In 1954, directly confronting the practice of rigid racial segregation of residential neighborhoods, the Bradens assisted an African-American couple, Andrew and Charlotte Wade, who wanted to buy a suburban home but had been unable to do so due to housing discrimination. The Bradens purchased a house on behalf of the Wades in Shively, an all-white neighborhood in the Louisville metropolitan area, and deeded it over to the Wade family. It was reported by Braden that someone had thrown rocks through the windows of the house, burning a cross in front of it, and firing gunshots into the home – and then bombed the house (setting off explosives under the bedroom of the Wades' young daughter while the home was occupied), driving the Wades out and destroying the home. As a result of their actions, Carl Braden was charged with sedition. Although housing discrimination was illegal, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling specifically on a case in Louisville, Buchanan v. Warley, in 1917, charges were brought against Braden for hatching a communist plot to stir up a race war. A friend of the Wades was also charged with bombing the house to make it appear to have been done by others. No charges were filed regarding the other incidents.[1] Braden denied the accusations that his purchase of the house and its subsequent bombing were all part of a "communist plot", and denied that he had ever been a member of the Communist Party.[1] He was convicted on December 13, 1954, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Immediately upon his conviction, he was fired from the Courier-Journal, and he served seven months of his sentence before he was released on a $40,000 bond pending appeal – the highest bond ever set in Kentucky up to that time.[1][2] His conviction was then overturned.[2][7]

And everyone knows that if something is illegal it can’t happen.

The charges were very much because they were looking for any possible reason to put him behind bars for the act of buying that house.