As remembered by:
|
Joan Browning John Due Ted Glick Ira Grupper |
Dorie Ladner Ken Lawrence David Nolan Efia Nwangaza |
Gwen Patton Larry Rubin Rohn Webb |
As remembered by Ted Glick
Friends,
Some very sad news to pass on. Anne Braden died this morning at a hospital in Louisville. She was taken there on Saturday suffering from pneumonia.
To find out more about plans for Anne's funeral and a memorial service, or to send a contribution in Anne's name, you can contact the Kentucky Alliance at 3208 W. Broadway, Louisville, Ky. 40211, 502-778-8130, kyall@bellsouth.net.
We have lost another great warrior in the struggle for racial justice and equality, but without question, her spirit and her example live on in the lives of many whom she influenced and inspired.
Ted Glick
As remembered by Dorie Ladner
March 16, 2006
I was very impressed with the commitment and passion that Anne and Carl showed during the early years of the struggle when it was not popular. As for me, a young black female, born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, they inspired me to go on to see what the end was going to be. Anne, in her quiet soft-spoken way showed up where she was needed. I remember her in Natchez. The National guard had placed a curfew on its residents. This didn't bother Anne. She went with us to canvass for the right to vote, and attended nightly mass meetings. Both she and Carl spent a great deal of time at Mt. Beulah teaching us about citizenship and telling us about their years of struggle in Kentucky. They were determined, and NEVER TURNED BACK.
Dorie Ladner
As remembered by Ken Lawrence
March 16, 2006
This morning I received a letter "From the Desk of Anne Braden," a fund appeal for Resist. Like Joe Hill and countless other dedicated comrades, she is still carrying on her organizing work.
I first met Anne at the October 1960 SNCC conference at Morehouse College in Atlanta. I went to work for her in August 1971, as Deep South Correspondent for the Southern Patriot. We worked together to build the National Anti-Klan Network in the 1980s.
My check to Resist will be dedicated to continuing Anne's work.
Ken Lawrence
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
As remembered by Larry Rubin
March 13, 2006
Anne Braden was much more than a Movement "ally" who saw the wisdom of the black power direction. She and Carl were pioneers in the Movement we later joined. They helped pave the way for us. They fully understood the power of the South's black community and had to wait for the rest of us to catch up to their understanding. They risked their livelihoods and lives, and suffered jail, long before most of us joined the movement they helped create.
They dedicated their lives to the idea that the South has the potential for being the most politically and economically progressive area in the country, if only the average Southerner — both black and white — could be organized. They knew that the South's potential was why the powers-that-be worked so hard to maintain dictatorial control of the area.
When SNCC was being Red-baited, it distanced itself from the Bradens so as not to give more ammunition to the Senator Eastlands of the nation. Anne was hurt by SNCC's rejection of her — but she understood the politics and did what she could to help us, often in ways that were invisible to us.
Anne was a central figure in my life. I knew about her and Carl through The Wall Between years before I met her in 1962 when working for SNCC's SW Georgia Project. Years later, when the "whites should organize whites and blacks organize blacks and we'll come together later" idea was adopted, I worked for Anne and Carl's Southern Conference Educational Fund in Pike County, Kentucky.
I can testify that from the beginning Anne and Carl believed SNCC should take leadership of the Southern movement. It's to Anne's credit she made SNCC people feel they were the leaders and she "just" an "ally."
— Larry Rubin
As remembered by Joan Browning
March 9, 2006
It is almost impossible for me to comprehend that Anne Braden has died. Instead of a memorial tribute to her, I offer this introduction of Anne that it was my honor and privilege to make last year about this time. When Rose Gladney retired from the University of Alabama, some of her friends began an endowed lecture in her name. Anne was the second Rose Gladney Justice and Social Change lecturer. Last night, I watched about two hours of Anne lecturing last year in Alabama. She was so vigorous and so right on point.
After the lecture, I got in line with students to ask Anne to inscribe my copy of Catherine Fosl's marvelous work about Anne and her times, Subversive Southerner. This morning, I read with tears and pleasure and gratitude what Anne had written: "For Joan — whose work as both an activist and a writer is helping to strengthen "the other America." Anne Braden, 3/10/05."
I treasure all my memories of Anne and will hold fast to that inscription if ever I am tempted to cease acting and writing from "the other America."
