Stetson Kennedy
Encyclopedia
William Stetson Kennedy (October 5, 1916 – August 27, 2011) was an American
author and human rights
activist. One of the pioneer folklore
collectors during the first half of the twentieth century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world. His actions lead to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan's national corporate charter. Kennedy was the author of nine books and the co-author of a tenth.
. As a teenager, he began collecting folklore material while seeking "a dollar down and dollar a week" accounts for his father, a furniture merchant. While a student at the University of Florida
, Kennedy befriended one of his professors, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
.
In 1937, he left the University of Florida to join the WPA
Florida Writers' Project, and at the age of 21, was put in charge of folklore, oral history
, and ethnic studies
. As her supervisor, Kennedy traveled throughout Florida with African-American novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston
, visiting turpentine camps near Cross City
and the Clara White Mission
soup kitchen in Jacksonville. Hurston later chronicled these experiences in her book Mules and Men. The two were forced to travel separately because Jim Crow laws prohibited them from working together. Because of segregation laws operative in Florida at the time, "You could get killed lighting someone's cigarette", Kennedy told independent producer Barrett Golding. "Or shaking hands -- both colors, white and black." Hurston was not even allowed to enter the Federal Writers' Project
office in Jacksonville through the front door and did most of her work from her home. Kennedy had a large hand in editing several volumes generated by the Florida project, including The WPA Guide to Florida: the Southernmost State (1939), from the famed WPA American Guide Series
, A Guide to Key West, and The Florida Negro (part of a series directed by Sterling Brown). Kennedy also studied at New College for Social Research in New York and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Kennedy's first book, Palmetto Country, based on unused material collected during his WPA period, was published in 1942 as a volume in the American Folkways Series edited by Erskine Caldwell
. Legendary folklorist Alan Lomax
has said of the book, "I very much doubt that a better book about Florida
folklife will ever be written." To which Kennedy's self-described "stud buddy", Woody Guthrie
, added, "[Palmetto Country] gives me a better trip and taste and look and feel for Florida than I got in the forty-seven states I've actually been in body and tramp
ed in boot." The Library of Congress has placed the recordings and pictures from the project online. Kennedy has been called "one of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century", and his work is a keystone of the library's presentation.
In 1942 Kennedy accepted a position as Southeastern Editorial Director of the CIO
's Political Action Committee in Atlanta, Georgia
, in which capacity he wrote a series of monographs dealing with the poll tax
, white primaries
, and other restrictions on voting that delimited democracy throughout the South. Kept from military service by a bad back, Kennedy resolved to perform his patriotic duties in Georgia by infiltrating both the Klan and the Columbians, an Atlanta-based neo-Nazi organization.
After World War II Kennedy worked as a journalist for the liberal newspaper PM
. His stories appeared in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Post
and The Nation
, for which he was for a time Southern correspondent, and he fed information about discrimination to columnist Drew Pearson
. To bring the effects of Jim Crow in the South to public awareness, he authored a number exposés of the Klan and racist Jim Crow system over the course of his life, including Southern Exposure (1946), Jim Crow Guide to the USA (1959), and After Appomattox: How the South Won the War (1995). During the 1950s, Kennedy's books, considered too incendiary to be published in the USA, were published in France by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
and subsequently translated into other languages. Kennedy coined the term "Frown Power", when he started a campaign with that name in the 1940s, which simply encouraged people to pointedly frown when they heard bigoted speech.
In 1947, Kennedy provided information - including secret codewords and details of Klan rituals - to the writers of the Superman radio program, leading popular journalist Stephen J. Dubner
and University of Chicago
economist Steven Levitt
, in their 2005 book Freakonomics
, to dub Kennedy "the greatest single contributor to the weakening of the Ku Klux Klan". The result was a series of 16 episodes in which Superman took on the Klan. Kennedy intended to strip away the Klan's mystique; and the trivialization of the Klan's rituals and codewords likely had a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership.
The amount of inside information about the KKK that was revealed on the show appears exaggerated. A review of all 16 episodes of the "Clan of the Fiery Cross" Superman storyline reveals that no passwords were revealed on the air and only one ritual was portrayed. In 1952, when Kennedy ran for governor of Florida, his friend and houseguest Woody Guthrie wrote a set of lyrics for a campaign song, "Stetson Kennedy". Kennedy says he became "the most hated man in Florida", and his home at Fruit Cove near Lake Beluthahatchee was firebombed by rightists and many of his papers destroyed, causing him to leave the country and go to live in France
. There, in 1954, Kennedy wrote his sensational exposé of the workings of the Klan, I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan (later reissued as The Klan Unmasked), which was published by Jean-Paul Sartre
. Questioned in later years about the accuracy of his account, Kennedy later said he regretted not having included an explanatory introduction to the book about how the information in it was obtained. The director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress Peggy Bulger, the subject of whose doctoral thesis was Kennedy's work as a folklorist, commented in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press, "Exposing their folklore – all their secret handshakes, passwords and how silly they were, dressing up in white sheets ... If they weren't so violent, they would be silly."
