Anne Braden

Who was Anne Braden?

Anne McCarty Braden was an American advocate 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.