the 1960s to the 1970s.
The Bradens had three children: James, a Rhodes Scholar, and a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School, Anita, born in 1953, who died of a pulmonary disorder at age 11, and Elizabeth, born in 1960, who has worked as a teacher in many countries around the world, serving as of 2006 in that capacity in rural Ethiopia.
Anne Braden died on March 6, 2006, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville and was buried at Eminence Cemetery in Eminence, Kentucky. Only three days earlier, she had completed a proposal for a local activist summer camp. She was remembered by many in the Civil Rights Movement, including Ira Grupper, Dorie Ladner, David Nolan, Efia Nwangaza, and Gwendolyn Patton.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 28, 1924, to Gambrell N. McCarty & Anita D. (Crabbe) McCarty and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama, Braden grew up in a white, middle-class family that accepted southern racial mores 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 Lynchburg, Virginia. As she grew older she experienced what has been framed as a "racial conversion narrative", "a conversion of almost religious intensity" "turning myself inside out and upside down".
After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, Anne Braden returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for The Louisville Times. She became a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement at a time when it was unpopular among southern whites.
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
While working at The Louisville Times, Anne met fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. The couple married in 1948. Both were deeply involved in the civil rights cause and the subsequent social movements it prompted from the 1960s to the 1970s.
The Bradens had three children: James, a Rhodes Scholar, and a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School, Anita, born in 1953, who died of a pulmonary disorder at age 11, and Elizabeth, born in 1960, who has worked as a teacher in many countries around the world, serving as of 2006 in that capacity in rural Ethiopia.
Anne Braden died on March 6, 2006, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville and was buried at Eminence Cemetery in Eminence, Kentucky. Only three days earlier, she had completed a proposal for a local activist summer camp. She was remembered by many in the Civil Rights Movement, including Ira Grupper, Dorie Ladner, David Nolan, Efia Nwangaza, and Gwendolyn Patton.