Dem
47
GOP
53
In the Iran item above, we refer to "today's history lesson." That was a bit of a falsehood, because we're about to present another one. We had no idea, at the start of the day, that this would be this week's Freudenfreude. However, after we got (L)'s item on the SPLC, and then wrote that bit at the start of "I Read the News Today," this was really the only way to go.
The fellow we want to discuss today is Stetson Kennedy. By his demographics, he should have been an out-and-out racist. He was a white Southerner, born in 1916 to a wealthy and aristocratic family in Florida. Kennedy's middle name, which he used as his first name instead of the more bland "William," was a tip of the hat (no pun intended) to the main source of the family fortune, the Stetson hats empire. Several of his relatives were active participants in the Ku Klux Klan, most notably an uncle who rose to the rank of Great Titan, which is a couple of steps down from the top position of Grand Wizard.
However, Kennedy was not an out-and-out racist. He was a lefty, enough so that he would give Bernie Sanders a run for his money. That's pretty far left by American standards, even today. It was positively pinko by the standards of Kennedy's time. He used the position of privilege afforded by his family wealth to launch a career as a folklorist, conducting interviews across the South, and publishing them in volumes like Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West.
Of course, much Southern folklore was going to be uncovered among Black populations. As a result of his exposure to these folks, particularly his family's Black maid, Kennedy eventually pivoted, and started producing books about Southern racism. The best known of those is Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A.: The Laws, Customs and Etiquette Governing the Conduct of Nonwhites and Other Minorities as Second-Class Citizens. This did not endear Kennedy to many of his fellow white Southerners, as you can imagine, but he was undeterred, and eventually followed that with Southern Exposure: Making the South Safe for Democracy.
Kennedy's life and career, from the 1930s through the 1960s, was really quite remarkable, and is reminiscent of those old "The Most Interesting Man in the World" beer commercials. He (Kennedy, not the Most Interesting Man in the World) worked for the Federal Writers Project during the Great Depression, collecting folk tales and folk songs. He traveled to Europe and worked on propaganda for the liberal side of the Spanish Civil War. He did coursework at the Sorbonne in Paris and the New School for Social Research in New York. He wrote a syndicated newspaper column, in which he advocated for "Frown Power"—anytime you hear anyone say anything that is bigoted, you should make a point of frowning. He supported the careers of Harlem Renaissance writers, particularly Zora Neale Hurston. And he served as Southeastern Editorial Director of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
What Kennedy is most famous for, however, is his work in undermining the Ku Klux Klan. During World War II, he tried to volunteer for service, but was classified 4-F due to a bad back. Observing that many of his high school friends were off fighting bigotry in Europe, he decided to go to war against domestic "homegrown racial terrorists." So, with some help from The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, he adopted an alias—John Perkins, the name of a deceased uncle who had been a KKK member—and he infiltrated the Klan. Given Kennedy's race, his background, and the fact that he, in his guise as "John Perkins," had been a longtime member, he had no trouble gaining the trust of the fellows in the white robes. And given his experience with folklore and with collecting documentation, he had no trouble figuring out which information was extra juicy.
Initially, Kennedy shared that information with state and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. Eventually, he began working with Drew Pearson, who was a newspaper reporter and a radio broadcaster, and who hosted a show called Washington Merry-Go-Round. Kennedy, using his own name to protect the Perkins alias, would reveal the minutes of the latest KKK meeting he'd been at (and he moved his way up the ranks, to national-level meetings), who had been there, and any other "interesting" details. This had the effect of causing many prominent people to renounce their KKK membership.
The platform afforded by Pearson brought Kennedy into contact with other radio programmers, among them the producers of the radio serial Superman. They were looking for content, and he was looking for exposure, and the result was a 16-episode story arc called "Clan of the Fiery Cross," in which Superman took on and defeated the KKK. The episodes revealed a little bit of inside information about the Klan, though their primary impact was to persuade young listeners that the KKK was wicked, and not something they should want to be a part of.
In 1947, Kennedy had to testify in a trial involving two Klansmen accused of (and convicted of) murder. That blew the lid off his alias, and brought an end to his undercover career. He later wrote a book about his KKK adventures entitled The Klan Unmasked. Some historians and other scholars have accused Kennedy of exaggerating his exploits; his response (before he passed away) was that he was really telling the story of two people, himself and another undercover operative who did not want to be identified.
In any event, exaggeration or no, there is no question that Kennedy did much damage to the KKK. Broadly speaking, he cost the organization hundreds or thousands of members. More specifically, he purloined evidence that the Georgia KKK was taking in much money and not paying taxes. That attracted the interest of the IRS and the Georgia Department of Revenue, who demanded immediate payment of the $685,000 they were owed (over $9 million in 2026 dollars). The Georgia klansmen did not have it, which led the state of Georgia to revoke the Klan's national corporate charter in 1947.
Stetson Kennedy is certainly someone who lived his best life (and it was a long life, too—he died in 2011 at the age of 94). Meanwhile, Todd Blanche's notions about the proper ways to deal with hate groups (see above) are clearly ahistorical hogwash. The acting AG might also want to take a look at the recent film BlacKkKlansman.
Have a good weekend, all! (Z)