Word: braden
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week Braden's outside interests landed him in jail. In a Louisville criminal court, he was sentenced under Kentucky's sedition law to 15 years in prison and fined $5,000 for "advocating sedition." The case resulted from what the state prosecutor called a "Communist-inspired plot to stir up racial trouble between whites and Negroes...
Shock Treatment. The plot began to unfold last spring when Braden bought a ranch-style house in a quiet, all-white suburban section outside Louisville, then transferred title to Andrew Wade, a Negro electrical contractor. In Louisville, where the hard lines of segregation are disappearing slowly, Braden's Communist-style "shock treatment" brought the expected results. First a flaming cross was burned on a lot adjoining Wade's property, then a volley of shots was fired into the house. Finally a bomb exploded...
Before a grand jury investigating the violence, Braden refused to answer any questions about his past political activities. Police who descended on Braden's own house seized more than a hundred Communist pamphlets and books (sample title: "How To Be a Good Communist"). After he was indicted, the Courier-Journal did not fire Braden but gave him a "leave of absence" with pay on the "American principle that a man is innocent until proved guilty...
Surprise Witness. While the Courier-Journal "deplored" Braden's race-relations tactics, it defended his refusal to answer questions about his political beliefs as "quite correct." Many a reader disagreed. Communism, they pointed out, has long been recognized as a criminal conspiracy, not simply a political belief...
...trial, Braden denied that he was a Communist. Then last week Alberta Ahearn, 44, a Louisville seamstress who had been an undercover FBI agent, testified that she had not only attended a party-cell meeting in Braden's home, but had paid her party dues to him. With that clinching evidence of Braden's Communist activity and his conviction, the Courier-Journal at long last came around to agreeing with its critics, fired Braden...