A founding member and past president of the Florida Folklore Society, Kennedy was a recipient of the 1998 Florida Folk Heritage Award and the Florida Governor's Heartland Award. His contribution to the preservation and propagation of folk culture is the subject of a dissertation, "Stetson Kennedy: Applied Folklore and Cultural Advocacy" (University of Pennsylvania
, 1992), by Peggy Bulger
, who assumed the directorship of the American Folklife Center
at the Library of Congress
in 1999. Kennedy is also featured as one of the "Whistle Blowers", in Studs Terkel
's book Coming of Age, published in 1995.
In 2005, Jacksonville residents attended a banquet in honor of Kennedy's life, and afterward a slide show with narration at Henrietta's Restaurant, located at 9th and Main Street in Springfield. This event was largely coordinated by Fresh Ministries
. The slides included numerous pictures of his travels with author Zora Neale Hurston
, and direct voice recordings which were later digitized for preservation.
In 2006, on November 24, the ninety-year-old Kennedy was wed to former city commissioner Sandra Parks at a Quaker-style ceremony at the William Bartram
Center on the Bolles School
in Jacksonville, Florida. Parks and Kennedy met when she came to Beluthahatchee to recruit him for the 40th anniversary observance of the St. Augustine civil rights marches which he participated in with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy, who admits to at least five previous marriages, commented, "I’ll leave it to the historians to decide how many times I’ve been married."
In 2007 St. Johns County
declared a "Stetson Kennedy Day".
Kennedy participated in the two-day New Deal Resources: Preserving the Legacy conference at the Library of Congress
on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the New Deal
held in March 2008. Kennedy's most recent book, Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West, was issued by the Pineapple Press, in 2008.
In February 2009, Kennedy bequeathed his personal library to the
Civic Media Center
in Gainesville, Florida with which Kennedy had worked since the center's inception.
In October 2009, a first party for Kennedy's 93rd birthday was held at the Civic Media Center and the next day admirers flocked to Beluthahatchee Park, now a landmarked historic site, to celebrate Kennedy's birthday there.
gave a concert in Jacksonville.
In 2005 Kennedy received a life estate
on his 4 acre homestead in Saint Johns County, and it is now "Beluthahatchee Park"
The name "Beluthahatchee" describes a mythical "Florida Shangri-la, where all unpleasantness is forgiven and forgotten" according to Zora Neale Hurston.
Among the amenities are a picnic pavilion, canoe dock, access to the Beluthatchee Lake, and use of the two wildlife observation platforms. A “Mother Earth Trail” throughout the property is planned, as envisioned by the Kennedy Foundation. The Park’s perimeter is surrounded by a heavy canopy of native vegetation and the enclave provides a habitat for wildlife and continues to serve as a rookery and roosting place for many types of waterfowl and other birds.
Kennedy’s home will, upon his passing, be open as a museum and archive and offer educational exhibits and whatnot, primarily about Woody Guthrie and William Bartram in addition to Kennedy himself, and will be operated by the Kennedy Foundation which will share office space in an adjacent home with the William Bartram Scenic and Historic Highway corridor group. A log cabin that's in the park may serve as a caretaker residence while the fourth building there may house an Artist-in-Residence through the Florida Folklife program.
The park is part of a 70 acre tract that Kennedy purchased in 1948, recorded restrictive covenants setting aside land in perpetuity as a wildlife refuge, and the following year subdivided, subsequently selling all but his own 4 acre parcel.
