
          Anne Braden: Southern Activist
          By Suitts, SteveSteve Suitts
          Vol. 15, No. 1, 1993, pp. 13-14
          
          FOR OVER FORTY-FIVE YEARS, almost as long as the Southern Regional Council has existed, Anne Braden has stood for a South that embodies the very best democratic ideals and traditions. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and reared in the Deep South, Anne had every opportunity as she was growing up in the 1930s to acclimate herself to the worst traditions of the South—the worst habits of a white segregated society. But by the gifts of family and circumstances, and perhaps just that magic that some call fate and others call God's will, she came to understand in time and experience that the South of segregation was wrong in the 1940s, and, by God, the South of segregation need not be forever. While in 1992 that conclusion seems commonplace, for those who were coming of age in the 1930s and '40s, it was a leap of imagination which even the founders of the Southern Regional Council could not grasp in its beginning.
          Anne began in newspaper work in Birmingham, Alabama, and in Kentucky. She soon realized, however, that what she was covering, what she was seeing, needed to be changed more than reported. And so, she began to use her talents as a journalist and her self-made talents as an organizer to work with labor unions and burgeoning groups that later would call themselves civil rights groups. With her husband Carl, she began to change and challenge and did not stop.
          In 1957, the Bradens began to work with the Southern Conference
Education Fund, (SCEF). And if I fumble a bit on the name, it's only because, if there's been one time, there's been a thousand times that people have introduced me from the Southern Regional Conference. I have often thought of it as something of a nice compliment, that somehow the Southern Regional Council, the Southern Conference on Human Welfare and the Southern Conference Education Fund could be seen as one in the full history of our world.
          Anne worked through the '50s and the '60s with SCEF. Into the '70s she helped to organize the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice (SOC) as a multi-racial, multi-issue network. She continued in the '80s and she continues in the '90s. If we had time and opportunity, we could meet people from the bayous of Louisiana to the mountain country of Kentucky who would give their own personal stories of what Anne has meant and done in their lives.
          Tonight we honor Anne not merely for the consequences of these good deeds but also for the example that she sets as a lifelong Southerner of goodwill. In the 1950s, Anne and her husband Carl stood up against the tyranny of the witch hunt which Joe McCarthy and the U.S. Committee on Un-American Activities led and which Southern segregationist governors and members of Congress used to terrorize people who simply believed in integration. More than virtually all other Southerners—at times more than the leaders of the Southern Regional Council—Anne understood the devastation that would befall the South, and did, when people replied to the accusation, "Communist" with the reply, "Not me!" She knew that that reply only gave strength to the corrupted accusations and only divided Southerners of goodwill into ineffectiveness. It is a testament to her mettle not only that she gave us that example, but that she forgave us for having not understood it early enough.
          Another of Anne's exquisite examples comes from her insight and her
faith in what I would call the beloved community. Before many others,
Anne saw the connections between various social movements that came in
time and different eras, various movements of different people with
different urges. She saw the labor movement and the civil rights
movement had very important connections—that they were in many ways
one. She was one of the first white Southerners to understand the
important connections between the civil rights movement the anti-war
movement (Vietnam) and the poor peoples movement. She understood this
lineage and these connections. I remember in 1969, after perhaps the
most deadly year of our recent political history, Anne Braden went to
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to speak to a group of black and white students
and community folks about how their work 



