LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Charlotte Wade, a Louisville woman who unintentionally became a central figure in the civil rights movement, died earlier this month.
Wade and her husband Andrew were trying to buy a home in the suburbs in 1954, but they were black, and and racial segregation made buying one in the area they wanted difficult.
White civil rights activists Anne and Carl Braden bought the Wades a small home in Shively.
"It was a segregated neighborhood," said Robyn Bellamy with the Kentucky Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.
When the Wades moved into the home that summer, there was an uproar in the all-white neighborhood. Their home was shot at, a cross was burned in the yard, and the house was eventually bombed.
"To be that brave to endure that and then in the same token after the trauma that you had to endure to deal with that ... we'll never forget this," Bellamy said. "It's a history-marker for the Kentucky Alliance."
Carl Braden and several others were arrested on criminal conspiracy charges, accused of orchestrating the bombing. Those charges were eventually dropped, but Braden was tried and convicted under a under state sedition law. He served seven months before the state revoked the law.
Carl and Anne Braden. Courtesy: Explore KY History.
Although the Wades didn't intended to become open housing pioneers, what the family went through helped pave the way for legislation like the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
"I don't think their intention was to do something to be brave," Bellamy said. "Maybe they were looking at an opportunity to move in the suburbs to have a better life."
And in her passing, a spotlight is now on Wade's legacy, especially since it comes during the time of year when we remember the civil rights movement.
"It was just so coincidental," Bellamy said. "It's all happening in the same circle of the holiday of civil rights."
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