activists Harry T. Moore
and his wife Harriette. Green's book about the Moores, Freedom Never Dies, was published in 1999. Green and Kennedy, however, quickly quarreled over what Kennedy considered Green's too sympathetic portrayal of the FBI. Green, whose book is generally disparaging of Kennedy, claimed to have examined Kennedy's archives at the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and in Atlanta and concluded that a number of interviews, portrayed in I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan as having been conducted undercover, had in fact been done openly, and that racist material amassed by Kennedy had also been openly obtained from mail subscriptions to the Klan and similar groups and not surreptitiously, as implied. Most seriously, Green accused Kennedy of concealing the existence of a collaborator, referred to as "John Brown" (a pseudonym probably chosen in honor of the nineteenth-century abolitionist John Brown
), whom Green alleged was in fact responsible for the most daring of Kennedy's undercover revelations. Green also interviewed Georgia State Prosecutor Dan Duke, whom he reported as denying having worked with Kennedy as closely the latter had claimed. "Duke agreed that Kennedy 'got inside of some [Klan] meetings' but openly disputed Kennedy's dramatized account of their relationship. 'None of that happened,' [Duke] told Green", according to Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in their New York Times Magazine column of January 8, 2006. In the same column, Levitt and Dubner also quote Jim Clark, a professor at the University of Central Florida
and co-author of a PBS television documentary based on Green's book, as saying that "[Kennedy] built a national reputation on many things that didn't happen". Jim Clark and Ben Green collaborated on the script of Freedom Never Dies: The Story of Harry T. Moore, based on Green's book and partially funded by the Freedom Forum
. Peggy Bulger, on the other hand, stated that when she interviewed him: "[Sheriff] Duke laughed about the way The Klan Unmasked was written. But he added that Kennedy 'didn't do it all, but he did plenty,' she said. In a letter to Kennedy dated July 27, 1946, Georgia Gov. Ellis Arnall wrote: 'You have my permission to quote me as making the following observation: Documentary evidence uncovered by Stetson Kennedy has facilitated Georgia's prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan.'"
Freakonomics
authors Dubner and Levitt had included a favorable summary of Kennedy's anti-Klan activities with special emphasis on the events recounted in I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan in the 2005 edition of their bestselling book. In the revised 2006 edition, however, after being contacted by Green, they retracted their earlier admiration, claiming that they had been "hoodwinked". The allegations in their retraction were swiftly repeated by the business journal Forbes
in a review of the revised edition of Freakonomics: "It turns out that Kennedy doesn't quite live up to his own legend. In fact, he had exaggerated his story for decades and credited himself with actions taken by other people".
Green's insinuations are contested by scholars, who emphasize that Kennedy never concealed that he had protected his colleagues' identities and maintain that Green either misread or did not really read the material at the Schomburg Center. Peggy Bulger
, the head of the American Folklife Division of the Library of Congress
, who wrote her Ph. D. dissertation on Kennedy and interviewed him extensively, maintains that Kennedy was always candid with her and others about his combination of two narratives into one in I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan: "His purpose was to expose the Klan to a broad reading audience and use their folklore against them, which he did." In a letter to the editor of New York Times Magazine (published on January 22, 2006) Bulger accused Dubner and Levitt of "holding Stetson Kennedy responsible for the inadequacies of their own research":
In the same issue of the magazine a letter of protest from famed oral historian Studs Terkel
affirms that "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty.... The thing is, Stetson did what he set out to do .... He did get help. He should have been much more up-front. But he certainly doesn't deserve this treatment".
In his own response (published in the Jacksonville, Florida Folio Weekly, January 27, 2006) Kennedy pulled no punches:
In 2006, The Florida Times-Union
, after extensive research, published an article "KKK Book Stands Up to Claim of Falsehood" (January 29, 2006) substantiating the general accuracy of Kennedy's account of infiltrating the Klan, while acknowledging that (as he himself never denied) he had made use of dramatic effects and multiple narratives in the book I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan.
David Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University commented:
Kennedy's stated wishes were that upon his death there be a party held rather than a funeral; therefore, a celebration of Kennedy's life was held on October 1, 2011 (four days before Kennedy's 95th birthday) at Kennedy's homestead, Beluthahatchee Park. Several hundred kin, friends, and admirers gathered for the events which commenced with an hour of music performed by many well-known artists of pieces among which were several written by Kennedy’s friend Woody Guthrie
, who composed many songs at Beluthahatchee, including a number about Kennedy, e.g., "Beluthahatchee Bill". The music culminated with all present singing Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land
", which was followed by an hour of eulogies. Then all present walked down to Lake Beluthahatchee and watched as Kennedy’s ashes were scattered thereon from a canoe by his daughter.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activist. One of the pioneer folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
collectors during the first half of the twentieth century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world. His actions lead to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan's national corporate charter. Kennedy was the author of nine books and the co-author of a tenth.
Biography and activities
Kennedy was named for a member of his mother's family, the hatter John Batterson StetsonJohn Batterson Stetson
John Batterson Stetson was a U.S. hatter, hat manufacturer, and, in the 1860s, the inventor of the cowboy hat. He founded the John B. Stetson Company as a manufacturer of headwear; the company's hats are now commonly referred to simply as Stetsons.John Stetson was born in New Jersey, the 7th of...