in civil rights and their work on anti-war activities were in fact one and the same. She made those connections far better than any of us ever did, and she was able to forge them in many other places with a sense of common purpose which enlivened, deepened and enabled the local work for social and political change.
          In recent years, she's continued to bind together what is a rainbow of interests even before the Rainbow Coalition, on whose board she sits, was ever imagined. Civil rights, peace, labor, environment—these are but one cause, not many, for Anne Braden and for this insight we all are indebted.
          The third significant lesson that Anne has given in her lifetime is tenacity, her endurance in the cause of a multiracial, just society. In an era when two years seem to be an awfully long time and four is just more than one can imagine ahead, Anne has given decades. She is devoted, daily, weekly, monthly in a fight she believes is as dear as her soul. I doubt there are many people who have ridden more miles, who have gone to as many small community group meetings and who continue to believe that each and every time it was important than Anne Braden. She has endured.
          Finally, Anne Braden has had an important part, now and in the past in shaping the conscience of the South. This is not a fuzzy, feel-good notion with Anne. While she is warm and friendly, no one is more free of useless sentimentality than Anne Braden.
          Bless her heart, she suffers fools poorly. She speaks her mind and she's always done so on behalf of what she sees as a just and right society. She always has been impatient with those who find practical problems with moving forward. Always impatient, yet always enduring, she has continued to help define the struggle to empower all citizens to have a voice and a stake in our peculiar institution of democracy.
          These are the examples of a lifetime that Anne Braden has brought to the South and this nation. History, I fear, will not do her justice since Anne's contributions represent characteristics that are not only too rare but too rarely appreciated.
          Tonight we are trying to do what I fear historians will not, to recognize the importance of these characteristics and the contributions they've enabled. Because she has given us a noble model of the qualities that are essential for anyone who works for a just and peaceful world, we have decided to give Anne Braden our highest honor and our deepest appreciation.
          
            Acceptance Remarks by Anne Braden
            
              
                StaffStaff
              
            
            Vol. 15, No. 1, 1993, pp. 14-16
            I find the matter of getting awards very awkward. It's something I don't have a long experience in. For most of my adult life I got brickbats and attacks. I learned by on-the-job training how to handle attacks: you use each attack as a platform to reach more people with what you were trying to say.
            I never got any awards until very recent years. The first group I ever got an award from was the local chapter of SCLC. Since then I've gotten some others. I find it a little embarrassing because part of it is longevity. You know if you stay around long enough people figure you must have done something.
            There is a poem I loved when I was young. I don't remember all of it but it is called "Defeat." And the poet is speaking to defeat, to the concept of defeat: "...you have insured that I will not be trapped by withering laurels..." I never had that temptation through most of my life. I'm kind of grateful for that.
            I'm not sure I've ever been to an annual meeting of the Southern Regional Council, which is sort of outrageous. These meetings and this dinner serve as a gathering of the family of the Southern Regional Council. I think that's great. You know we all believe in family values. There is a sense of family here and I'm sort of the outsider who came to dinner. I wanted to allude to the fact—and Steve has really gone into it more than I would have done—that throughout the course of the work I've tried to do in the South, I have not had a close relationship with the Southern Regional Council.
            I've admired the work and gotten the publications and learned a
lot. And the organizations that I've worked with through the years
often did not have a close working relationship with the Southern
Regional Council. I think this is grist for the mill of history. It
should be understood what the dynamics were. But I don't think that's
the point right now. I think it was ridiculous. That's my point. It's
ridiculous that there were groups in the South all working for a
democratic South that weren't working closely together. I mean it was
outrageous. Then when you look back it seems even more
outrageous. Whatever the reason was, there was no good reason for
it. Here we were surrounded by the forces that wanted to destroy us
all and we couldn't work together. I think it's important for the
future for us to learn from that. Because I think that no matter what
differences there might be, I start with the assumption that everybody
in this room and everybody in the Southern Regional Council, and many
different groups in the South, all of us work with in one way or
another, 



