Racism and red scare in the 1950s USA

This is a video from the USA about Anne Braden.

8 June 2008.

Again, from the Independent series about United States activists:

Anne Braden

1954

When Anne and Carl Braden bought a home in a white suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, for the Wades, an African-American family, the house was fire-bombed. Andrew and Charlotte Wade and their young child escaped injury, but the Bradens were charged with sedition.

When the grand jury met I was the first one called. I’d only been there a few minutes when I realised it was not the bombing that was under investigation; it was me. They began by asking me what organisations I belonged to and what books I had in my house. I’d heard that questions like those were being asked by HUAC, but I didn’t expect them from the grand jury. I told them, “It’s none of your business. It doesn’t have a thing to do with who blew up this house.” The next day, the prosecutor made a statement that there were two theories about the bombing. One was that the neighbours blew it up to get the Wades out. The other was that it was a Communist plot to stir up trouble between the races and bring about the overthrow of the governments of Kentucky and the US. By the beginning of October, those of us who had been openly supportive of the Wades were charged with sedition. A combination of anti-black and anti-red mania gripped this community. If you haven’t lived through such hysteria, it’s hard to imagine. People were so scared, they were going through their libraries and getting rid of books. The hysteria had taken everybody’s minds off the real issue: whether a black man has a right to live in his house. The Wades were never able to move back and the real dynamiter was never punished. We became part of a resistance movement, a small group of people who were scared but not intimidated, and were still fighting. They were the soul of America.

What are the raciological dimensions of Cold War anticommunism in the US (1945-65)? How did anticommunist practices in the Deep South during the period of classical anticommunism advance, allow, or inhibit, the reproduction of the racial relations of production? In what way did the reproduction of races determine the forms of Southern anticommunism? What role did the Southern social formation play in the construction of the Cold War ‘historical bloc’? How did Southern racial anticommunism impede, or assist, the pursuit of US global hegemony against the ‘communist’ antagonist? Here.

Study: Racism may speed cell aging and premature death in black men: here.

The list of racist owners of pro sports teams doesn’t end with Donald Sterling: here.

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