VHS/DVD , 3 episodes, 56 minutes each, 2003, Produced by: California Newsreel.
Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese, but what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today? There’s less – and more – to race than meets the eye:
1. Race is a modern idea
Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word “race” until it turns up in a 1508 poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.
2. Race has no genetic basis
Not one characteristic, trait, or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.
3. Human subspecies don’t exist
Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven’t been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most genetically similar of all species.
4. Skin color really is only skin deep
Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.
5. Most variation is within, not between, “races”
Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.
6. Slavery predates race
Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.
7. Race and freedom evolved together
The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that “All men are created equal.” But our early
economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.
8. Race justified social inequalities as natural
As the race idea evolved, white superiority became “common sense” in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democracy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society.
9. Race isn’t biological, but racism is still real
Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.
10. Colorblindness will not end racism
Pretending race doesn’t exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.
Vision: An anti-racisit community where all children and families receive appropriate and equitable support and services.
Mission: The Jefferson County RCCW Leadership Advisory Board exists to promote public policies and practices that ensure equitable care and support of all children and families by addressing disproportionality and disparate outcomes through multi-system strategies and community involvement.
Values: The Jefferson County RCCW Leadership Advisory Board values:
Well being of children and their families
Anti racism culture
Positive sustainable systems' change through best practices, data-based decision making, committed involvement and transparency
Accountability, mutual respect, honesty and integrity
Advocacy to shape public policy and practice through multi level strategies
Leading by example and challenging complacency
Continuing education and public outreach
Entire community leadership responsibility for all children
RCCW Leadership Advisory Board Committees
Development Committee
To garner support from identified targeted sponsors within the community including community service providers and corporations for general funding of the initiative including "Undoing Racism" workshops. To seek out and apply for grants to benefit the initiative. To partner with community agencies to provide community forums and conferences regarding the intiative.
Public Awareness, Education, and Communication Committee
To focus on community outreach including training and educating the public about racial disproportionality and disparate outcomes in the child welfare system to promote equitable treatment of all chidlren and ffamilies. This includes facilitation fo "Undoing Racism" workshops and developing a Speakers' Bureau. To develop materials (i.e. brochures, flyers, reports, handouts, etc.) and carry out all functions related to communicating RCCW activities and events to engage the community in the efforts of the initiative.
Evaluation Committee
To carry out functions required to recommend priorities and evaluate the efforts including data collection and strategic plan review. To gather materials for assessment of "Undoing Racism" workshops and RCCW conferences to track trends and identify opportunities for improvement.
Policy, Practice and Culture Change Committee
To review the policies and practices of systems or agencies associated with child welfare for unintended consequences and make recommendations for improvement. To promote an anti-racist culture within lcoal organizations and community agencies.
Executive Leadership & Membership Committee
Executive Leadership - To be comprised of RCCW Leadership Advisory Board Co-chairs and all committee chairs to carry out the business of the Board while the Board is not meeting. To plan Board meeting place, time, set meeting agendas, etc.
Membership - To recruit and retain members for the Jefferson County RCCW Leadership Advisory Board in accordance with established membership ratios. To prepare slate of recommended officers (co-chairs and committee chairs). To compile and report information to the Board annually and recommend improvements.
The Jefferson Service Region of Kentucky DCBS (Department for Community Based Services) has worked strategically since September 2005 to begin redefining the definition of "child welfare". To most of the public, the "child welfare system" simply means the public child welfare agency or "CPS".
This mythical definition of who "child welfare" is can not be further from the truth. What the public at large must remember is that members of the community (not the CPS agency) have referred all families to the public child welfare agency for investigation of abuse, neglect or dependency. Families of color are referred by the community at a disproportionate rate compared to their population in the general census.
Once a family is involved with Kentucky DCBS, community partners that make up the "child welfare system" help DCBS make most of the key case decisions made during the life of a public child welfare case. The key decisions include the results of the investigation of abuse or neglect; the decision to leave the family intact or remove the child from the home; the decision to move a child from one placement to another placement; and finally, any permanency decision about a child (for example, the decision to change the child's permanency goal to Adoption).
