Charles W. Anderson Jr.

Charles W. Anderson Jr. (May 26, 1907 – June 14, 1960) was an African-American lawyer, state legislator and civil rights leader in Kentucky. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1936 until 1946, and was the first African American elected to the Kentucky legislature. His father was a doctor and his mother a 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 then started his own law practice in Louisville in 1933. Around this time he became president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was a Republican and ran against four Democrats: Charles E. Tucker, Rev. Ernest Grundy, Dr. Richard P. Beckman and James D. Bailey. He was the first African-American to be elected into the Kentucky legislature. He went on to serve six two-year sessions in total from 1936 until 1946. but on August 10, 1936, he announced that all appeals had been exhausted.

Anderson served as president of the National Negro Bar Association for two terms starting in 1943. 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.