. As a teenager, he began collecting folklore material while seeking "a dollar down and dollar a week" accounts for his father, a furniture merchant. While a student at the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
, Kennedy befriended one of his professors, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie, also known as The...
.
In 1937, he left the University of Florida to join the WPA
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
Florida Writers' Project, and at the age of 21, was put in charge of folklore, oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
, and ethnic studies
Ethnic studies
Ethnic studies is the interdisciplinary study of racialized peoples in the world in relation to ethnicity. It evolved in the second half of the 20th century partly in response to charges that traditional disciplines such as anthropology, history, English, ethnology, Asian studies, and orientalism...
. As her supervisor, Kennedy traveled throughout Florida with African-American novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, visiting turpentine camps near Cross City
Cross City, Florida
Cross City is a town in Dixie County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,775 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 1,800...
and the Clara White Mission
Clara White Mission
The Clara White Mission is a non-profit organization in downtown Jacksonville, Florida that advocates for the poor and provides social services...
soup kitchen in Jacksonville. Hurston later chronicled these experiences in her book Mules and Men. The two were forced to travel separately because Jim Crow laws prohibited them from working together. Because of segregation laws operative in Florida at the time, "You could get killed lighting someone's cigarette", Kennedy told independent producer Barrett Golding. "Or shaking hands -- both colors, white and black." Hurston was not even allowed to enter the Federal Writers' Project
Federal Writers' Project
The Federal Writers' Project was a United States federal government project to fund written work and support writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program...
office in Jacksonville through the front door and did most of her work from her home. Kennedy had a large hand in editing several volumes generated by the Florida project, including The WPA Guide to Florida: the Southernmost State (1939), from the famed WPA American Guide Series
American Guide Series
The American Guide Series was a group of books and pamphlets published under the auspices of the Federal Writers' Project , a Depression-era works program in the United States. The American Guide Series books were compiled by the FWP, but printed by individual states, and contained detailed...
, A Guide to Key West, and The Florida Negro (part of a series directed by Sterling Brown). Kennedy also studied at New College for Social Research in New York and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Kennedy's first book, Palmetto Country, based on unused material collected during his WPA period, was published in 1942 as a volume in the American Folkways Series edited by Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
. Legendary folklorist Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
has said of the book, "I very much doubt that a better book about Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
folklife will ever be written." To which Kennedy's self-described "stud buddy", Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, added, "[Palmetto Country] gives me a better trip and taste and look and feel for Florida than I got in the forty-seven states I've actually been in body and tramp
Tramp
A tramp is a long term homeless person who travels from place to place as a vagrant, traditionally walking or hiking all year round. In British English meanwhile a tramp simply refers to a homeless person, usually not a travelling one....
ed in boot." The Library of Congress has placed the recordings and pictures from the project online. Kennedy has been called "one of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century", and his work is a keystone of the library's presentation.
In 1942 Kennedy accepted a position as Southeastern Editorial Director of the CIO
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
's Political Action Committee in Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
, in which capacity he wrote a series of monographs dealing with the poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
, white primaries
White primaries
White primaries were primary elections in the Southern States of the United States of America in which any non-White voter was prohibited from participating. White primaries were found in many Southern States after 1890 about until 1944...
, and other restrictions on voting that delimited democracy throughout the South. Kept from military service by a bad back, Kennedy resolved to perform his patriotic duties in Georgia by infiltrating both the Klan and the Columbians, an Atlanta-based neo-Nazi organization.
After World War II Kennedy worked as a journalist for the liberal newspaper PM
PM (newspaper)
PM was a leftist New York City daily newspaper published by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and bankrolled by the eccentric Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III....
. His stories appeared in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
and The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, for which he was for a time Southern correspondent, and he fed information about discrimination to columnist Drew Pearson
Drew Pearson (journalist)
Andrew Russell Pearson , known professionally as Drew Pearson, was one of the best-known American columnists of his day, noted for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column "Washington Merry-Go-Round," in which he attacked various public persons, sometimes with little or no objective proof for his...
. To bring the effects of Jim Crow in the South to public awareness, he authored a number exposés of the Klan and racist Jim Crow system over the course of his life, including Southern Exposure (1946), Jim Crow Guide to the USA (1959), and After Appomattox: How the South Won the War (1995). During the 1950s, Kennedy's books, considered too incendiary to be published in the USA, were published in France by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and subsequently translated into other languages. Kennedy coined the term "Frown Power", when he started a campaign with that name in the 1940s, which simply encouraged people to pointedly frown when they heard bigoted speech.