Community partners are at the table when Kentucky DCBS makes these key decisions through two types of meetings that are conducted with families. All families who receive ongoing services from Kentucky DCBS will eventually be part of a "Family Team Meeting" or a "Facilitated Staffing" (sometimes called "Team Decision Making"). It is during these two types of meetings that community partners who make up the "child welfare system" help Kentucky DCBS make the key decisions in a public child welfare case.
These community partners are listed below and are committed to helping redefine who the "child welfare system" is in Louisville, Kentucky.
"Freedom Rides" took place
from May to November 161.
Fifty years ago this month, a group of thirteen young men and women, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) led by James Farmer, planned a deliberate but non-violent protest against segregation in the American south. This is the story of a few extraordinary, ordinary people who changed history, as told by the American Experience production of "Freedom Riders", a documentary of the pivotal six months in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, which aired on KET.
May through November 1961, hundreds of Americans, both black and white, risked their lives to change the Jim Crowe laws in the segregated U.S. South. The majority of the Freedom Riders were black and white college students.
MLK led a reception in Atlanta. However, he did not participate in the rides, and even told riders that the Klan in the Deep South were planning “quite a welcome...If I were you," he warned, "I probably wouldn’t go into Alabma."
Despite his warnings, they went anyway.
Imagine this: A group gets off a greyhound bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Higway patrolman emerges from the smoke, fires his gun in the air and says, "Ok.You’ve had your fun. Time to move on.”
Freedom Riders flee a bus burned by an Alabama mob in 1961.
Freedom Rider, Bernard Lafayette, Jr., explained, "The mob came out and went straight to the reporters, and started beating them and kicking them, and throwing their cameras down, smashing them on the ground."
After the reporters were forced away, that’s when the attack on the riders started.
Another rider, James Zwerg, said, “You could see baseball bats, pieces of pipe, and hammers and chains. One fellow had a pitchfork...I asked God to be with me, to give me the strength I would need to remain non-violent, and to forgive them.”
Fellow rider, Frederick Leonard's voice shook when he described the scene, "They were like a feeding frenzy. They were just crazy!”
“And what sticks with me," said rider Catherine Burke-Brookes, "was women were screaming, “Kill them n-----s” and they had babies in their arms.
There were no police anywhere to be seen. President John F. Kennedy was getting the report in real-time, explained journalist and author, Evan Thomas.
Justice Department Official during the Kennedy administration, John Seigenthaler added, "This was war, on the Greyhound Bus terminal parking lot.Absolute war." He re-called one of the last moments he remembered from that day, before he was attacked and left bleeding and unconscious in the street. He grabbed a young female rider by the arm, to try to get her out of harms way. But, she looked at him and shouted: “Mister, I don’t want you to get hurt!I’m non-violent. I’m trained to do this. Please don’t get hurt.We’ll be fine.”
Newspaper articles came out immediately, with headlines such as “U.S. Official is Knocked Un-conscious”. Former rider turned State Representative, John Lewis, explained “The last thing I recall, standing with John Zwerg, I was hit in the head with a wooden crate.”
Rider Sangernetta Gilbert Bush said “The police were standing there in their uniforms, just looking.They provided no protection for those students.”
Before the police broke up the crowd with tear gas, they beat up and injured at least twenty persons of both races and sexes.
Derek Casam, professor from the University of Texas explained, “After the Montgomery riots, the Kennedys feltbetrayed.There’s John S lying in a pool of his own blood. They realized they were going to have to bring in Federal Marshalls.”
Writer Diane McWorter explained that Hoovert didn’t tell Kennedy the mob had formed.He made no effort to stop the mob.
The second bus didn’t know the mob had attacked, that the streets were covered in blood, as they were approaching the most dangerous part of their trip - Atlanta, Georgia - explained historian, Raymond Arsenault.
Freedom rider, Mae F. Maultrie Maurie explained, “It was a very disconverting period.It was as if one civilization was coming unhinged.”
One boy laid down in front of the bus, the mob surrounded.The bus driver was able to ease the bus out of the crowd, but a car followed close behind.
The tire was going flat. The bus driver got out, saw the tire, barely any air left, and he walked away.
