Stetson Kennedy (1916 - 2011)

          American civil rights hero Stetson Kennedy infiltrated Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  Stetson Kennedy's heroic undercover work helped empower Georgia prosecutors to indict KKK leaders and take its charter. 

Stetson Kennedy graduated from Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida. He enrolled at the University of Florida, where he took a journalism class taught by novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. At 18, Kennedy moved to Key West looking for work. He became head of the Florida Folklore Project, part of the federal Work Progress Administration's Writers Project.

Stetson Kennedy and folk singer Woodie Guthrie fought off the KKK in Beleuthahatchie in Fruit Cove.  Guthrie wrote a song about Stetson Kennedy.

Stetson Kennedy once ran for Governor of Florida and was arrested on election day in St. Johns County. He wrote a number of books about segregation. Stetson Kennedy was named to the Artists Hall of Fame in Florida and was awarded the Florida Heartland award by the late Florida Governer "walkin" Lawton Chiles. He also received the Florida Folk Heritage Award and his newest book "Grits and Grunts" received the Carleton Tebeau Award in 2009 as an "outstanding history book" by the Florida Historical Society.

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