Charis welcomes Editor Ben Wilkins in conversation with Kym Smith to discuss Anne Braden Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1960-2006. Finally, and for the first time, we have full access to a representative collection of Braden's writings, speeches, and letters, and the full spectrum of their subject matter: from the relationship between race and capitalism, to the role of the South in American society, to the function of anti-communism.

Anne Braden was raised to be a southern belle. Instead she became a revolutionary who helped to shape the self-understanding of the entire civil rights movement. From her earliest days as a trade unionist in the radical wing of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, she had been one of a small handful of white Southerners willing to take a stand against Jim Crow in the 1950s. As a journalist throughout the 1960s, she offered a penetrating, historically-grounded analysis of events which was widely read by civil rights activists. She was an informal advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; a close associate of key leaders such as Ella Baker, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and Myles Horton; and a mentor to countless young revolutionaries until her death in 2006.

At a time when the North American ruling class went to great lengths to prevent any semblance of continuity between movements, Braden forged direct links between the radical left of the 1930s and 40s, and that of the 1960s. Beginning with her trial for sedition in 1954, she endured constant attacks at the hands of the U.S. government, largely due to her association with Communism. And yet, as deeply as she influenced the development of the early civil rights movement, the scale of Braden's contributions and insights have either been redacted to meet the needs of the official version of civil rights movement history, or been made palatable to the very same power structure she spent her entire life working to overturn. Anne Braden Speaks corrects this distorted narrative.

Ben Wilkins is a labor organizer based out of Durham, North Carolina. Currently he is the Director of Raise Up the South, a union of low wage service workers with chapters in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. He is also the editor of Anne Braden Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1960-2006

Kym Smith is a mom to a revolutionary artist and scientist, a popular educator, organizer,  cultural worker, southern scholar, trekkie and up and coming theologian. Born and raised in West Columbia, South Carolina, Kym loves proving academics wrong and redefining what is and who is an intellectual and what's considered theory, and making sure everyone remembers that South Carolina is the blueprint for real class struggle and real revolution.

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Anne Braden Speaks: Ben Wilkins in conversation with Kym Smith