Now in the hands of the mob, it didn’t look good for the the Freedom Riders. “I was pretty afraid, that’s putting it mildly," said a rider.
Someone from the croud broke out a window with a crowbar, and a smoke bomb was launched through the broken glass., causing the fuel tank to explode.The mob dispursed, the door burst open and people spilled into the yard, gasping for air, shouing “Water!”
"I can’t tell you if I walked off the bus, crawled off, or if someone pulled me off," said Maurie
People were coughing, strangling, and collapsing to the ground. Angry mobs some pulled out baseball bats and beat riders that had collapsed to the ground.“It was like a scene from hell," one rider said.
Rider John Lewis said, "I was happy, I was like a soldier in a non-violent army...there was no military, police protection...we just chartered a regular bus unprotected, just to see what happens."
"With our non-violent beliefs, and our good will, we could do anything," added rider Genevieve.
Halleleujah, I'm a Travelin', Freedom Singers
One of the songs that inspired Freedom Riders through their dargest days
I’m taking a trip on the Greyhound Bus
Hallelujah, I’m a travelin’ Hallelujah, ain’t it fine Hallelejah, I'm a travelin' Down freedom's main line.
'Freedom Riders' Reenactment, May 16, 2011:
50th Anniversary of an Event that Changed America
Earlier this month, forty current college students from around the country, picked from thousands of applicants, participated in a PBS-sponsored re-enactment of the Freedom Rides.They joined some of the original 1961 Riders to make the trip from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans.
It was an opportunity to reflect on the risks and sacrifices inherent in the fight for social change, whether fifty years ago or today.
Democratic Congressman, John Lewis, from Georgia, one of the thirteen original Freedom Riders. He was severely beaten in Montgomery, Alabama.
One of the student riders, Charles Reed from Jersey City, NJ a graduating senior from the university of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.
Why is it important to remember the Rides a half-century later?
Give acknowledgement to such a historic event in American history, inter-racila, both male and female, getting on a bus saying we want to end segregation.
In 1961 a small group of black and white college students chartered two greyhound buses and hit the road, to try to change the Jim Crowe Laws that kept the south and beyond segregated.
They took “Freedom Rides” from Washington D.C. to the deep South, beginning a journey to challenge Jim Crowe’s segregated travel laws: divided buses, separate waiting rooms, and restrooms.
Signs such as "Colored Waiting Room"
reminded travelers of the enforced racial order.
At just 19 years old Hank Thomas was filled with optimism. “We had no thought of any kind of violence.”
But, violence came just ten days in.
In Aniston, Alabama, the KKK surrounded the bus and set it on fire. Thomas and five others were almost burned alive.
Hours later, in Birmingham, the second bus was not met with fire, but with pipes and bats.
“We must not surrender to violence,” was a thought that remained strong among the Freedom Riders, as non-violent resistance only served to empower them against their enemies.
Over the next seven months, more than 400 others joined the cause, and it paid off.
The Kennedy administration finally enforced federal law desegregating interstate buses and public accommodations, proving that 13 people on two buses could start a movement that would change their lives and the nation.
Almost 50 years later, Freedom Rider, Hank Thomas, met with the son of one of the Klan members that burned the bus.
“He asked me for forgiveness. Obviously there’s nothing to forgive," Thomas said. "I had mentally left Aniston a long time ago. I didn’t carry the baggage of bitterness with me...He asked me if he and I could break bread together."
When asked what he hoped to acomplish when he got on that bus, Thomas explained that he knew they would overcome segregation in the South. "That wasn’t just a song or melody, that was our philosophy.We knew we would be successful."
Hey everybody! Take a look at our new Reclaiming Our Dreams website. It's a work in progress, so be sure in check in over the next couple of weeks as we add new material!
Click here to view the entire photo album (nearly 500 pictures taken by Ms. Silvia!) from the Youth Leadership Institute's Overnight Retreat at Urban Spirit!!!
“History is not just something that happened long ago and far away. History happens to all of us all the time. Local history brings history home, it touches your life, the life of your family, your neighborhood, your community."
