Charles W. Anderson Jr.

He was the son of Frankfort, Kentucky physician Charles W. Anderson Sr. and a well-known school teacher. Anderson was born May 26, 1907, in Louisville, Kentucky to Dr. Charles W. Anderson and Tabitha Murphy Anderson. His father was a doctor (physician) and his mother a well known schoolteacher. He attended Kentucky State College (now Kentucky State University) and graduated from Wilberforce University in Ohio before moving to Washington, D.C to obtain his law degree from Howard University School of Law. He returned to Kentucky and was admitted to the bar February 1932. He then started his own law practice in Louisville. Around this time he became president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In April 1935 he decided to run for a seat in the Kentucky House representing the fifty-eighth district. He was a Republican and ran against four Democrats: Charles E. Tucker, Rev. Ernest Grundy, Dr. Richard P. Beckman and James D. Bailey. Anderson won the seat and was the only Republican to be elected to represent Jefferson County that session, a first for many years. Anderson was the first African-American to be elected into the Kentucky legislature after Reconstruction while African American elected positions became scarce. After he won, he immediately began work to improve educational opportunities for African Americans. He went on to serve six two-year sessions in total from 1935 until 1946. He worked to pass legislation outlawing public hanging in Kentucky and to provide state aid for African Americans seeking higher degrees out-of-state due to Kentucky segregation laws. One of his most important legislative accomplishments was the Anderson-Mayer State Aid Act which provided $7,500 annually to African American students to attend out of state colleges.

Anderson secured legislation that repealed the state's notorious public hanging law and legislation requiring each rural county to guarantee its Black youths access to high school even if it meant providing transportation and tuition costs to another jurisdiction. He helped pass laws equalizing the pay of Black and White teachers, establishing African-American units in the previously all-white Kentucky National Guard, and preventing discrimination in state contracts and private business. He secured a law that allowed all women public school teachers to keep their positions after marriage.

While he was a representative he was one of several African-American lawyers to appeal against the hanging of Rainey Bethea who was the last person publicly executed in the United States, but on August 10, 1936, he announced that all appeals had been exhausted. Anderson then secured legislation that repealed the state's notorious public hanging law, that required each rural county to guarantee its Black youths access to high school even if it meant providing transportation and tuition costs to another jurisdiction. he passed laws equalizing the pay of Black and white teachers, establishing African-American units in the previously all-white Kentucky National Guard, and preventing discrimination in state contracts and private business. he secured a law that allowed all women public school teachers to keep their positions after marriage. He served as president of the National Negro Bar Association for two terms starting in 1943. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him an alternate delegate to the United Nations in the 1950s, and he served as the president of Louisville's NAACP branch. He was also honored with a Kentucky Colonel's commission by Kentucky Governor Albert “Happy” Chandler. He was the first black Kentuckian to receive that honor.

Anderson resigned from his seat in the house in 1946 to become the Assistant Commonwealth Attorney for Jefferson County, another first for an African-American in Kentucky and was the highest judicial position held by African Americans in the south. In 1949, he was narrowly defeated as a Republican in a campaign for judge (magistrate) and came up short again in 1953. Three years later in 1949 and 1953 he was nominated for the position of judge for the third municipal district, but was narrowly defeated at the election. He had two children with his second wife. His half-sister Florence was an educator. Anderson was killed June 14, 1960 when his car was hit by a train at a crossing in Shelby County. He was buried at Eastern Cemetery. There is a historical marker in Louisville (No. 1964) marking his as the first African American elected in the state.

The University of Louisville has a collection of his papers.[1]

• Charles W. Anderson Jr. at Find a Grave