Stetson Kennedy, one of the pioneer
folklore collectors during the first half of the
twentieth century, was born in
Jacksonville, Florida in
1916. As a
teenager he began collecting
Cracker and
African-American folksay material while he was collecting "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 was soon, at the age of 21, put in charge of
folklore,
oral history, and
ethnic studies.
Kennedy's first book, Palmetto Country, appeared in 1942 as a volume in the American Folkways Series edited by Erskine Caldwell. Of it, folklorist Alan Lomax has said, "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, "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."
In the aftermath of WWII Kennedy infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and other racist/terrorist groups, and he subsequently authored a number of books dealing with human rights, including The Klan Unmasked, Southern Exposure, Jim Crow Guide, and After Appomattox: How the South Won the War, some of which have been widely translated into foreign languages.
Woody Guthrie wrote a song "Stetson Kennedy" that extolled his virtues as a possible write-in candidate for President.
For more information, see http://www.stetsonkennedy.net