By Ronica Hutchison–

U of L’s Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research announced its newest digitization of the public history exhibit “Black Freedom, White Allies, Red Scare: Louisville, 1954.” The publication is online at BlackFreedomWhiteAlliesRedScare.org. The event officially launched the site on Monday, April 4, 2016, which is also the 9-year anniversary of the Institute’s grand opening.

The exhibit’s online learning site is aimed at presenting interactive material drawn from the exhibition hosted by the Louisville Free Public Library. The library’s Bernheim Gallery held the exhibit, “Black Freedom, White Allies, Red Scare: Louisville, 1954,” in the fall of 2014, originally designed to commemorate the 60th anniversary of a pivotal series of events in Louisville in 1954.

Catherine Fosl, a co-curator of the exhibit, explains the series of events which took place.

“A dramatic act of housing desegregation led to racial violence and intimidation, and culminated with a local version of the anticommunist ‘Red Scare’ that swept the nation in those years. The case made major national headlines and affected many lives locally, but is often neglected in textbooks that cover the cold war and civil rights eras,” Fosl said.

This new site displays archival photos, primary source documents, and oral histories documenting the struggle of two African Americans – Andrew and Charlotte Wade – who bought a new suburban home, only to be faced with racial violence.

The exhibit aims to provide its viewers with resources to better understand the civil rights movement and its unique history in Louisville and Kentucky. The exhibit also provides the tools to examine present-day housing conditions, believed to be a form of institutionalized racism in the U.S.

The original exhibit was supported heavily by campus and community partners. The newest exhibit is sponsored and partnered by the Louisville Free Public Library, University of Louisville Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, the Courier-Journal and the Grassroots Information Design Studio, which designed the digital exhibit.

More information about community partners can be found here. For more information, contact the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at (502)852-6142.