[News] Anne Braden passes

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Anne Braden was one of those people who was totally dedicated to abolishing
white supremacy.  Her passing is a great loss to the peoples' movements.

Ted Pearson

---------- Forwarded Message -----------
From: charlene.mitchell at att.net
To: ncc at lists.cc-ds.org (Committees)
Sent: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:30:45 +0000
Subject: [NCC] (no subject)

Dear Folks:

I have just learned that Anne Braden died early this morning, Monday March,
6. 2006.

Anne was a very small woman in size but a heroic giant in the civil rights
movement. Much will be written and spoken about this courageous leader who
during her more than fifty years was truly a model in the fight against
racism.   There will be an obituary on Portside as soon as it is available.

Personally, Anne was a good friend with whom I often consulted. I loved her
and will miss her.

We will keep you informed about arrangements for a memorial and where to send
condolences.

In sorrow,
Charlene Mitchell

Excerpts from an Interview with Anne Braden
Joining the Other America

I, in various looking around for things to do, I 
had become involved somewhat, by meetings I had 
gone to and things the Civil Rights Congress was 
doing. One of the things they were doing was 
fighting the many, many cases of terror in the 
south in that period. Things that were aimed at 
African American veterans coming back from World 
War II wanting to exercise some of the freedom 
they thought they had fought for. There were some 
bad things happened. Also a number of, what came 
to be called "legal lynchings." The old fashioned 
kind of lynching was on the decline, although 
that did happen too. But courtrooms were lynching 
people. One of them was a man named Willie McGee 
in Mississippi who had been framed, many of us 
were convinced and I still am, on a charge of 
raping a white woman, which was the worst thing you could be charged with.

There was a movement of white women in the 
thirties called Southern Women Against Lynching 
or something. Because this kind of 
oppression--more than oppression, it was killing 
of black men. The excuse for it was to protect so 
called "white womanhood." The whole myth of white 
womanhood and the part that it played in the 
south at that time. So these white women--this 
was long before my day; I don't think I ever 
really met any of them, but I read about them 
later and began to identify with that 
tradition--were white women who said, "Thank you 
just the same, we'll protect ourselves. We're 
tired of being used as an excuse to kill black 
men." I mean, that was the message.

They were getting ready to electrocute Willie 
McGee in Mississippi. The Civil Rights Congress 
had been carrying on a campaign. It became a 
national campaign. They were getting delegations 
of white women to go to Mississippi to try to 
talk to white women in Mississippi to get them to 
speak out against what was this great injustice, as a lot of us saw it.

And I went to a meeting and heard one of these 
women talk who had been on this delegation. I'd 
never done anything. I was really not dry behind 
the ears. Had just gotten into things, never done 
anything like this before in my life and I 
decided I wanted to go. So I signed up to go. And 
I went down to Mississippi on the last delegation 
on the Willie McGee case on a weekend. He was 
executed the following Monday, we were not 
successful in stopping that. Our mission was 
to
not to, it was too late to talk to other white 
women in the state. We were to see the governor 
that day. Jackson was a garrison state that day. 
There were state police. There were rumors that 
African Americans were coming in from all over 
the countryside to protest that day. There had 
been a lot of organization there around this 
case. People were coming. People who had come 
down from Memphis, blacks and some whites from Memphis.

So there were all these police in the street and 
we were headed for the capital and they stopped 
us, wanting to know where we were going. I said, 
"We're going to see the governor." "Oh no, nobody 
is seeing the governor of Mississippi today!" We 
tried to explain that we were there on an 
important mission. So they took us into what they 
called "protective custody." Took us to jail. And 
we spent the day in jail. It was the first time I'd ever been in jail.

They were mumbling about all these outsiders 
coming into Mississippi and we didn't understand 
about Mississippi and, you know, just muttering 
like people will do in a situation like that. 
Anyhow, I couldn't stand it any longer and I 
said, "Well I don't really think I'm an 
outsider." I said, "I was a child in Jackson. 
First thing I remember is being in Jackson, 
Mississippi and Columbus. I grew up in Alabama." 
And I said, "But I lived in Mississippi for a 
number of years and I'm ashamed of this state today."

He got absolutely furious. It's the whole traitor 
thing. He was so furious and he said, "And you're 
in here, and you're a southerner, and you're on 
this thing!?" And he turned around like he was 
going to hit me, but he didn't because this other 
cop stopped him. So he didn't. But all of a 
sudden that was a very revealing moment to me. 
Because all of my life police had been on my 
side. I didn't think of it that way but I didn't 
bother about police and they didn't bother you, 
you know, in the world where I grew up. Except 
maybe if you were speeding they might stop you, 
and if you talked to them real nice they wouldn't 
give you a ticket. All of a sudden I realized 
that I was on the other side. He had said, 
"You're not a real southern woman." And I said, 
"No, I guess I'm not your kind of southern woman."

Very early in that stage I had this letter from a 
man that I bet you most of you have not heard of, 
possibly, named William L. Patterson. He was an 
African American, fighter. He headed, at that 
time, a thing called the Civil Rights Congress. 
But he wrote this letter. Number one, and this 
isn't the main point, but he told me that I 
didn't need to be going around talking at the 
black churches. That I ought to be talking at the 
white churches. That's the first time I heard 
that message. And I've been preaching that ever since.

But then he said, "You know, 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." 
He said, "There is another America." And I'm 
paraphrasing a little bit, he said, "It's always 
been here. Ever since the first slave ship 
arrived, and before. The people who struggled 
against slavery, the people who rebeled against 
slavery. The white people who supported them. The 
people who all through Reconstruction struggled." 
He came on down through history of the people who 
have struggled against injustice. The other America.

Sometimes people will say just what you need to 
hear at that point. I was very young. And that's 
what I needed to hear. And that's what I felt like I joined.



The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20060306/9f59d48c/attachment.htm>