Tomorrow, I shall drive six hours to Louisville and six hours back home in order to be with others at Anne's funeral service. This is precious time, as following in the best of what I learned in the Movement, I am now a candidate for one of Greenbrier County, West Virginia's two seats in the state House of Delegates. I know now why it is called "running" for public office! I began my campaign with a quote from Ms. Ella Baker. I hope Anne would be pleased that I've tossed my bonnet into the political fray.
The Rose Gladney Justice and Social Change Lecture
Thursday, March 11, 2005
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Introduction of Anne Braden, Keynote speaker
By Joan C. Browning
Good evening. Thank you for coming to this place at this time for this special event. You have come to hear a woman with a sterling history of social justice activism speak from that experience on the issue of organizing today for social change.
I also want to commend you on the organization of co sponsors. It is important any time we get together and work for a common goal as special and as important as the Rose Gladney lecture for Justice and Social Change so I also commend the College of Arts & Sciences, African-American Studies Program, Department of Women's Studies, New College, Department of Religious Studies, and the History Department.
It is important that we remember that change happens not in any generic sense but in particular places at particular times because specific people initiated change. What and who we choose to remember from the past and the way we choose to remember shapes our identity, as individual personalities, as communities and as a nation. The Rose Gladney Justice and Social Change lecture is being endowed here at the University of Alabama so that generations to come, in this place where Dr. Gladney taught for so long, will remember and celebrate her passion for group action to create a more equitable world. We are deliberately, proactively, shaping this university's memory through this lecture series. Your presence here tonight strengthens our resolve to complete that endowment and to continue seeking lectures by people whose lives echo the values that Dr. Gladney personified.
White supremacy is at the heart of American history and it is the starting point for the Rose Gladney lecture. Race was the dominant point in our collective memories of the two decades ending in the '60s that have especially shaped American identity. In the 1860's, almost a million combatants and civilians perished so that Africans in America might be freed from slavery. The presumptive losers in that conflict have nostalgically remembered their commitment to maintaining human bondage with more than one thousand Confederate monuments throughout the south.
The 1960's also reshaped American identity. In the spring of 1960, more than 70,000 young people, college aged people just like you, from southern African-American colleges started and participated in the sit-in movement to protest segregation. "Out of that wild and spontaneous activity arose an organization . [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] .[that was] intent on cracking the caste system that had been in place for hundreds of years.[1]
I was one of the lucky few white southerners who were part of SNCC in the very early 1960's. That struggle to free black and white southerners from white supremacy is remembered by fewer than one hundred public monuments.
Anne Braden was one of the precious few white southerners who had already spent decades deep into the struggle against white supremacy. Anne was there in 1960 to welcome us, to encourage us, to support us, and to be one of our circle of trust.
I don't really remember the first time I met Anne Braden, but it was surely by the September 1961 SNCC meeting. The SNCC "way of working," we called it, involved meeting together where everybody said everything they ever wanted to say. And then, without resorting to Robert's Rules of Order or any formal vote, we knew by consensus what our next move would be and who would do what and who would play which role. My memories of those meetings-and they would continue for two or three days and sometimes twenty or twenty-one or twenty-four hour a day — is of two women not of our generation — Ms. Ella Baker was always there and Ms. Anne Braden was always there.
I remember Anne Braden as having great poise, of being very centered. She was a lot like Ms. Baker. They were both calm, able to sit through our hours of intense debate, always able to keep focused on issues and avoid personality conflicts.
These two life-long friend and allies, Ms. Baker and Ms. Braden, supported the few of us who were white women. Ms. Baker had a soft spot in her heart for what she called "spunky white girls" and encouraged us to maintain our identity as whites and southerners but also to honor our newfound consciousness to include anti-white supremacist. Anne Braden showed me that I could retain my identity as a southerner and as a respectable woman while fighting for social justice. Anne also showed me that there were useful movement activities other than putting one's body on the line or in jail for direct action demonstrations - for example, writing.
Anne edited the Southern Patriot, a monthly newspaper of highest journalistic standards that reported on what people were doing in the south to challenge white supremacy. When I was debating a few years ago about whether to shed my treasured anonymity and write about my time in the civil rights movement, I learned that correspondence between Anne and me was being collected — at least by one historian and it was also auctioned off in a New York City collection of papers from the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. So I decided my anonymity was about to be blown anyway so I might as well write autobiographically and tell it my way, Anne.
