Arts & Events

Never one to shut up and tend to her knitting, Anne Braden made a place for herself in the history of American radicalism when she and her husband, Carl, were charged with sedition for a buying a house in a white Louisville, Ky. suburb in 1954 and turning it over to a black family. The Supreme Court eventually ruled state sedition laws invalid, but not before Carl served time in prison and lost his job at the Louisville Times.

From then on Carl and Anne worked fulltime for the civil rights movement as field organizers for the Southern Conference Educational Fund. After Carl's death, Anne went on writing, speaking, and marching for her vision of a better world.

Braden could not have asked for better tellers of her story than the filmmakers who pay tribute to her radical life in "Anne Braden: Southern Patriot": Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering began working together at Appalshop, a media production center in the tiny Kentucky mountain town of Whitesburg, where Pickering is still based while Lewis teaches at the University of Texas. Both have already produced a stream of award-winning documentaries that uncover the seamy side of American life. 

As longtime media activists, they clearly mean us to take their new film as more than historical record. From the screen, Anne Braden speaks directly to us now, in 2012: "The real danger today comes from the people in high places, from the halls of Congress, to the board rooms of our big corporations....." 

Anne Lewis will be present for the San Francisco showing of "Anne Braden: Southern Patriot": 6 p.m. tomorrow, July 12, at 518 Valencia, San Francisco.