Anne Braden
| Anne McCarty Braden | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Anne Gambrell McCarty July 28, 1924 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Died | March 6, 2006 (aged 81) Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Randolph-Macon Woman's College |
| Occupation | civil rights activist, journalist, educator |
| Political party | Progressive Party of 1948 |
| Movement |
Civil Rights Movement Peace Movement |
| Spouse(s) | Carl Braden |
| Awards | American Civil Liberties Union's Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty |
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, 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 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, in 1948, she met and 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.
In 1948, Anne and Carl Braden immersed themselves in Henry Wallace'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.
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