In 1947, Kennedy provided information - including secret codewords and details of Klan rituals - to the writers of the Superman radio program, leading popular journalist Stephen J. Dubner
Stephen J. Dubner
Stephen J. Dubner is an American journalist who has written four books and numerous articles. Dubner is best known as co-author of the pop-economics book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and its 2009 sequel, SuperFreakonomics.-Background:His parents were...
and University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
economist Steven Levitt
Steven Levitt
Steven David "Steve" Levitt is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2004 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B...
, in their 2005 book Freakonomics
Freakonomics
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics, but has also been described as...
, to dub Kennedy "the greatest single contributor to the weakening of the Ku Klux Klan". The result was a series of 16 episodes in which Superman took on the Klan. Kennedy intended to strip away the Klan's mystique; and the trivialization of the Klan's rituals and codewords likely had a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership.
The amount of inside information about the KKK that was revealed on the show appears exaggerated. A review of all 16 episodes of the "Clan of the Fiery Cross" Superman storyline reveals that no passwords were revealed on the air and only one ritual was portrayed. In 1952, when Kennedy ran for governor of Florida, his friend and houseguest Woody Guthrie wrote a set of lyrics for a campaign song, "Stetson Kennedy". Kennedy says he became "the most hated man in Florida", and his home at Fruit Cove near Lake Beluthahatchee was firebombed by rightists and many of his papers destroyed, causing him to leave the country and go to live in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. There, in 1954, Kennedy wrote his sensational exposé of the workings of the Klan, I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan (later reissued as The Klan Unmasked), which was published by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
. Questioned in later years about the accuracy of his account, Kennedy later said he regretted not having included an explanatory introduction to the book about how the information in it was obtained. The director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress Peggy Bulger, the subject of whose doctoral thesis was Kennedy's work as a folklorist, commented in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press, "Exposing their folklore – all their secret handshakes, passwords and how silly they were, dressing up in white sheets ... If they weren't so violent, they would be silly."
A founding member and past president of the Florida Folklore Society, Kennedy was a recipient of the 1998 Florida Folk Heritage Award and the Florida Governor's Heartland Award. His contribution to the preservation and propagation of folk culture is the subject of a dissertation, "Stetson Kennedy: Applied Folklore and Cultural Advocacy" (University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, 1992), by Peggy Bulger
Peggy Bulger
Peggy Bulger is a folklorist and the director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.A native of Albany, New York, she received her BA in Fine Arts from SUNY at Albany in 1972; her MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University in 1975; and her Ph.D. in Folklore and...
, who assumed the directorship of the American Folklife Center
American Folklife Center
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife" . The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American folk music...
at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
in 1999. Kennedy is also featured as one of the "Whistle Blowers", in Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...
's book Coming of Age, published in 1995.
In 2005, Jacksonville residents attended a banquet in honor of Kennedy's life, and afterward a slide show with narration at Henrietta's Restaurant, located at 9th and Main Street in Springfield. This event was largely coordinated by Fresh Ministries
Fresh Ministries
FreshMinistries is an interfaith, non-profit organization based in Jacksonville, Florida whose goal is to eradicate poverty, improve race relations and build stronger communities. The group is "working to improve people’s lives and bring hope to those living in distressed conditions."-History:The...
. The slides included numerous pictures of his travels with author Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, and direct voice recordings which were later digitized for preservation.
In 2006, on November 24, the ninety-year-old Kennedy was wed to former city commissioner Sandra Parks at a Quaker-style ceremony at the William Bartram
William Bartram
William Bartram was an American naturalist. The son of Ann and John Bartram, William Bartram and his twin sister Elizabeth were born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. As a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels, to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens,...
Center on the Bolles School
Bolles School
The Bolles School is a private college preparatory day and boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. It has a lower school , a middle school, and a high school, spread across four campuses around the Jacksonville area, and enrolls about 1,800 students a year. The school was founded in 1933 as...
in Jacksonville, Florida. Parks and Kennedy met when she came to Beluthahatchee to recruit him for the 40th anniversary observance of the St. Augustine civil rights marches which he participated in with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy, who admits to at least five previous marriages, commented, "I’ll leave it to the historians to decide how many times I’ve been married."
In 2007 St. Johns County
St. Johns County, Florida
St. Johns County is a county located in northeastern Florida. As of the 2010 census, the population was 190,039. The county seat is St. Augustine. Due to the inclusion of Ponte Vedra Beach, it is one of the highest-income counties in the United States....
declared a "Stetson Kennedy Day".
