STETSON KENNEDY
(William Stetson Kennedy)
Kennedy was the reporter who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and wrote a prize winning expose. He also exposed many individual Klansmen. See {588295}.
Kennedy had compiled all the overt Federal, State and Local laws and ordinances that required or supported discrimination against Blacks. At the time it was published, the Cold War was raging and the Communists were claiming all over Europe that the United States was really not free given the racial discrimination. With Kennedy’s book, they had a field day citing chapter and verse and naming communities and reading the laws all over the United States. The U. S. Information Agency and the CIA were both were having a difficult time coping with the Communists use of Kennedy’s book, and a CIA agent approached Kennedy and offered to make him “financially independent” if he would repudiate the book and stop publication.
William Stetson Kennedy was an American author, folklorist and human rights activist. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th 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 led to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan's national corporate charter. Kennedy wrote or co-wrote ten books.
