Racism In Anne Braden's The Wall Between

In The Wall Between, the civil rights activist and journalist, Anne Braden, documents her experiences and findings that went along with the serious societal issues, segregation and racism. She demanded to fulfill the question of why segregation exists and why it continually exists throughout history. She is able to create the conclusion that “all of history has been a story of men’s efforts to learn to live with other men -- resolving first his own individual conflicts with other men to form societies for the common good, and then resolving ot trying to resolve the conflicts of one society or group of men with another” (p. xix). Through this, she is demonstrating the proof of why discrimination and racism exists. She believes that societal

Tn the year 1954, Anne Braden and her husband, Carl Braden purchased a house in an all-white neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky. However, they purchased the house not for themselves, but for an African American couple, Charlotte and Andrew Wade. And this turns into “Anne Braden’s account of what this act of friendship precipitated -- mob violence against the Wades, the bombing of their house, and a prison term for sedition for Carl Braden” (p. ix). The book goes through chronologically to all the effects that occurred from 1954 on, including, Anne’s husband, Carl’s, sparked idea to purchase the house all the way to the final outcomes and asking the writer if she could, would she do it again. The first idea to buy this house was created by Carl because he had been seeing how the Wade family was struggling to purchase a house due to the fact that they were African American. The Braden family had no second thoughts about purchasing the house because they “never had either of us refused to act when someone asked us to help in any effort to break down segregation” (p. 3). Immediately following that one day, the decision was final, and the Braden’s purchased the Wade family a home. With that, the world of the Wades, the Braden’s, and the world of segregated Louisville came in contact with one other. The book goes through each of the three worlds and describe how each world would be affected by coming in contact with the other two. For example, the world of racial segregation did not only affect the African American population, but the whites population, so it affected both the Wade’s world and the Braden’s world. “Racial bars build a wall not only around the Negro people but around the white people as well, cramping their spirits and causing them to