Kentucky Women in the Civil Rights Era

One of the most famous pictures of Anne Braden

“We used this attack on us as a platform to reach more people with what we’d been talking about anyway, which was segregation and housing and racism. If you do that, if you use every attack as a platform, they can’t win and you can’t lose cause if they leave you alone you go right on organizing, if they attack you you’re gonna have a platform to reach a lot more people. So you really can’t lose. And it really works like a charm.”

“When we are 80 years old, I think we will have no regrets.”

To Carl Braden, prison correspondence, February 17, 1955

 Anne with her husband, Carl Braden 

“The anti-communist hysteria and the anti-black hysteria were all wrapped up in a ball and hurled at us.”

Dr. Fosl’s biography of Anne Braden

“In every age, no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world. I believe this is the genius of humankind, the thing that makes us half divine: the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.”

Anne Braden continued to protest inequality until she died in 2006.

“A new massive thrust toward racial justice will not alone solve all the problems that face us, but I am convinced that unless such a thrust develops—one that is global in its outlook—the other problems will not be solved. Because they are at the bottom of this society, when people of color move, the foundation shifts. . . In a sense, the battle is and always has been a battle for the hearts and mind of white people in this country. The fight against racism is not something we’re called on to help people of color with.  We need to become involved as if our lives depended on it because, in truth, they do.”

Anne remained active in the fight for Civil Rights until the very end of her life.

“What you win in the immediate battles is little compared to the effort you put into it but if you see that as a part of this total movement to build a new world, you know what could be. You do have a choice. You don’t have to be a part of the world of the lynchers. You can join the other America. There is another America!”

Anne on the front lines of a protest.

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