That correspondence showed that Anne was a generous editor. In response to an article that she printed that I wrote for her, she wrote, "Your story is very good indeed. You are a good reporter. It is a real joy to find someone who can collect information and summarize it this well."[2] And Anne, you'll never know what comfort those words have given me all these years. If Anne Braden thinks I'm a good writer, well, lesser editors will just have to hold their opinion.
In that correspondence though, she also offered me names of contacts at various universities who might help me find money to complete my bachelor's degree. Anne, I finally accomplished that in 1994 at the age of 52 but I now am a college graduate.
Anne Braden's patriotism was challenged by government at all levels. She was also often unwelcome by some whom you would consider natural allies within the civil rights movement. It has always been a source of pride to me that SNCC always welcomed Anne Braden. SNCC was the one civil rights group that did not go along with Cold war anti-communism, red-baiting or gay-bashing, or, until late in the decade, after Black Power came into vogue, any kind of stereotyping.
When I was wrenched from my family at the age of 18, somebody had to show me how to be an adult. Anne Braden became for me one of the people whose lives gave me insights and patterns that I use in forming my own identity and my own activism agenda down to this day.
I encourage you to own your own copy of The Wall Between, which is on sale outside and I also endorse heartily Cate Fosl's book Subversive Southerner, also available outside. These two books will tell you more about Anne Braden and about how this one southern patriot challenged white supremacy in all its manifestations and how white supremacy with all its force and vigor fought her back. What a testament to the depth and integrity of Anne Braden's struggle it is that the foreword to Cate's book was written by Angela Davis, a daughter of Bombingham, Alabama. Angela writes, "When we challenge structural racism and violence by vigorously defending immigrant rights, opposing violence against women, and protesting the prison industrial complex, we should know that we are also upholding the legacy of struggle that emerges from Anne's life story."[3]
Let us, tonight, enlarge our collective memories and remold our identity. Let Anne Braden tell you that now is always the time to organize. Anne Braden is a skilled guide. If you will allow her, she will change your life - and you, like me, will thank her for opening your eyes. Listen, learn, and go forth to emulate, the legendary and, to me dear, Anne Braden.
*** *** ***
Anne Braden responds and begins her lecture: Thank you very much, Joan. I find introductions like that very embarrassing because most of it is just not true. I mean, really. But I appreciate it and Joan is one of my sisters in the world I live in and I want to talk about that world.
[1] Constance Curry, Joan C. Browning, et. al. Deep In Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement. Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 2000. Preface pp. xiii-xix.
[2] Anne Braden to Joan Browning, January 9, 1963. Box 40, Folder 1, Braden Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
[3] Catherine Fosl. Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South. Palgrace: Macmillan, 2002. Foreword, p. ix.
Joan C. Browning
PO Box 1147
Lewisburg WV 24901-4147
oma00013@wvnet.edu
myweb.wvnet.edu/~oma00013
As remembered by John Due
March 9, 2006
Anne Braden's "Finding the other America"
I first met Anne Braden and her husband in Indianapolis,. Indiana, when she and her husband joined us in our NAACP picketing of a night club across from the Greyhound Bus Station. I believe it was about 1958. They were friends of John Preston Ward, my mentor, who, in addition to being the local NAACP lawyer, was the Director-Counsel of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. John and I were also the Braden's guest at their Louisville home.
As I became aware of their story in the "Wall Between" and the persecution by the State of Kentucky and the UnAmericans Activities Committee, I remembered walking by the old home of Eugene Debs, the radical labor leader, in Terre Haute, Indiana, that somebody was still maintaining as a historical site. (I was raised in Terre Haute) and the similarity of the persecution of the Braden's, for their treason of selling a house in a white neighborhood to a Black person, to the persecution of Eugene Debs for opposing America in getting involved in world war I because it was a war between two sets of capitalist imperialist tyrannies.
I will always appreciate Ann because she was a force in the movement to help us be aware that there must be a freedom movement that would be beyond what has now been called a civil rights movement. If Ann has left us with any disciples who are committed to her ideas, I hope that her ideas could obtain some permanency by being connected to the "Critical Race Theory" movement which has become identified with Derrick Bell, especially to his book, "Silent Covenants", and Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform.
Ann was the first one to help me to understand that the "Other America" was the real america that signed the Declaration of Independence as a contract of freedom by the people as promoters whose benefits were accepted by the new United States and constitution. But the contract was sabotaged by corporate america and the cotton growers by means of puritan based racialism.
Therefore, the Black freedom movement was not a new revolution, but was, in sense, a resistance movement, a movement to recover and complete the American revolution about which the "silent covenant" sabotuers are still in control.
