MR. MARC FISHERWelcome back. Maybe you know the name Stetson Kennedy and think of him as a civil rights hero. He was immortalized in song by Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, best known for helping to undermine the Ku Klux Klan's popularity by disseminating Klan secrets to the national media. Back in 2005, Stetson talked with Kojo about his life, the roots of his activism and his hopes and sadly his serious concerns for the future. Kojo started by asking Stetson how a teenage job led to his interest in folklore.

MR. STETSON KENNEDYWell, that was during the Great Depression, and almost everyone was poor, including a lot of millionaires, former millionaires. And my father was in the business of a dollar down, dollar a week retail furniture sales, and as a high school student, after hours and on weekends I would collect that dollar bill. And very often I would have a mother, you know, look me in the eye and say, well, if I give you this dollar, it means my kids will go to bed hungry tonight, and so it was a hard choice on my part to take that dollar, and sometimes I didn’t.

MR. STETSON KENNEDYAnd it was one rude introduction to the realities of life, and I do hope we don't go through again. I'm not so sure we're not headed that way. I was a small child when I first saw my first Klan parade and saw my uncle's hooked up shoes sticking out beneath the robe, and my mother explained to me that -- I asked, you know, what it was all about, and she said, well, they're probably going to end up over in colored town and have to whip a few people to be sure they keep staying in their place.

MR. STETSON KENNEDYSo that was an introduction. But by the time World War II rolled around, and most of my classmates were overseas fighting, they -- a lot of them weren't aware of it, but they were fighting racism as well as all the aspects of fascism. I had a back injury, fallen off a fence as a child, and probably no good as a fence straddler even then.

MR. STETSON KENNEDYAnyway, I had a back injury and was not in service, so I looked around and saw the Klan in our own backyard doing its thing, and it occurred to me that the preachers were preaching and the editors were editorializing against the Klan fulminating, but what was missing was hard actionable evidence that could be taken into a court of law.

MR. STETSON KENNEDYAnd I concluded that infiltration was the one and only way to get that, and I think there's a moral there for our anti-terrorist war of today, the effectiveness of infiltration. But anyway, I asked myself if I don't do it who will, and I didn't hear any chorus, so I did it.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIYou did that and a whole lot more. We're talking with Stetson Kennedy who, if you're just joining us, has been described as a crusader, dissident, idealist, radical, civil rights firebrand, newspaper reporter, historian, union organizer, environmentalist, folklorist, prophet, outcast, angry young man, angry old man, survivor, patriot, and Ku Klux Klan infiltrator. You really have been all of those things, have you not, Stetson Kennedy?

KENNEDYWell, when -- I think that's the third time I've heard all the things I've been doing, and I wish I were more like my colleague Rosa Parks, a civil rights activist. She's still saying, and I ain't in no ways tired. But I've just had a bout with pneumonia, and I must confess to being some ways tired. I don't know, for a long time I was saying it's not what I've done, but what I'm going to do, but even that, the clocks running down on me and I'm trying to wrap up a few things.

NNAMDIYou fed secret Ku Klux Klan passwords and information to the writers of the popular radio drama, "Superman." How did you get that idea?

KENNEDYWell, I got the idea at my very first Klan meeting when I saw the police blue uniform sticking out under the Klan robes, and the khaki uniforms of the sheriff's deputies. And also in attendance there were prosecutors and judges and politicians and public figures, businessmen. So my original idea of, you know, gathering actionable evidence to take into a court went out the window. There were too many lawmen who were Klansmen.

KENNEDYAnd that I'm again sad to say I went to the FBI and this was the Hoover FBI and it was lily white, and we're talking about 1946 and '47. I believe Hoover has six African-American employees nationwide, and they were all chauffeurs in Washington. So that was the FBI I confronted, and sure enough they were not the least bit interested in the fact that I could tell them what went on inside the Klan meetings, and they would lead me out in to the hall and ask me about black militants and what did I know about them, and they were the real threat to America.

KENNEDYSo I had to realize that the FBI as well as the state, county, and municipal lawmen were Klan-minded if not Klan members. And that meant I had nothing left but the court of public opinion, and I went not only to Superman, he had a radio show three times a week on Mutual Broadcasting, also to Drew Pearson. Jack Anderson was Pearson's sort of office boy, I believe, at the time.

NNAMDIYeah.

KENNEDYBut Pearson had a coast-to-coast radio program, a weekly program, and with Pearson we'd broadcast the Minutes of the Klan's last meeting as a regular feature. Every Sunday it would go coast to coast, and I would name all the names of big shots who were there, and needless to say, they never showed up again.

NNAMDIYou had infiltrated the Klan, at that point you were using the surname of a family member who had been high up in the KKK, until that side of the family told you to stop.