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
held in March 2008. Kennedy's most recent book, Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West, was issued by the Pineapple Press, in 2008.
In February 2009, Kennedy bequeathed his personal library to the
Civic Media Center
Civic Media Center
The Civic Media Center is a grassroots, community-based radical infoshop, an alternative library and reading room in Gainesville, Florida, United States...
in Gainesville, Florida with which Kennedy had worked since the center's inception.
In October 2009, a first party for Kennedy's 93rd birthday was held at the Civic Media Center and the next day admirers flocked to Beluthahatchee Park, now a landmarked historic site, to celebrate Kennedy's birthday there.
Beluthahatchee Park
In 2003, Friends of Libraries USA put Beluthahatchee on its national register of literary sites and, to commemorate the occasion, Arlo GuthrieArlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...
gave a concert in Jacksonville.
In 2005 Kennedy received a life estate
Life estate
A life estate is a concept used in common law and statutory law to designate the ownership of land for the duration of a person's life. In legal terms it is an estate in real property that ends at death when there is a "reversion" to the original owner...
on his 4 acre homestead in Saint Johns County, and it is now "Beluthahatchee Park"
The name "Beluthahatchee" describes a mythical "Florida Shangri-la, where all unpleasantness is forgiven and forgotten" according to Zora Neale Hurston.
Among the amenities are a picnic pavilion, canoe dock, access to the Beluthatchee Lake, and use of the two wildlife observation platforms. A “Mother Earth Trail” throughout the property is planned, as envisioned by the Kennedy Foundation. The Park’s perimeter is surrounded by a heavy canopy of native vegetation and the enclave provides a habitat for wildlife and continues to serve as a rookery and roosting place for many types of waterfowl and other birds.
Kennedy’s home will, upon his passing, be open as a museum and archive and offer educational exhibits and whatnot, primarily about Woody Guthrie and William Bartram in addition to Kennedy himself, and will be operated by the Kennedy Foundation which will share office space in an adjacent home with the William Bartram Scenic and Historic Highway corridor group. A log cabin that's in the park may serve as a caretaker residence while the fourth building there may house an Artist-in-Residence through the Florida Folklife program.
The park is part of a 70 acre tract that Kennedy purchased in 1948, recorded restrictive covenants setting aside land in perpetuity as a wildlife refuge, and the following year subdivided, subsequently selling all but his own 4 acre parcel.
Allegations of Sensationalism
In 1999, a freelance historian, Ben Green, alleged that Kennedy falsified or misrepresented portions of I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan. During the 1990s, Green had enlisted Kennedy's help while researching a book about the still unsolved 1951 Florida fire-bombing murders of black Civil RightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activists Harry T. Moore
Harry T. Moore
Harry Tyson Moore was an African-American teacher, and founder of the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Brevard County, Florida....
and his wife Harriette. Green's book about the Moores, Freedom Never Dies, was published in 1999. Green and Kennedy, however, quickly quarreled over what Kennedy considered Green's too sympathetic portrayal of the FBI. Green, whose book is generally disparaging of Kennedy, claimed to have examined Kennedy's archives at the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and in Atlanta and concluded that a number of interviews, portrayed in I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan as having been conducted undercover, had in fact been done openly, and that racist material amassed by Kennedy had also been openly obtained from mail subscriptions to the Klan and similar groups and not surreptitiously, as implied. Most seriously, Green accused Kennedy of concealing the existence of a collaborator, referred to as "John Brown" (a pseudonym probably chosen in honor of the nineteenth-century abolitionist John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
), whom Green alleged was in fact responsible for the most daring of Kennedy's undercover revelations. Green also interviewed Georgia State Prosecutor Dan Duke, whom he reported as denying having worked with Kennedy as closely the latter had claimed. "Duke agreed that Kennedy 'got inside of some [Klan] meetings' but openly disputed Kennedy's dramatized account of their relationship. 'None of that happened,' [Duke] told Green", according to Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in their New York Times Magazine column of January 8, 2006. In the same column, Levitt and Dubner also quote Jim Clark, a professor at the University of Central Florida
University of Central Florida
The University of Central Florida, commonly referred to as UCF, is a metropolitan public research university located in Orlando, Florida, United States...
and co-author of a PBS television documentary based on Green's book, as saying that "[Kennedy] built a national reputation on many things that didn't happen". Jim Clark and Ben Green collaborated on the script of Freedom Never Dies: The Story of Harry T. Moore, based on Green's book and partially funded by the Freedom Forum
Freedom Forum
The Freedom Forum was created in 1991 under the direction of Al Neuharth, former publisher of USA Today newspaper. Funding was provided by a foundation started by publisher Frank E. Gannett in 1935, called the Gannett Foundation...