The next generation must be called to continue and complete the American revoluton. Recently, there has been a gathering which has adopted what is called "The Covenant with Black America". Recently, I sent a note to my daughter, Tannarive Due, that in response to her excitement from participation in this gathering, I said that I hoped there was thinking abour a "Black Covenant with America" that would help save America.
Another Due Memory of Ann Braden.
I am sure that veterans could gather and tell their stories about Ann Braden for years. But when the history of the Freedom Movement of the 60's is told, the Braden's must have a necessary place in this history. It has been ironic that the Southern Regional Council in recent years have honored her role-when most of us remember the efforts of SRC and other liberal organizations and personalities who were more worried about Communist infiltrators than our adversaries.
It was the December of 1963. I was in my last year of law school at FAMU in Tallahassee. There was a lull in the demonstrations. Patricia, the CORE leader, was tired and was leaving Tallahassee and move to New York. I told her that I would drive her to New York-by way of Indianapolis, where my mother lived-and she bought it.
Driving north on 31, around Birmingham, I proposed to her-and she accepted. When we arrived in Louisville, KY, we stopped by the Braden's house and had a lunch -and there was Ivan Donaldson with his car load of supplles-dlriving to Mississippi.
You know the rest of his story for being arrested in Miss for his aspirins.
John Due
As remembered by Efia Nwangaza
March 9, 2006
Thanks Gwen,
Ann's consistency, between theory and practice, especially on Black self-determination deeply endeared her to me and stands as a model for all who would claim to be our ally.
efia nwangaza
As remembered by Gwen Patton March 8, 2006
We have lost a brave heart and soul in Anne Braden. When SNCC issued the call for Black Power, most of our friends abandoned us. Not so of Anne. She did not only accept the challenge, but she gave real meaning to one of our Movement anthems: Heed the Call Americans All, Side by Equal Side. Brothers Sit in Dignity, and Sisters Sit in Pride.
Anne heeded the call to organize white people to fight racism in the white community, from the hills and hollows of Appalachia to the swank, urban cities in the South.
Anne s profound analyses of racism went beyond those who committed racist acts — commission — to include those who did nothing in the presence of racism — omission. Both groups were equally guilty as perpetrators of racism.
Anne always talked about a vision of the world free of cold war tactics, racism, oppression and economic exploitation. Her last message to us was this vision of Finding the Other America.
Anne was not only concerned with fighting racism, but more importantly with undoing racism as a necessary transformation on human and institutional levels.
Many of our freedom warriors are now dancing with our ancestors. My cousin Claire Milligan offers: Heaven's stocking up & leaving the mantle to us.
Gwen Patton
As remembered by David Nolan
March 7, 2006
Below is my contribution to any memories you publish about Anne Braden. I sent it out to the SSOC List [Southern Students Organizing Committee], but she was such a beloved benefactress of every part of the movement that I am sure it will be of interest to others. What losses we have faced in recent months! What extraordinary heroes we have been blessed with!
Warmest regards,
David Nolan
Anne Braden's passing struck very close to home. I wrote to my son Hamilton, trying to pass on something about her. I don't think he would object to my sharing it with you. Rest in peace, old friend...
Dear Hamilton,
Word just came on the SSOC List that Anne Braden died this morning. She was 81, and the recent biography of her was aptly titled Subversive Southerner. She was one of the southern whites praised by Martin Luther King in his "Letter From the Birmingham Jail".
I first met her in 1965 in Lawrenceville, VA. where she came to write a story about the Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee for her newspaper, The Southern Patriot — one of the great places to learn about the south that was not doused in moonlight and magnolias.
She and her husband Carl had sold a house in Louisville to a black family in the 1950s, and it was bombed. In the spirit of the times, they charged Carl with the bombing and sent him to prison. Anne wrote a wonderful book, The Wall Between, about the case. She later wrote a very insightful piece called "The Southern Freedom Movement in Perspective" which was published as an entire issue of Monthly Review magazine.
Carl Braden was a pioneer at fighting legal cases through what some might call "Public Relations". He specialized in taking what originally looked like small hopeless cases and publicizing them until the New York Times picked them up, and he pioneered "action memoes" to a list of people around the country who would write to governors, mayors, prosecutors, etc. to let them know that the whole wide world was watching. I think William Kunstler learned a lot from him: they were involved in many cases together, each using their own talents to rescue people from the maws of "justice."