– Thomas J. Noel, author and historian
Civil Rights Driving Tour: Louisville, Kentucky
Reclaiming Our Dreams: Youth Leadership Institute
Saturday May 21, 2011, 9:30am-2:00pm
In Attendance:
Program Coordinators – Mikal Forbush and Ashley Jackson
College Mentors – Silvia Gozzini, Khotso Libe, and Jenna Williams
Tour Guides – Dr. Cate Fosl, Director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research (BI), and Amber Duke, BI Community Education Coordinator
Fosl and Duke provided amazing historical context (via megaphone!). Also, Fosl read aloud firsthand accounts through oral histories from her book, "Subversive Southerner", and Duke shared her own family’s experiences of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, as we rode the bus through downtown neighborhoods.
Starting out at the Shawnee Boys & Girls Club, the group gathered around in a circle. “Can we get a pep talk?” Daishana asked. We loaded up on the bus, driven by Mr. Ron, who shared firsthand experiences of segregation and sit-ins, offering our young people some advice and encouraging words for their active participation as agents for positive social change.
Khotso and Silvia passed out Flip cams to everyone, which students used during the tour to take video and photo footage of historic sites, recorded discussions with community organizers and educators, and captured their own voices, reflecting on their experience as they went.
Duke grabbed the megaphone, “Do you remember when you watched the movie, "Freedom Song", at the Overnight Retreat?...” The movie is about a group of young people who risked their lives to bring change to their Mississippi community and beyond, during the 1960s.
“We talked about the Civil Rights Movement more broadly; today we will talk about it locally. Follow along with a copy of the tour map,” Duke said.
Dr. Fosl began, “If this was 1911, our lives would be very different. Besides the things like MTV, and the internet, we would have racial segregation by law. Most spaces were reserved only for white people…Often the spaces reserved for African Americans were not as nice. This was not true everywhere, but very true in the southern states, especially in Kentucky, and Louisville.” She explained that there was a struggle to make change, “a movement where changes were made by people not that much different in age from you all.”
“When you think about the Civil Rights Movement, what do you think of?” Dr. Fosl questioned the group.
Students shouted out “MLK!”, “Rosa Parks!”, and “bus rides!” Exactly. "Public buses were segregated," Dr. Fosl said. "and in 1961, exactly 50 years ago, a group of young people - black and white - chartered a bus together, not so different from the one we’re on now. They decided, ‘we don’t care what they do to us, we’re going.' These were the Freedom Rides, in which people endured amazing violence and displayed amazing courage, with great healing that took place,” she explained.
Approaching Fontaine Ferry Park on Southwestern Parkway (stop 12 on the tour), Duke described the area as “kind of like the Kentucky Kingdom in its day. It was a big amusement park with lots of rides.
Dr. Fosl illuminated the idea that racism hurts everyone, when she explained that she went to the park as a child, but had no idea that blacks were not allowed in. "For white children, segregation was invisible, you just didn’t think about who was absent,” she said.
Fontaine Ferry Park was a protest site in 1961 and
1963, because African Americans were not allowed
entrance. By the late 1960s, racial tensions swelled
in surrounding neighborhoods. The park closed in
1969 and a sports complex was later built here.
Families would come in and spend the day. But it wasn’t open to Black families.” It might have been a few decades ago, but many people have firsthand accounts of the park. Duke’s mother, when she was young, earned a pair of tickets to the park, for good behavior in school, only to find out, when she shared the great news with her mother, that she wouldn’t be allowed inside the park. “Her grandparents never told her. She was so excited to go, only to find out from her mother that she wasn’t allowed,” Duke exclaimed.
Driving through Chickasaw Park, we passed families having picnics and strolling down the walking path, kids playing basketball, and ducks on a pond, which led to a discussion on Environmental Justice.* The park's ponds are known for being contaminated. Many of the students snapped pictures of a sign, warning visitors not to consume any fish from the pond because of possible contamination.
