Subversive Southerner : Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South

by Fosl, Catherine; Davis, Angela

• ISBN13: 9780813191720
• ISBN10: 0813191726
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-08-25
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

Anne McCarty Braden (1924-2006) rejected her segregationist, privileged past to become one of the civil rights movement's staunchest white allies. In 1954 she was charged with sedition by McCarthy-style politicians who played on fears of communism to preserve southern segregation. Though Braden remained controversial-even within the civil rights movement-in 1963 she became one of only five white southerners whose contributions to the movement were commended by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famed "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Braden's activism ultimately spanned nearly six decades, making her one of the most enduring white voices against racism in modern U.S. history. Subversive Southerner is more than a riveting biography of an extraordinary southern white woman; it is also a social history of how racism, sexism, and anticommunism intertwined in the twentieth-century South as ripples from the Cold War divided the emerging civil rights movement. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Catherine Fosl is an assistant professor of Women's and Gender Studies and director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville

Table of Contents

Foreword by Angela Y. Davis	ix
Acknowledgments	xii
List of Abbreviations	xv
Chronology of Anne Braden's Life	xvii
Introduction	xx
PART ONE
Prologue The Power of Place	3	(10)
Chapter 1 A White Southern Childhood	13	(20)
Chapter 2 Intellectual Awakening	33	(24)
Chapter 3 Alabama Newspaperwoman	57	(26)
PART TWO
Chapter 4 Political Awakening	83	(20)
Chapter 5 Marriage and Movement	103	(32)
Chapter 6 The Wade Case—No Turning Back	135	(40)
Chapter 7 Fighting Back—The 1950's Resistance Movement	175	(26)
Chapter 8 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness-Early SCEF Years	201	(44)
PART THREE
Chapter 9 The Mass Civil Rights Movement-Beginning of a New Day	245	(24)
Chapter 10 Opening Up the Southern Police State	269	(24)
Chapter 11 End of an Era	293	(20)
PART FOUR
Chapter 12 The Next Three Decades: The Struggle Continues	313	(20)
Epilogue	333	(10)
Notes	343	(50)
Bibliography	393	(14)
Index	407