Biography
LaRue Spiker was a Louisville activist who, with Mary Louise Gilbert, urged white neighbors to accept the Wade family’s move into a segregated neighborhood. A grand jury indicted her for sedition on October 1, 1954 after segregationists bombed the Wades’ home. Spiker was jailed in lieu of $10,000 bond and released after nearly two weeks. The prosecution was later abandoned after the Supreme Court invalidated state sedition prosecutions preempted by federal law.