The bus came to a stop at 4403 Virginia Avenue, and we all piled out to get a group shot in front of the former home of Anne and Carl Braden, who were among the earliest and most dedicated white allies of the civil rights movement in the South.People both young and old, from all across the country, spent time at the Braden’s home in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
Our next stop on the tour was a community center, dedicated to the memory of one of Louisville’s most dedicated social justice leaders and former pastor of the First Congregational Church, Rev. Louis Coleman, who passed away in 2008.Coleman was a pioneer in the civil rights movement, a voice for the voiceless, who fought tirelessly for greater access to opportunities and resources for minorities and women.He advocated for affirmative action, spoke out against police brutality, and fought against “environmental racism.”
The next stop was especially exciting for many of the students: the boyhood home of Louisville’s famous boxer, Muhammad Ali, who grew up in the Parkland area.
“Besides the fact that he was a boxer,” said Mikal Forbush, “does anybody know anything about Muhammad Ali?”
“Wasn’t he arrested for dodging the draft during the Vietnam War?” asked DeVonte.
Muhammad Ali
In 1967, Ali was charged by the government for violating the Selective Service Act, his titles were taken from him, and he was banned from boxing.His decision to protest the Vietnam War was controversial, as some praised him for risking possible jail time to stand for his conviction, while others called him a traitor.In 1970, Ali won a legal battle, as the U.S. Supreme Court decided he was not guilty of draft evasion, and he was allowed to return to the ring.
Passing through the intersection of 28th Street and Greenwood Avenue, Dr. Fosl explained that it was the site of a civil disorder.On May 27, 1968, demonstrators gathered there to protest the reinstatement of a police officer that attached a black businessman.“Organizers stood atop a parked car to deliver speeches, calling on the community to take action,” she said.
Next, we passed the Western Branch Library, which was one of the first in the nation to allow black Patrons and remains an important resource for the African American community.
Driving down Chestnut Street, Dr. Fosl explained the next site, Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, was an important gathering space in the struggle for civil rights since the late 19th century.Protesters gathered there as early as the 1870s to speak out against segregated seating in streetcars.This church was central to the victory over segregated housing ordinances in 1917, the battle against park segregation in 1924, and the fight for open accommodations and open housing policies in the 1960s.
A few blocks later, we passed the former home of Andrew Wade, a WWII veteran who challenged local realtors' unwillingness to sell to African Americans by asking the Bradens to help him purchase that house. The Bradens bought the home and transferred it to Wade’s family.White neighbors were outraged, shot out a window, and burned a cross in the Wade’s front yard.A few weeks later, the house was nearly destroyed by dynamite, the Bradens were called “communists” and faced sedition charges, and the Wades were never able to live in the house.
"We’re now coming up on the house of Murray A. Walls,” Dr. Fosl explained, “who was a leader in the movement to desegregate the city’s libraries, and pushed for the integration of the Louisville Council of Girl Scouts.”
The next two stops were especially key to our student group focusing on education for their community organizing and digital storytelling project: a historic school site.In 1882, the building became home to Kentucky’s first public school for Blacks, and one of the top all-black public schools in the 20th century, Central High school.The school was an important site for the development of early civil rights movement leaders, but has now moved to West Chestnut Street.
Simmons University on South Seventh Street opened in 1879 as the state’s first African American controlled institution of higher learning.In 1918, the school was renamed in honor of William Simmons, a college-educated minister and ex-slave.The property was purchased by the University of Louisville during the Depression-era, operating as Louisville Municipal College until the desegregation of the university in 1950.Simmons professor, Charles Parrish Jr. became the first African American to join U of L’s faculty.
Leaving the school, our driver, Mr. Ron, explained that we were coming up on the Old Walnut Street business district (6th through 13th Street on West Ali Boulevard).By the 1920s, Louisville’s black business district developed around Walnut Street (later renamed Muhammad Ali Boulevard).We passed a large building at 6th and Walnut, the longtime home to Mammoth Life and Accident Insurance Company (which eventually became the state’s largest black-owned business).
