UofL’s Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research (ABI) has been included in a multi-media, multi-city exhibition whose subject is white communities that organize in support of racial justice.
“Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements” was in Philadelphia through Feb. 17 and will travel to various locations in Chicago in March and April. The project was conceived by Daniel Tucker, a Louisville native currently teaching at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. A link to the exhibition can be found here.
“The Philadelphia events were really well attended; we had numerous class visits to the gallery and the project seemed to really resonate with current conversations as well as spark new ones,” Tucker said.
The Louisville component of the project emanates from the Anne Braden Institute working in partnership with a community organization, Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice (or LSURJ). The local project consists of two digital stories and is titled “The Braden Inspiration Over Three Generations: White Anti-Racists Organizing Their Own in Louisville, Kentucky.” UofL history graduate student Wes Cunningham produced the stories from interviews he conducted with local activists or interviews ABI leaders had done previously.
One story focuses on the profound influence on young people Anne Braden and her husband Carl had as committed white allies to the cause of racial equality for African Americans during the battle against segregation during the 1950s and sixties. The second story profiles Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a local and national network organizing white communities to join with people of color in ending racism. These stories juxtapose oral history audio snippets with relevant historic images and artifacts. The digital stories on Louisville can be viewed at https://organizeyourown.wordpress.com/special-projects/anne-braden-institute/
Anne Braden was a Louisville journalist, organizer and educator who was among the earliest and most dedicated white allies of the southern civil rights movement. The Anne Braden Institute at UofL, founded in 2006, seeks to advance public understanding of racial and social justice, particularly as it relates to the U.S. civil rights movement.
For more information, contact the Anne Braden Institute at 852-6142.
