The award, in its 31st year, is UofL’s most prestigious faculty award, recognizing faculty members who have made significant contributions to student life. The UofL Board of Trustees made the announcement Dec. 10.

“I’m so honored and I’m so humbled by this incredible award,” Fosl said.Ìę

Fosl founded the ABI in 2006, two years after arriving at UofL, and since then has helped UofL earn classification as a Carnegie Foundation community engagement institution.Ìę

“The ABI mission is to ‘bridge the gap between academic research and community activism for racial and social justice’,” Fosl said in her 2020 Teaching and Learning Statement. “… ABI students, staff, and I have conducted teach-ins and civil rights history tours with multiple UofL classes across several colleges and programs, as well as in dozens of (Jefferson County Public School) and other K-12 classrooms, various local civic and governmental groups, and in or with multiple universities regionally.”

Through the ABI, Fosl has created funded opportunities for UofL students to gain meaningful new research and community engagement experience, focusing on issues ranging from homelessness to increasing the visibility of Kentucky LGBTQ history.Ìę

Fosl is the author of several books including Braden’s biography “Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South” and “Freedom on the Border: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky” with her colleague Tracy E. K’Meyer, UofL history professor.

“Perhaps one of her most interesting, and literally far-reaching, collaborations was with her 2013 and 2016 study abroad courses in South Africa,” K’Meyer said in her letter supporting Fosl’s nomination for the award. “In these classes, Fosl taught the history of white women’s anti-racist activism in the U.S. South and in South Africa.”

The late Anne Braden was a Louisvillian known as one of the most prominent white anti-racists in U.S. history. She is one of only six white southerners whom the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. named as reliable allies in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 

In 2019, Fosl won a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award for the “Anne Braden Institute-Kentucky LGBTQ Heritage” project, conducted from 2015-2017. That project, in association with the Fairness Campaign, held statewide “History Harvests” to collect and preserve Kentucky’s LGBTQ history, and the ABI report was published by the National Park Service as part of its effort to document minority communities.

ABI also established an annual, free Anne Braden Memorial Lecture to focus on the U.S. civil rights movement. From the 2007 inaugural talk by Julian Bond, longtime NAACP president and rights leader, to activist Angela Davis, the series has brought to UofL nationally known speakers and authors on topics ranging from mass incarceration and Black Lives Matter to racial divides and justice in present-day America.

Fosl will receive $5,000 and a plaque recognizing her achievement. She will also be recognized at the 2020 Virtual Commencement at .

His first and only visit to this campus happened about a week before his notable anti-war speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” on April 4, 1967 in New York City’s Riverside Church.

UofL will mark both milestones in the coming week; first with a free, public celebration March 30 in Room 275 of the law school, where a speaker panel will share memories of the event and discuss King’s legacy. The event, from noon to 1:30 p.m., will include Stephen Porter, a 1968 law school graduate who invited King to speak at UofL in 1967. Porter, a local attorney, will be joined by professors , Pan-African studies, and , law.

“He loved to speak at colleges,” said Porter in a 2014 UofL video about King’s visit. “As a matter of fact, the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, he gave that dozens of times before he gave it in Washington and he gave it mostly to college groups.”

According to researchers in the law school, King came to Louisville many times during the 1960s, but March 30, 1967, was the only time he visited UofL.

In 2014, the university unveiled never-before-seen photos of King’s law school stopover. The photo negatives were found among some old files and records. Those photos were reprinted and are now part of a permanent  in the foyer of the law school’s Allen Court Room.

“This was not a very big room, so there were people outside, people literally hanging from the windows,” said Porter, recounting the overwhelming student interest in the event.

Another university MLK-focused 50^th anniversary celebration will be hosted April 4 by the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research. That  marks the anniversary of the civil rights leader’s anti-war speech, which was considered King’s most radical critique of the war and policies that created it; the social justice activist delivered it one year before his assassination.

The institute invites groups and individuals to participate in the 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. read-in of King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech and have discussions about its relevance today. Locations will be the quad entrance to Ekstrom Library and the ramp (weather permitting) to the Swain Student Activities Center on the Belknap Campus.

Read-in participants can contact the institute via email or 502-852-6142.

Later that day, the institute plans a public open house with refreshments at its office in Room 258, Ekstrom Library, from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Below, UofL remembers the MLK visit:

For years, Davis has been involved in movements for social justice around the world and is a leading advocate for prison reform and gender and racial equality. She is also featured in the 2016 Netflix documentary “13th” about mass incarceration in the United States. Davis has authored 10 books, the most recent of which was published in February 2016.

Her talk, titled “Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement,” brought out thousands of people from UofL and the Louisville community, far more attendees than expected. In fact, hundreds of people had to be turned away after the venue reached capacity.Ìę

“We hoped for and believed we would get a full house,” said Cate Fosl, director of the Anne Braden Institute.Ìę “But when as many people have to be turned away from such an event as those who get in, it bespeaks an incredible outpouring of enthusiasm, a desire for supportive community whereby people are not marginalized.”

The program included various poems by spoken word artist, Hannah Drake, and an introduction from Antron Mahoney, a graduate student in UofL’s department of Pan African studies.

Davis touched on a variety of controversial topics in her lecture including the recent presidential election and how we can continue to move toward equity in the United States. Among her thoughts:

2016 Presidential Election

Davis said Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign was about more than just shattering the glass ceiling, “it’s about reaching down to the very bottom and lifting to the top.”

“I am sad to say that if Hillary Clinton had been elected President we may not recognize that we are in a state of emergency.”

Electoral College

Davis believes the electoral college is obsolete and that it was designed to “give slave states with smaller populations the power to emerge as the governing forces at a national level.”

“The electoral college is a reminder that we have not extricated ourselves from slavery,” she said.

Black Lives Matter

Davis had several thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement including:

• “Black Lives Matter is the most inclusive statement.”
• “If we ever reach a point in time when black lives actually matter, it would mean that all lives matter.”
• “We need a new political party. An independent party inspired by the black radical movement.”

Davis’ history with Louisville

Davis is very familiar with Louisville. She was a visiting professor at UofL in 2002, teaching women’s and gender studies.

Because of her work, and its controversial nature, she has also been given three keys to the city, the first of which was confiscated before being handed back. In the 1970s, Davis was denied to speak at Central High School, but was invited to speak at Reverend Gilbert Schroerlucke’s church (West Broadway UM)) instead.

Davis’ relationship with Braden

Davis also discussed her friendship with Anne Braden, the Louisvillian activist after which the social justice institution is named:

“I often ask myself what would Anne Braden do? I reflect on her theories,” Davis said.Ìę“Anne Braden was always aware of the way history pulls us back into the past.”

A Q&A followed the lecture, and younger members of the audience were encouraged to participate.

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The collection is available at the website, , which was launched this week by the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville and its partners.

The site presents interactive material drawn from the 2014 “Black Freedom, White Allies, Red Scare: Louisville, 1954” exhibition at the Louisville Free Public Library’s Main Library.

Materials include archival photos, primary source documents and oral histories about Andrew and Charlotte Wade’s struggles as African-Americans to buy a new suburban house near what is now Shively. Segregationists used dynamite to blow up the couple’s home. Anne and Carl Braden, white supporters who had bought the home on the Wades’ behalf, were accused of staging the purchase and bombing as part of a communist plot, and were charged with sedition.

“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,” said historian Catherine Fosl, the Anne Braden Institute director who co-curated the exhibit. “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.”

Partners include University of Louisville Libraries’ Archives & Special Collections, Louisville Free Public Library, The Courier-Journal and GRIDS: The Grassroots Information Design Studio.