Harry Targ (a revised version of an original post on Tuesday, March 23, 2010)
…there are no heroes in this story…no villains…only people, the product of their environment, urged on by forces of history they often do not understand. Anne Braden, 1958.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/anne-braden-southern-patriot
A film by
Anne Lewis “Anne Braden: Southern Patriot”
Biographies can tell us about ourselves, where we came
from, and where we might go. I recently read a narrative of the life of an extraordinary activist and her time. I think her history is relevant for us today.
Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice
in the Cold War South, by Catherine Fosl, tells the story of a
militant Southern woman who rejected the political culture of her day to fight
for the liberation of African Americans, always insisting that Southern whites
had to play a significant role in that struggle.
Anne Braden was born in 1924 in Louisville, Kentucky to a traditional
Southern family. Schooled in the values of Southern womanhood, she increasingly
saw the white supremacist south as an evil that not only repressed African
Americans but served as an impediment to the achievement of human liberation of
people everywhere. She pursued a career as political organizer and journalist,
publishing the invaluable periodical, The Southern Patriot. She, with her
husband Carl Braden, spent years organizing against racial segregation. Her
struggle repeatedly encountered racists who opportunistically used
anti-communism to protect their white privilege.
The biography of Braden suggests several historical lessons for us today.
First, Braden was raised in a political culture that was hostile to social
justice, although in a supportive, though sometimes stern family. In the society at large Braden experienced racism and was expected to accept and endorse it.
Second, through a multiplicity of associations and experiences she came to realize that racism was not only an impediment to her own development as a full human being but was also an impediment to the development of all humanity. Consequently, at relatively young ages, Braden came to the view that she must devote her life to the struggle against racism.
Third, Braden realized in her struggles that capitalism as an economic system
stood in the way of human liberation. She understood that the capitalist mode
of production was built on the backs of workers. Racism was used by capitalists
to divide workers who together could organize to create a more humane society.
Fourth, Braden accepted as a basic premise of her political work the
proposition that human solidarity was a necessary if not sufficient condition
for the creation of a humane society. Anne Braden, saw human beings as shaped
by their environments. Her own upbringing in a segregated society shaped her
consciousness, but circumstances made her realize that people can liberate
themselves by organizing resistance to that society. Racism had its roots in
economic and political structures, and people were “urged on by forces of
history they often do not understand.” But they can come to recognize and
oppose those institutions that oppress others and by extension, themselves.
Fifth, Braden committed her life to organizing against capitalism, imperialism,
colonialism, and racism. This meant crossing racial lines, participating in
union struggles, linking struggles for civil rights with struggles for civil
liberties, and unabashedly working with the Left to bring about social change.
Finally, Anne Braden became one of the most despised political activists in
Cold War America. Anne and Carl Braden purchased a home in Louisville in the
1950s and sold it to an African American family. The property was in an
all-white neighborhood. This generated a massive campaign to keep the family
from occupying their house. The campaign was leveled at the Bradens for their
work against segregation as much as against the African American family. After
an extended public trial characterized by charges of Communist subversion Carl
Braden was sentenced to prison for “sedition” based on an arcane Kentucky law.
Subsequent to the trial and incarceration, virulent anti-communism dogged most
organizing campaigns embraced by the Bradens.
The Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), which the Bradens led, was
always viewed with suspicion. Anti-communism even crept into the politics of
the civil rights movement as it blossomed in the late 1950s. Despite the
virulence of it, which usually was linked with racism, Anne Braden became an
inspirational force among the young SNCC organizers in the South in the early
1960s, along with Ella Baker. Anne Braden took particular responsibility for
building white activism around civil rights.
In the end, anti-communist campaigns, such as those against the Bradens, were
used as tools by racist forces to demean, delegitimize, and split the working
class and youth and to defeat progressive forces. Anti-communism and the
defense of white supremacy became inseparable.
How do we assess the role of Anne Braden
in historical perspective, particularly during Women’s History Month? She
participated as a leader, as intellectual and moral inspiration at a time when
the working class was on the move in the 1930s and 1940s, and civil rights
activism spread in the 1950s. Braden committed her life to the struggle against
racism and she saw Black/white unity as basic to victory.
She participated in struggles with allies from the organized Left, particularly
with members of the Communist Party USA.
Finally, and most critically, Braden participated in and advanced a politics of
the Popular Front. Popular Front politics began with a commitment to class
struggle. It was based on the presumption that racism was the central barrier
to social change. And Popular Front politics prioritized commitments to
broad-based networking among people and groups who engaged in a whole array of
peace and justice issues.
Are there lessons from these lives for us today? I believe so. Braden taught us
that the pursuit of social change was a lifetime activity. And ehe demonstrated
to us that our political work must engage the broadest range of issues and the
greatest numbers of people in our struggles for a humane future. The Braden
biography tells an insightful and inspiring story that everyone interested in
social change should read.