Mae Kidd (1904-1999)
Dr. Fosl pointed out that Mae Street Kidd, a state representative from 1968 to 1984, was an employee at that insurance company.In 1968, she co-introduced Kentucky’s fair housing bill.Four years later, the Mae Street Kidd Act created the KY Housing Corporation for low-income housing.Furthermore, Kidd also led the legislature to adopt the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1965, MLK's younger brother, A.D. King,
became minister of Zion Baptist Church and
founded the KY Christian Leadership Conference,
a local branch of the elder King's Atlanta-based
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Continuing down Ali Boulevard, we reached the Zion Baptist Church, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s younger brother became minister in 1965, and where in 1967 MLK delivered one of his most famous speeches shining light on the struggle for open housing policy: “Upon this rock," he exclaimed, "we are going to build an open city." A year later, the city’s open housing ordinance passed.
We drove past two more stops on the tour, the homes Willis Cole, the former editor and owner of The Louisville Leader, a civil rights-based black newspaper, and Lyman Johnson, a longtime Central High School teacher and NAACP leader who challenged the Day Law, which prohibited white and black students from attending the same school.In 1949, Johnson became the first black University of Kentucky student.
May 27, 1968, demonstrators gathered at 28th & Greenwood to protest the reinstatement of a police officer who, unprovoked, had struck a prominent black businessman. Organizers delivered outraged speeches from atop a parked car & called on African Americans to take control of their community. When a police car appeared on the scene, the crowd erupted, showering it with empty bottles. The incident sparked a riot that would last through the weekend, resulting in attempts by federal authorities to crack down on local activists.We ended at the Braden Memorial Center, purchased by the couple in 1968, after they became the directors of the civil rights group Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF).The center is also the longtime home to the Kentucky Alliance Against Racial & Political Oppression (KAARP), and a popular meeting space for anti-racist activists. Here, we reflected on the tour, asked questions of Alliance members, and enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal of chili cheese dogs, nachos, and fresh garden salad.
Civil Rights Driving Tour: Background Whether you are from Louisville or visiting for the first time, we invite you to learn how the 20th century civil rights movement changed lives here at the South’s northern border–for Africa Americans, but also for whites & now for the new immigrants who are bringing greater cultural diversity in the 21st century.
Read the following UofL Today story to learn about how the Braden Institute's Civil Rights Driving Tour came about!
“Braden Institute driving tour focuses on Louisville's civil rights history” by UofL Today — last modified Feb 10, 2010 01:01 PM
When Anne and Carl Braden bought a Louisville home in early 1954, then signed the deed over to World War II Navy veteran Andrew Wade and his wife, Charlotte, they really didn't expect that within six weeks the house would be ripped apart by a dynamite blast. But it was.
The violence put the street on the map for local civil rights history. And that's why it is among 21 stops on a new self-guided driving tour developed by the University of Louisville's Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research (ABI).
The Wades were African Americans. They had one small child and another on the way, and wanted a home with a yard where their children could play. While they had come close to purchasing a nice, suburban ranch home before, the deals had fallen through when their race became known.
At the time, deed restrictions and lending practices in Louisville kept black families from being able to buy homes in much of the city, according to UofL associate history professor Tracy K'Meyer in her book, "Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945-1980."
The Wades needed help to purchase the home of their choice and turned to a white couple, the Bradens, activists in Louisville's civil rights movement.
Since the Bradens worked with the black community to end segregation and with other like-minded white friends and colleagues, however, they were out of touch with the pervasive support in Louisville for segregation, wrote UofL associate professor and ABI Director Cate Fosl in her book "Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South."
And even though there was an African American neighborhood a quarter of a mile away from the home they purchased, they had crossed a line - so much so that authorities shifted blame from the perpetrators of the violence to the Bradens and Wades, Fosl said in "Subversive Southerner."
The people who threw rocks through the Wades' windows, shot into the house, burned a cross in the yard - and bombed the house - never came to justice, Fosl said. Instead the legal system accused the Bradens of being Communists. Carl was tried for sedition and sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $5,000 fine. His conviction was reversed in 1956 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all sedition laws were unconstitutional.
Tying the incident to Communism "diverted attention away from the real issue at hand - the inability of a black family to live peacefully in the home of their choice," K'Meyer said recently, and the violence and legal harassment that confronted the Wades and Bradens stifled the movement for residential integration for almost a decade. In fact, she said, housing segregation worsened.
