The University of Louisville's College of Arts & Sciences is establishing a social justice research institute in memory of the longtime anti-racist activist Anne Braden, a native of Louisville.
The Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research will celebrate its grand opening on the campus on Wednesday, April 4, 2007, just a little over one year after Anne's passing at age 81. The institute's founding director is Cate Fosl, a historian who was Anne's biographer and author of Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South (University Press of Kentucky, 2006).
Through the Institute, Fosl hopes to widen public understanding of Anne Braden's significance in U.S. social movement history through exhibits, public programming, a social justice reading/resource room, and a website with an online database featuring digitized versions of some of Anne and Carl Braden's writings. Providing activists with intellectual tools to enhance their efforts and knowledge that can be acted on can bridge the gap between academic research and social activism and keep alive Anne Braden's educational and humanitarian vision of a world without racism, poverty, and war.
Julian Bond will attend the grand opening and will deliver the First Anne Braden Memorial Lecture. The day will begin with a dedication ceremony and press conference at the Institute's new offices in University of Louisville's Ekstrom Library at 4:30 pm. This event will mark the opening of a reading room featuring the Anne and Carl Braden books collection and exhibits highlighting the Bradens' longtime civil and human rights activism. The dedication will also include a commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior with the public unveiling of two of his books which he autographed to Anne and Carl Braden and their children.
At 5:30 pm in the Brown & Williamson Club of the university's Cardinal Stadium, Julian Bond will announce the new institute to the community and will deliver the first Anne Braden Memorial Lecture, entitled "2007: A Race Odyssey." This event is free and open to the public, and there is ample free parking at the stadium. A community reception will follow in the same location.
The evening will conclude with a fund-raising dinner starting at 8 pm, held at Saffron's Cuisine on 131 W. Market Street in downtown Louisville. Suggested minimum gift per person is $100, with a sliding scale rate per ticket of 100, 250, 500, and 1000. The purpose of this fund-raising event is to endow the Anne Braden lecture as an annual event and to fund the digitization of the Bradens' writings.
It would be wonderful to have SNCC friends and civil rights veterans who knew and loved Anne to join us for these events. Seating for the fund-raiser is extremely limited, however, so if you wish to attend it, please RSVP as soon as possible to donna@louisville.edu. Or call Cate Fosl at 502-852-2944 for more information on any of these events. Our website also gives details at www.louisville.edu/org/bradeninstitute.
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Last Modified: March 22, 2007.
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