Anne and Carl were both my mentors in many ways. After I finished working at Penn Center in 1971, I moved to Atlanta (living in the building where Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind) and took a job for $150 a month writing for the Southern Patriot. Carl sold me my first car: a 1959 Volkswagen with a blown engine for $25. I paid $175 to get the engine rebuilt, and I was on the road, "Covering Dixie like the Dew," as they say. Skills I learned in those days have served me well ever since. Not long ago I was called on to speak at a ceremony honoring the St. Augustine Four — heroes of the civil rights struggle in the Ancient City. I quoted Carl who once told me (he was a fountain of pithy phrases) that the ruling class had a five-point program for dealing with dissidents: buy some, fool some, scare some, jail some, and shoot the rest!
Carl was a veritable bulldog. "Piss on you!" was his favorite expression. He died in his sleep in 1975, and a few of us drove up from Atlanta for the funeral in Louisville. On the way back, I was the first driver and everyone else went to sleep. I drove and drove and drove and drove and when the other people woke up, they were amazed to find that we were still in Kentucky! I was quickly deposed as driver.
Anne was one of the people we asked (along with Koji Ariyoshi) to write letters to be read at our wedding. She didn't go to the SSOC reunion in Charlottesville, but did go to a later one in Nashville, which I missed.
She was a kind of house mother to a lot of us — someone with politics that our own mothers didn't have. One year Louie Nunn ran for governor on a platform of driving the Bradens out of Kentucky. He won, but the Bradens stayed put til they died, and will be much more highly remembered in the history of that state — and the nation — than Louie Nunn will ever be.
We have lost a great one.
Love,
Dad
As remembered by Ira Grupper
March 7, 2006
Contained in the Talmud is the following gem: It is not given to us to complete the task. Nor may we remove our hands from the plow. Anne Braden did not complete the task. None of us living today has completed the task. But it can be said with assurance, indeed with certitude, that Anne Braden never, never, never removed her hands from the plow.
A Song For Anne Braden, words and music by Ira Grupper
In 1948 a Black man named Willie McGee
Was railroaded for raping a white woman
In the state of Mississippi.
A white women s delegation
Decried this Jim Crow frame.
Among them our freedom fighter,
Anne Braden was her name.
Anne Braden was her name.
Louisville, Kentucky, 1954,
Anne and her husband, Carl,
Were journalists for labor
Until they hit a snarl.
They'd sold a home to a Black family
In an all-white neighborhood.
Carl was imprisoned for sedition.
It seemed their wage-earning lives were ruined.
Then Anne hit the lecture circuit
To show who really was to blame.
Fighting red-baiting and racism,
Anne Braden was her name.
Anne Braden was her name.
And in the 1960's
The was against Jim Crow
Saw Anne battling segregation
Where the Klan and bigots sow.
She opposed the war the U.S. fought
Against Vietnamese,
Supported workers against bosses,
And prayed for a world at peace.
In all the decades that followed
She fought on just the same.
Organizer, propagandist,
Anne Braden was her name.
Anne Braden was her name.
And even with her dying breath
She fought on just the same.
The truest Southern Patriot,
The truest Dixie rebel,
The truest freedom fighter,
Anne Braden was her name.
Anne Braden was her name.
Anne Braden was her name.
words and music by Ira Grupper
In love and struggle,
Ira
irag@iglou.com
March 2006
As remembered by Rohn Webb
March 7, 2006
THE ENTIRE LABOR AND CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS CELEBRATE THE LIVES OF CARL AND ANNE BRADEN — MY PARENTS WERE POLITICALLY CLOSE TO THEM WHEN POLITICALLY CORRECT MEANT FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE PEOPLE!!
PARENTS (ROY M. & MARGUERITE WEBB), MY SISTER AND THREE OLDER BROTHERS HAVE ALL PASSED ON — BUT LIKE MY PARENTS THEY SHARED HUMAN RIGHTS FRIENDLY ATTITUDES ON TO THEIR KIDS, GRANDKIDS, AS DO DARLENE AND I.
MOURN FOR THE DEAD AND FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING!!
DARLENE AND ROHN WEBB
CHARTER MEMBERS/OFFICERS
IDAHO SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION
LOCAL #687,ISEU,SEIU,AFL-CIO,CLC
and CO-FOUNDERS WEBBs ID, OR, UT, WI NETWORK
for GRANDPARENTS' RIGHTS
P O Box 165
Melba, ID 83641-0165
rohnfwebb@msn.com
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