have a common denominator, a goal. I've sometimes tried to define it. What is it that brings us together? I used to call it the scattered brotherhood and sisterhood. You know when you meet people that they share your vision of a different kind of world. I think what we all want is a human and humane society. I think that's the common denominator. We may have different approaches of how you approach social change.
            In a society that needs basic changes—and I think this one does, did forty years ago and still does today—you need different approaches. There is no one approach that is going to do it all. We can work together. You do this part, I do that part.
            For those of us working for a better society, the things that unite us are a lot more important than those that divide us. I've been through some bitter fights in the social justice movement—and I'm talking about internal fights—and I've never been in one that it didn't strike me: why are people fighting like this? Because what unites us is so much more important than what divides us.
            What are a few of the things that I think unite all of us in the South who have been working through the years? I think there is a sense we have as Southerners. When I go to other parts of the country now, people say: "Has the South really changed?" You know. That kind of thing. And I say, "You know, the South's getting more and more like the rest of the country all the time and has been for years. It's probably less racially segregated than the rest of the country and no more racist, which isn't saying much." In the South we have an identity with each other because of the shared history—the bad, and some good.
            And I think that we in the South have some things to give the rest of the country that it needs. Of course, I speak as a white Southerner. I'm like Steve, that doesn't change. We get older but we stay white. I think that white Southerners who become involved in social justice movements have a gut realization of knowing that the basic issue that's got to be dealt with in this country is racism. Not the only issue, there are all kinds of problems. But, we know in our guts if we don't deal with that we ain't going to deal with any of the others. We know that because of the history we come from. And I'm not sure that white people in other parts of the country always know that.
            I think that we know in our guts that it's the movements of the people of color—and it's a multiracial and not just an interracial struggle now—that provide the motivating force for this country to move in a more humane direction.
            We don't have to sit around and have long arguments—which I've heard and you all probably have, too—about whether whites will follow black leadership. You been in on any of those arguments? I say this is ridiculous. In the 1960s this whole country was following black leadership. So what are we arguing about? It was because the civil rights movement was setting the agenda of the country. It didn't have political power, but it was setting the agenda.
            Look back in your history. It's perfectly logical that people who
have been pushed down the most are gonna provide the upsurge that changes everything. It has happened over and over. I see it happening right now in a project I work with on environmental justice, not just the environment, environmental justice. (See Ellen Spears' essay in this issue.)
            The South is being poisoned. We're the dumping ground of the country. But what's happening in the last few years is a tremendous new movement. It's really out there. It just hasn't coalesced yet. Coming from communities of color on the issue of environmental justice.
            So, it's happening again and it's gonna continue to happen. We can understand that as Southerners because of our experience in the struggles we've been in. It's important for the country too. White people get confused on that—the interests of people of color as being opposed to them, or that's going to take something away from them. The whole concept of reverse discrimination. We must not get confused by that sort of thing.
            Southerners understand the depths of racism. For reasons I don't have to tell anybody here. I find that white people some places in other parts of the country think if they go to a couple of workshops on racism they've dealt with it. I think that those of us who are white never get free of racism entirely. We never do. There's no graduation certificate. And the reason is that this society is so deeply permeated by racism that you can be racist without even trying. If you just do the normal thing, you're going to be racist. Even those of us who have been in this struggle a long time are likely everyday to come up and do something racist. We understand that. And that's a lesson we have to teach other people.
            
            Finally, I think the thing that unites us is that we also know what can be accomplished by the struggle of people. Because we've seen it happen in the South in our lifetimes. Of people who had no power, often had no formal education, sure had no money, who organized and set a different agenda. People organizing can make a difference. And you can do it under the most adverse conditions.
            I think we're in for a period where we've got to have struggle, organized struggle. We've got a new administration in Washington and I guess some people think that's gonna change things. I think it gives us some openings, but I think that administration like any administration is going to respond to the needs of people in direct proportion to how we organize. I have run into people who say, "Oh, it's a hard time to organize." I say, "What are you talking about?" This is a beautiful time to organize. The people who organized in the South—I'm talking about before my day—in the '20s, '30s and '40s, organized in a literal police state. That's what the South was. It was a police state and you were risking your life, white and black. And people died. People did it anyway. They met in secret, they marched, black and white people together marched down the streets of Birmingham demanding unemployment compensation in the'30s. We haven't had a march of black and white people in Birmingham lately as big as some of those.
            I don't like to speak of the Civil Rights Movement in the past tense because I don't think it's ever stopped. But that period of the '50s and '60s accomplished many things. You can say what it didn't accomplish, and we all know that it didn't bring about the beloved community. We didn't have a revolution in the sense of remaking the society. But anybody who says that it didn't accomplish anything just doesn't know how things were before. One of the main things it accomplished was that it broke that police state in the South. We won the right to organize. So if we don't organize now, we can't blame it on any outside oppression or anything else, we just don't have the get up and go to go do it.
            But I think we can do it. I think our history of struggle that
brings us together means we can do it and that all of these things
that unite us, the people here in this room, the Southern Regional
Council, all the different organizations that I've worked with, that
you've worked with ... the things that unite us are so much more
important than those that divide us. And if we really come together
and forget all these divisions, we will have the power to change not
only the South but the country. 
          
          
            Steve Suitts, executive director of the SRC, made these remarks in presenting a Life Fellows Award to Anne Braden.
          
        