Activist Anne Braden to Speak at UA’s Rose Gladney Lecture

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama’s department of American studies is hosting the second annual Rose Gladney Lecture on Justice and Social Change March 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Alabama Institute for Manufacturing Excellence (AIME) Building located at 720 Second St. behind the Ferguson Student Center on campus.

Anne Braden, author and anti-racism activist since 1954 and founder of the Kentucky Alliance against Racism and Repression in Louisville, Ky., will be the guest speaker. Her lecture, entitled “A Time to Organize,” addresses why organizing is necessary in times of injustice and social change and in times when it seems as if nothing significant is happening.

There will also be a panel discussion on “Justice and Social Change” with Braden, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Joan Browning and Dr. Rose Gladney at 11 a.m. on March 10 in room 112 in Martha Parham Hall. Both events are free and open to the public.

The annual lecture is named for Gladney, who retired in 2003 as UA associate professor of American studies. Gladney spent her career working on issues of social justice and change. She was one of the early professors in the women’s studies department and helped craft the master’s program in that field. She also helped develop and sustain the African-American studies minor.

Following the lecture, there will be a reception honoring Gladney in the AIME lobby. The Rose Gladney Lecture is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, African-American studies program, the department of women’s studies, New College, the department of religious studies and the department of history.

Gladney says, “I am humbled and honored that such a giant in social justice in this country is speaking. She has endured so much resistance as an activist herself, not only from those you would expect, but from other activists.

“In the post-World War II McCarthy era we used fear of Communism to negate any challenge to change – racially or socially. Now, as we continue to deal with issues of change and the ability to use our rights as citizens, our rights are being taken away in the name of terrorism,” said Gladney.

Gladney said she was inspired by Braden’s writings in the 1970s and remembers reading and using her work in her teaching at the University.

Braden is best known for a 1954 incident in which she and her husband, Carl Braden, purchased a house in an all-white neighborhood of Louisville and, in a pre-arranged transaction meant to protest segregation in housing, resold it to an African-American family. Her book, “The Wall Between,” tells of the subsequent bombing of the house and the prosecution of the Bradens.

Seizing on another inflammatory issue of the time, their opponents attempted to link integration efforts to Communism, and the Bradens were tried – and Carl jailed – on charges of sedition. Meanwhile, the buyer decided to move his young family out of the house for fear of their safety.

In the decades since, Braden has continued to be an activist, founding Progress in Education and the Kentucky branch of the Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression to ease the stress of school desegregation in the 1970s.

Braden was born in 1924 in Louisville but grew up in Alabama. After college, she worked as a newspaper reporter in Birmingham, covering the courthouse. The incongruity between the Bible she was reading and the racist practices of her society troubled her, and her beliefs eventually compelled her to leave the deep South.

In 1947, she came to Louisville to work for the Times. She found that although African-Americans in Louisville could vote and sit where they wished on buses, race relations were otherwise very similar to what she had experienced farther south. She also discovered people working through organizations to bring about desegregation and joined in efforts to open up hospitals and schools, leading her to a life of work against racism.

For more information, please contact Dr. Lynne Adrian at ladrian@tenhoor.as.ua.edu or 205/348-5940.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state with 6,600 students and 360 faculty. Students from the college have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships, and memberships on the “USA Today” Academic All American Team.