Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South.

By Catherine Fosl Palgrave Macmillan. 320 pages. $35.00.

Anne and Carl Braden were two the most active and determined white anti-racist crusaders of the 1950s and beyond. Catherine Fosl's Subversive Southerner traces the life story of Anne Braden, the archetypal "subversive Southerner," from her upbringing in Kentucky to her years in the desegregation struggle to her activism in the 1980s as a supporter of Jesse Jackson's Presidential campaigns.

The Braden couple entered the national spotlight in 1954 because of an incident now known as the Wade Case. The Bradens purchased a house in a segregated area of Louisville for an African American family named Wade. Local racists targeted the house and burned a cross in the front yard. Finally, the Wade home was destroyed in a bomb blast. The criminals were never brought to trial; instead, the Bradens and several other anti-racist activists found themselves accused of conspiring in a Communist plot against the state. Carl Braden received a fifteen-year prison sentence for "sedition," which the Supreme Court overturned within months. "The unique thing about the Cold War in the South was that [fighting it] was inextricably tied to the battle against white supremacy," Anne Braden says. "That was the reason for all the hysteria against us in Louisville. It was anti-red and anti-black hysteria wrapped up and thrown at us."

Subversive Southerner is an excellent and inspiring read.