. Peggy Bulger, on the other hand, stated that when she interviewed him: "[Sheriff] Duke laughed about the way The Klan Unmasked was written. But he added that Kennedy 'didn't do it all, but he did plenty,' she said. In a letter to Kennedy dated July 27, 1946, Georgia Gov. Ellis Arnall wrote: 'You have my permission to quote me as making the following observation: Documentary evidence uncovered by Stetson Kennedy has facilitated Georgia's prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan.'"
Freakonomics
Freakonomics
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics, but has also been described as...
authors Dubner and Levitt had included a favorable summary of Kennedy's anti-Klan activities with special emphasis on the events recounted in I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan in the 2005 edition of their bestselling book. In the revised 2006 edition, however, after being contacted by Green, they retracted their earlier admiration, claiming that they had been "hoodwinked". The allegations in their retraction were swiftly repeated by the business journal Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
in a review of the revised edition of Freakonomics: "It turns out that Kennedy doesn't quite live up to his own legend. In fact, he had exaggerated his story for decades and credited himself with actions taken by other people".
Green's insinuations are contested by scholars, who emphasize that Kennedy never concealed that he had protected his colleagues' identities and maintain that Green either misread or did not really read the material at the Schomburg Center. Peggy Bulger
Peggy Bulger
Peggy Bulger is a folklorist and the director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.A native of Albany, New York, she received her BA in Fine Arts from SUNY at Albany in 1972; her MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University in 1975; and her Ph.D. in Folklore and...
, the head of the American Folklife Division of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, who wrote her Ph. D. dissertation on Kennedy and interviewed him extensively, maintains that Kennedy was always candid with her and others about his combination of two narratives into one in I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan: "His purpose was to expose the Klan to a broad reading audience and use their folklore against them, which he did." In a letter to the editor of New York Times Magazine (published on January 22, 2006) Bulger accused Dubner and Levitt of "holding Stetson Kennedy responsible for the inadequacies of their own research":
It's preposterous. I have worked with Stetson Kennedy for more than 30 years, conducting almost 100 in-depth interviews with both Kennedy and his contemporaries. Your writers use one footnote from my dissertation as "evidence," yet Dubner admitted to me that they never read the whole thing. This is "data"? What is the smoking gun here?
In the same issue of the magazine a letter of protest from famed oral historian Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...
affirms that "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty.... The thing is, Stetson did what he set out to do .... He did get help. He should have been much more up-front. But he certainly doesn't deserve this treatment".
In his own response (published in the Jacksonville, Florida Folio Weekly, January 27, 2006) Kennedy pulled no punches:
The hidden story behind these hidden story guys is that is was a put-up, hatchet job. Freakonomics co-author, Stephen Dubner, admitted to me that it was Ben Green, author of the book about the Harry T. Moore assassinations, who made the call. And, why would he have it in for me? We once had a contract to collaborate on the Moore book and split the byline; but instead we split, because I was convinced that lawmen at every level were involved in every phase of the murders, while he was bent not just upon whitewash but on praising the G-men for a "stellar performance".
I must say that I am not at all comfortable about being in Freakonomics, anyway. I took the authors into my home on the basis of their assertion that what they were after was the economics of the Klan. The next thing I knew, they sent me a pre-publication copy of their sketch of Klan history, and I was horrified to see that it was a rehash of the Klan's very own "Birth of A Nation" version. I did some detailed editing, but they chose to ignore it — just as they did all the documentation I gave them on my infiltration of Klans all over the South, all by my lonesome.
I trust that readers took note of the book's attack upon Head Start, which with all its faults, is a godsend to many. Still worse is the book's suggestion that the way to decrease the crime rate is to decrease the black birthrate via abortion. Without reference to what American does to its black and tan kids, that is sheer racism. There is too much evil going on in the world for me, going on 90, to take time out to haggle with anyone about which agent covered which Klan meeting 50 years ago.
In 2006, The Florida Times-Union
The Florida Times-Union
The Florida Times-Union is a major daily newspaper in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. Widely known as the oldest newspaper in the state, it began publication as the Florida Union in 1864. Its current incarnation started in 1883, when the Florida Union merged with another Jacksonville paper, the...
, after extensive research, published an article "KKK Book Stands Up to Claim of Falsehood" (January 29, 2006) substantiating the general accuracy of Kennedy's account of infiltrating the Klan, while acknowledging that (as he himself never denied) he had made use of dramatic effects and multiple narratives in the book I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan.
David Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University commented:
Green claimed, after months of readings Kennedy's field notes, that he was unable to substantiate many of the claims in The Klan Unmasked. He even insinuated that Kennedy had fabricated his true role. In recent years, Kennedy, now in his 90s, has been fighting to salvage his reputation and protect his legacy. He acknowledged that some accounts in his books were actually derived from the actions of co-infiltrators or others sympathetic with undermining the Klan. Though I recognize the importance of integrity in a person's work, I am nevertheless not especially troubled if Southern Exposure or The Klan Unmasked includes accounts from others afraid to speak for themselves. Nor am I bothered that Kennedy embellished his role. Infiltrating the Klan was an act of great courage, and the information in the books and on the radio shows led to the arrests of some Klansmen, the derailing of domestic terrorist acts, and the unpopularity of the Klan organization. That is good enough for me. I encourage readers to watch this short video [(no longer) on Youtube] which chronicles the life and work of Kennedy.
The Jim Crow Museum staff periodically trains docents to work in the facility. When I facilitate this training I have the students read Kennedy's book, Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was (1959). The book is a mock guide dripping with bitter sarcasm; nevertheless, it is a historically sound account of life under Jim Crow segregation.
Death and Memorials
Kennedy died on August 27, 2011 at Baptist Medical Center South in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had been in palliative care for several days.Kennedy's stated wishes were that upon his death there be a party held rather than a funeral; therefore, a celebration of Kennedy's life was held on October 1, 2011 (four days before Kennedy's 95th birthday) at Kennedy's homestead, Beluthahatchee Park. Several hundred kin, friends, and admirers gathered for the events which commenced with an hour of music performed by many well-known artists of pieces among which were several written by Kennedy’s friend Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, who composed many songs at Beluthahatchee, including a number about Kennedy, e.g., "Beluthahatchee Bill". The music culminated with all present singing Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land
This Land Is Your Land
"This Land Is Your Land" is one of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 based on an existing melody, in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent. Tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on...
", which was followed by an hour of eulogies. Then all present walked down to Lake Beluthahatchee and watched as Kennedy’s ashes were scattered thereon from a canoe by his daughter.
Books
- Mister Homer, 1939
- Southern Exposure, University of Alabama Press 2011 reprint, ISBN 978-0-8173-5672-9
- The Klan Unmasked, University of Alabama Press 2011 reprint: ISBN 978-0-8173-5674-3
- Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A., University of Alabama Press 2011 reprint: ISBN 978-0-8173-5671-2
- Palmetto Country, 1942, University Press of Florida 1989 reprint: ISBN 0-8130-0959-6, Florida Historical Society Press 2009 reprint with a new publisher's preface, updated Afterward and eighty photographs ISBN 1-886104-38-7 ; ISBN 978-1-886104-38-9
- The Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was Before the Overcoming, 1956 at Paris, 1959, Florida Atlantic University 1990 reprint: ISBN 0-8130-0987-1
- South Florida Folklife, 1994, (coauthors Peggy A. Bulger and Tina Bucuvalas), University Press of Mississippi, ISBN 0-87805-659-9
- After Appomattox: How the South Won the War, 1995, University Press of Florida 1996 reprint: ISBN 0-8130-1388-7
- Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West, Pineapple Press, 2008
- The Florida Slave, The Florida Historical Society Press, September 29, 2011, ISBN 978-1-886104-48-8
External links
- Official Stetson Kennedy Website
- Spartacus Educational entry for Stetson Kennedy
- Biographies of Florida folklorists, including Stetson Kennedy (Florida State Archives)
- Main page for the Florida Folklife Collection, which includes the Stetson Kennedy Collection (Florida State Archives)
- Oral History Interview with Stetson Kennedy from Oral Histories of the American South
- Recordings of the "Clan of the Fiery Cross" episodes of the Superman radio program
- This American Life episode with piece about Stetson Kennedy
- Person of the Year 2009: Stetson Kennedy from Folio WeeklyFolio WeeklyFolio Weekly is an alternative weekly newspaper containing articles about people, issues, and events in northeast Florida. Its writers include Anne Schindler, Dan Brown, Susan Clark Armstrong, Hal Crowther, Susan Cooper Eastman, Anthony Gancarski, and Shelton Hull...
, a Jacksonville publication - Oral History Interview with Stetson Kennedy from Oral Histories of the American South
- Sauvage, David. "An Interview with Stetson Kennedy (Freakonomics)". Retrieved August 29, 2011.