Stetson Kennedy

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Stetson Kennedy

Born October 5, 1916 (1916-10-05) (age 93)
Jacksonville, Florida
United States
Occupation Award-winning Author
Activist
Folklorist
Nationality American

Stetson Kennedy (born October 5, 1916 in Jacksonville, Florida) is an author and human rights activist from Florida. Kennedy is also known as a pioneering folklorist, a labor activist, and environmentalist. He is the author of the books After Appomattox, Palmetto Country, Southern Exposure, The Jim Crow Guide, and The Klan Unmasked. He is co-author, with Peggy A. Bulger and Tina Bucuvalas, of South Florida Folklife.

Contents

[edit] Biography and activities

Kennedy was one of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the twentieth century. As a teenager, he began collecting white and African American folklore material while he was collecting "a dollar down and dollar a week" accounts for his father, a furniture merchant. He left the University of Florida, in 1937, 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."[1] 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'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 tramped in boot." The Library of Congress recently made a wealth of recordings and pictures from the project available 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.[2]

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" [3], when he started a campaign with that name in the 1940s, which simply encouraged people to pointedly frown when they heard bigoted speech, leading popular journalist Stephen J. Dubner and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, in their 2005 book Freakonomics, to dub Stetson Kennedy "the greatest single contributor to the weakening of the Ku Klux Klan".[4]

In 1947, Stetson Kennedy provided information - including secret codewords and details of Klan rituals - to the writers of the Superman radio program. The result was a series of four 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.[5] 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".[6] 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.[7]

A founding member and past president of the Florida Folklore Society, Kennedy is 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.

On November 2006, the ninety-year-old Stetson Kennedy, who admits to at least five previous marriages, was married once again, this time to Sandra Parks at a Quaker ceremony at the William Bartram Center on the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida.

In 2007 St. Johns County declared a "Stetson Kennedy Day".[citation needed]

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.[8] Kennedy's most recent book, Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West, was issued by the Pineapple Press, in 2008.

In October 2009, admirers flocked to Beluthahatchee Park, now a landmarked historic site, to celebrate Stetson's Kennedy's 93rd birthday.[9]

[edit] Allegations of Sensationalism

Kennedy in 1991

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 Stetson Kennedy's help while researching a book about the still unsolved 1951 Florida fire-bombing murders of black Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and his wife Henriette. 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 Florida 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.[10] 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.'"[11]

Freakonomics authors Dubner and Levitt had included a favorable summary of Stetson 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".[12] 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", Forbes opined.

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":

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 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) Stetson 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.[13]

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 has this to say:

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 [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.

[edit] Books

  • Mister Homer, 1939
  • Palmetto Country, 1942, University Press of Florida 1989 reprint: ISBN 0-8130-0959-6
  • Southern Exposure (Florida Sand Dollar Book), 1946, University Press of Florida 1991 reprint, ISBN 0-8130-1078-0
  • I Rode With the Klan, 1954, republished as The Klan Unmasked, University Press of Florida 1990 reprint: ISBN 0-8130-0986-3
  • 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

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Stetson Kennedy, interviewed February 2002 by Barrett Golding on "The Sound of 1930s Florida Folk Life" on National Public Radio.
  2. ^ "Stetson Kennedy" entry in New Georgia Encylopedia.
  3. ^ Frown Pow'r, a garage-rock band based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, borrowed their name from Stetson Kennedy's famous anti-bigotry movement.
  4. ^ An entire chapter of Freakonomics is devoted to the "contrarian" thesis that in the twentieth century the Ku Klux Klan was not as violent as it had formerly been and, in fact, had acted paradoxically as a stabilizing influence on race relations in the American South.
  5. ^ In August 2008, Penn Jillette described Stetson Kennedy's part in the story of how "Superman came very close to destroying the Ku Klux Klan". See "Penn Says: Superman and the KKK". http://crackle.com/c/Penn_Says/Penn_Says_Superman_and_the_KKK/2353817. Retrieved 2008-10-16. 
  6. ^ The song was later set to music by Billy Bragg and recorded by Bragg and Jeff Tweedy's band Wilco on the album Mermaid Avenue Vol. II.
  7. ^ Quoted in Charlie Patton, "KKK Book Stands Up to Claim of Falsehood", Florida Times-Union (January 29, 20006).
  8. ^ Selections of the conference are available for viewing online on a Library of Congress webcast.
  9. ^ Bridget Murphy, "Admirers flock to Stetson Kennedy's 93rd birthday: he can't prove he's made a difference, but he can prove he's made friends, he said." (Florida Times-Union, October 5, 2009).
  10. ^ The column, entitled "Hoodwinked? Does it matter if an activist who exposes the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan isn't open about how he got those secrets?", is based exclusively on Green's allegations, which Levitt and Dubner accepted uncritically, without factchecking. 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.
  11. ^ Quoted by Charlie Patton in "KKK Book Stands Up to Claim of Falsehood", The Florida Times-Union, January 29, 2006
  12. ^ New York Times Magazine, Jan. 8, 2006, cited previously.
  13. ^ Stetson Kennedy's response is reproduced on the website of the Association for Cultural Equity.

[edit] References

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[edit] External links


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