Louisville has yet to realize the integration it might have experienced if the movement to more fully integrate its neighborhoods had progressed uninterrupted, both Fosl and K'Meyer said.
"There are few better instances in all of U.S. history that so dramatically demonstrate how Cold War 'McCarthyism' -- that anticommunist hysteria that made all dissent seem suspicious" -- helped white southerners who wanted to uphold legal segregation at the same time that federal actions were in the process of slowly dismantling it, Fosl said."McCarthyism propped up racial segregation by questioning the loyalty of those who opposed it," she said.
The Wade home never was rebuilt, but motorists can learn of its role in Louisville's civil rights movement from a historical marker on the street. Markers provide information at several stops of the ABI driving tour.
One goal of the tour, Fosl said, is to provide "a wider understanding of our local history and how it connects to regional and national experience."
Louisville's civil rights movement was similar to those in other communities in the type of participants it drew. Their tactics - direct action, boycotts, use of the political system and persuasion - also were similar to those used in other communities, K'Meyer said.
But in Louisville, she continued, "there was no one dominant organization, strategy or personality."
Fosl said tour developers also want those who take it to understand more fully what life under past racial restrictions was like and "why and how African Americans and their white allies organized together to change laws and practices." It is a way "to more solidly anchor" the events and places in local memory and "to give visitors a fuller picture of what Louisville was and is today."
"We want to honor the movement's leading participants in particular, but also to lift up the importance of collective struggle in bringing about needed improvements to our city, she said.
And, as in the case of the Wade dynamiting, to come to terms with what Fosl said the civil rights movement did not achieve.
"We still have a lot of work to do to achieve true racial justice in the United States and in Louisville today," Fosl said.
Brochures of the driving tour are available at ABI, on the second floor of Ekstrom Library on Belknap Campus. More information on the Wade incident, including books confiscated from the Braden home and used as evidence of their Communist involvement, are on display at the institute.
Tour Stops:
Muhammad Ali Center, 144 N. 6thCharles Anderson, 600 W. Jefferson: marker is on steps of Hall of Justice
Historic School Site, 550 W. Kentucky
Simmons University/Louisville Municipal College, 1018 S. 7th
Old Walnut St. Business District (6th-13th on W. Ali Blvd.)
Mae Street Kidd, Old Mammoth Life Insurance, Corner of 6th & W. Ali.
Zion Baptist Church, 2200 W. Ali.
I. Willis Cole, 2317 W. Ali.
Lyman Johnson Home, 2340 W. Ali.
Braden Memorial Center, 3208 W. Broadway
Buchanan v. Warley site, 37th St. & Pflanz (vacant lot)
Fontaine Ferry, 230 Southwestern Pkwy.
Chickasaw Park, 1200 Southwestern Pkwy
Braden Home, 4403 Virginia Ave
Rev. Louis Coleman Community Center at First Congregational Church, 3810 Garland Ave
Muhammad Ali Boyhood Home, 3302 Grand Ave
1968 Civil Disorder, S 28th St & Greenwood Ave
Western Branch Library, 604 S 10th St
Quinn Chapel, 912 W Chestnut St
Open Housing Pioneers–the Wade Home,S Crums Ln & Clyde Dr
Murray Atkins Walls, 2105 Lexington Rd
Freedom Riders
For more background on the famous Freedom Rides, check out "Freedom Riders" on KET, Monday (5/16) at 9pm.
Episode description: From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives for simply traveling together on buses and trains in the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism. Veteran filmmaker Stanley Nelson's documentary is the first feature-length film about this courageous band of civil-rights activists.
Rating: [TV-PG] (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Upcoming Airdates on KET2: Wednesday, May 18 at 3:00 am EDT and Sunday, May 22 at 9:00 pm EDT
Past Airdates on KET2: Tuesday, May 17 at 1:00 am EDT, and KET: Monday, May 16 at 9:00 pm EDT
First aired: Monday, May 16, 2011(excluding any air dates prior to June 1999)
More Resources! Click here for additional information about Louisville, Southern, and U.S. Civil Rights History, check out some of the following films, books, and websites!
