by Anne Braden

Written in 1995 for the 40th Anniversary of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.

My life has been intertwined with that of the ACLU of Kentucky for its full 40 years.  When my husband Carl and I were charged with sedition in 1954, there was no ACLU here.  But Grover Sales was a local cooperating attorney.  The national office asked him to speak as a “friend of the court” on our motion to dismiss the indictments.  Grover was ill, so he asked Louis Lusky to appear.

Our relationship with Lou, a real estate lawyer whose real love was civil liberties, got off to a rocky start.  He made an eloquent presentation, but to make his point that the sedition law was overly broad, he said “If you have cockroaches in your house, you don’t go in with a shotgun.”

During a recess, I said to him, “You called me a cockroach.”  He said, “No, I didn’t.”  I replied, “Yes you did, and if that’s the way you feel, I don’t want you in this case.”

Later, Carl and I came to feel that we could trust Lou with our right arms, and I think he came to respect, and even like us.  During Carl’s 13-day trial in December 1954 -- when the courtroom was filled with angry people whispering that we should be lynched -- Lou was at the defense table, as observer and advisor.  After Carl was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Lou became counsel on appeal, persuading national ACLU to receive gifts to help cover expenses, and writing a brief that was as gripping as a novel.

When a brave group of people decided during the hysteria surrounding our case that Kentucky needed an ACLU, we felt we were its godparents.  But they never asked us to join or attend a meeting.

The ACLU has never been given to inviting defendants (or cockroaches) to dinner.  We joined anyway and for years attended the annual meetings to worry people.

Then, in 1967, we were charged with sedition again -- in Pike County, Kentucky, where Al and Margaret McSurely and Joe Mulloy, who worked with the regional civil rights group we led -- upset coal operators by joining the struggle against strip mining.

But these were different times; we challenged the law in federal court; KCLU files an amicus brief.  When the sheriff brought us to Lexington from the Pike County jail for the hearing, we walked into a courtroom filled not with our enemies but our friends -- activists from the University of Kentucky student movement.  When the prosecutor asked me, “Are you or have you ever been…,” the courtroom burst into laughter.

I then knew that the 1950’s were finally over.  The Kentucky sedition law was declared unconstitutional that day.

As the hearing ended, we met Bob Sedler, then a little-known UK law professor who had written KCLU’s brief; he said it was “a labor of love.”  That was the beginning of long relationships between us and him, and KCLU and him, that changed his life, ours, and KCLU’s.

Soon after that, Suzy Post became full-time organizer (unpaid, I think) for the KCLU.  She decided that cockroaches were really lean and wiry dogs the organization needed -- and began recruiting people in civil rights and anti-war movements.  She asked me to a committee meeting, and called the next day (as I now know she calls everyone) to tell me what a great contribution I’d made.  I became active, and when local women ran a slate for the Louisville board, I was elected.

I served on the local and then the state board for several years.  I have disagreed with ACLU on some things -- for example, when it supported a Klan leader’s right to speak at Valley High School when racial tensions beset that school.  But Kentucky and Louisville would be much grimmer places for social-justice activists if ACLU had not been here for 40 years.

Last year, the organization staged a big party to observe my 70th birthday and help raise funds for the Carl Braden Memorial Center.  Now I’m pleased to return the greeting and say “happy birthday” to a great organization.

Anne Braden continues to this day her quest for equality for all races.  She lives in Louisville and works on both local and national civil rights issues.  Anne is a major force in the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice (SOC), and in the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

She was the first recipient in 1990 of the national ACLU Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty given for lifetime service to civil liberties.