FiftyandFurthermore Expert Susan Brandenburg is a journalist with the St. Augustine Record and recently wrote the following piece on 90-year-old still-active activist Stetson Kennedy, illustrating beautifully why he is indeed a Sage in the Spotlight. 

Klan buster still crusading at 90

By SUSAN BRANDENBURG
Record Correspondent

Sixty years ago, Stetson Kennedy stealthily slipped on his Ku Klux Klan robe and donned his white hood in the back of a Washington, D.C. taxicab.He then grasped the handle of a heavy, evidence-stuffed suitcase and motioned for the cabby to stop in front of the U.S. Congressional headquarters for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Within minutes, four armed security guards were briskly escorting the hooded young human rights crusader from the building.

"The powers that be didn't want to know about the Klan's criminal activities back then, no matter how dramatically they were told," recalled Kennedy, who spent nearly 10 years infiltrating and informing on the Ku Klux Klan during the 1940s.

Still crusading at age 90, Kennedy once again donned a Klan robe and hood on June 16 at Anastasia Book Sellers, this time for the benefit of young boys participating in the Character Builders summer program sponsored by the St. Augustine Four (four St. Augustine natives who were arrested in the 1960s for protesting discrimination in the city).

Wearing the black Nighthawk Klan robe traditionally worn only by the group's internal law enforcers, Kennedy demonstrated the secret Klan sign for "secrecy," and revealed some of the secret passwords used by Klan members when they met. The word "White," for example, would require the response "Man." The word "Native" would be answered with the word "Born," ("native born meaning not an immigrant," Kennedy noted.)

However, he went on to explain, those wearing Nighthawk robes were never questioned or asked for secret passwords, as they had the role of policing the others at Klan rallies. "I sent away for this Nighthawk robe because it gave me more security when I was infiltrating," said Kennedy, adding that he paid $65 mail-order for the robe, with the only requirement being that the letters I.T.S.U.B. be written on the order blank. I.T.S.U.B., Kennedy explained, stood for "In the Sacred Unfailing Bond of Klanishness."

"The Klan had their own ideas about character," Kennedy told the boys. "And their main idea was that no 'mud people,' (meaning anyone who was not Caucasian) were worthy to vote or be American citizens."

Strong character

He talked of the strong character shown by African Americans who defied the threats of the Klan, risking their lives to vote. He encouraged the boys to stand up for their rights as citizens and never to take freedom for granted.

"He knows what he's talking about, boys," declared Carrie Johnson, program coordinator for Character Builders.

Standing up next to the Darth Vader-like figure, Johnson cringed slightly, and continued: "Many of the freedoms you boys have today are because men like Stetson Kennedy risked their lives."

Sitting next to his 14-year old son, Jabari, Christopher White of St. Augustine nodded his head in agreement. "The Ku Klux Klan threw a Molotov cocktail through our window when I was a boy here in St. Augustine," said White, "And I spent my 13th birthday in jail for ordering a hamburger and a Coke at a local restaurant in the summer of 1964."

White's brother, Samuel, now a resident of Jacksonville, is one of the St. Augustine Four, but White noted that many were jailed during that "Freedom Summer" of 1964 when St. Augustine became the site of non-violent civil rights demonstrations and the Ku Klux Klan was anything but non-violent.

Shucking the robe and hood, Kennedy sat knee to knee with the boys, describing his memories of 1964, when he marched with Dr. MFifty and Furthermore | Sage in the Spotlight | Stetson Kennedy PhD alomi is Haul Travelrship r Business