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

• Author: Wellington, Darryl Lorenzo
• Position: Book Review - Brief Article

By Catherine Fosl Palgrave Macmillan. 320 pages. $35.00.

Anne and Carl Braden were two the most active and determined white anti-racist crusaders of the 1950s and beyond. Catherine Fosl's Subversive Southerner traces the life story of Anne Braden, the archetypal "subversive Southerner," from her upbringing in Kentucky to her years in the desegregation struggle to her activism in the 1980s as a supporter of Jesse Jackson's Presidential campaigns.

The Braden couple entered the national spotlight in 1954 because of an incident now known as the Wade Case. The Bradens purchased a house in a segregated area of Louisville for an African American family named Wade. Local racists targeted the house and burned a cross in the front yard. Finally, the Wade home was destroyed in a bomb blast. The criminals were never brought to trial...