KENNEDYYes. They still threaten to kill me if I mention that name again, you know. A blot on the family discussion or something. But that's the truth of the matter, and this matter of infiltration, it put a stop not only to the attendance dropped, but recruitment hit rock bottom, and best of all, violence came to a halt. So there again, I think we have a moral for this other war against international terrorism. And I do wish someone would by pay more attention to our domestic home-grown terrorists.

NNAMDIIndeed, you make the point that if we're talking about spreading democracy abroad, we also need to be looking at the state of democracy at home, that -- or I imply from that that you are not at all satisfied with the state of democracy at home.

KENNEDYKojo, to some extent, I have to confess that I'm sorry I lived so long, you know. There's a great deal going on out there that I would have liked to have missed or gone to -- I would rested better in peace had I not lived to see it. Some philosopher once said that trends are everything, and so far as I can see, the trends are not good. In fact, if there's anyone out there that bumps into a good trend, I wish you'd call me collect.

NNAMDIAnd tell you. We're talking with...

KENNEDYI hate to sound pessimistic, I know it's not fashionable, but I can't help but feel that the doomsayers don't know the half of it. This whole matter of Klan and racism, I've been saying that the Klan, as serious as it is, and it is the terrorist enforcement arm of racism and white supremacy in this county, and always has been, but the Klan is really just the fleas on the dog of racism, and the racism came before the Klan, and we'll have racism, I'm afraid, after the Klan is gone.

KENNEDYAnd at the same time, in my lifetime, in this 20th century, we've just left behind, I am thankful that -- appreciable is the word I've chosen, that progress has been made in the whole of race relations in America. It's very appreciable progress. But at the same time, I'm highly concerned about the efforts that are being made to turn back the clock, and there are a great many of those efforts, and they are unfortunately bearing fruit, and it's conceivable that we're headed back into another dark age of that old-fashioned racism, and that needs to be addressed.

NNAMDIMost people think that they mellow with age, but you've said, Stetson Kennedy, that you hope your last words will be your most militant. Is that because of the concern you've expressed throughout this program that society -- that the United States might be going in the wrong direction again?

KENNEDYWell, we like to boast that we're out there building democracy in the world, and I'm old enough to -- I was around when World War I was fought to make the world safe for democracy. And Woodrow Wilson talked about self-determination, and we never heard anymore about it. And here we are a century later and when anyone talks about self-determination, you know, that's what America did when it decided it didn't want to be a part of the British empire.

KENNEDYAnd yet, when Ireland says it doesn't want to be a part, or the Chechens don't want to be a part of Russia, or you name it, Puerto Rico doesn't want to be a part of the U.S., any number -- a long list of people, the Basques wanting to talk about self-determination, and we just call it separatism and turn our backs on it, and in some cases call it terrorism. But of course, we were -- our American revolutions were terrorists, if we define it that way.

KENNEDYWe were separatists, and we've got to rethink these things and make sure that it's really democracy we're building at home and abroad, and not something else.

NNAMDIAccording to the post office, Stetson, you live in Fruit Cove, but really you live in Beluthahatchee.

KENNEDYI've been linked to Mother Nature in a very intimate way all my life, and it's like the fellow said, you know, all the world's a stage, and if we let the stage go up in smoke, we can forget about racism and democracy and some of these other things. There won't be any stage to perform it on, and, therefore, my concern about Mother Earth. I've set up a foundation and I hope to carry on some of the legacy I hope to leave behind.

KENNEDYSt. John's County, where I live, has just now passed a resolution to acquire the property, including a 20-acre lake, and to have it become a nature preserve and a retreat for writers and activists, and all sorts of social service agencies, both public and private as a retreat and workshop. It would counter-terrorist training camp. Don't tell the county that.

NNAMDIWe won't tell the county.

FISHERThough Stetson spoke of being some ways tired, he kept going strong well into his 90s. He continued to write, married for the seventh time, and traveled to D.C. for President Obama's inauguration which he said he really did need to be here for since he had, quote, "been campaigning for President Obama since 1932." He even dealt with a controversy raised after the popular book "Freakonomics" included some of Kennedy's stories.

FISHERSome said that he has misrepresented portions of his stories about infiltrating the KKK. Stetson acknowledged he had dramatized portions of his work, including some stories told to him by another man who'd also infiltrated the Klan. Peggy Bulger, the director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress who worked with Kennedy for decades, vouched for his truthfulness, and acclaimed oral historian Studs Terkel defended him vigorously.

FISHERIn fact, while Studs Terkel was a guest on this show back in 2001, Kojo took an unexpected call.

NNAMDIOnto Stetson in Jacksonville, Fla. Stetson, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

KENNEDYHi, Studs. This is Stetson. I haven't heard your voice since...

MR. STUDS TERKELStetson Kennedy?

KENNEDYYeah.

TERKELOh, this (unintelligible) great man talking.

KENNEDYYeah. The Miami Book Fair four or five years ago.

TERKELBy the way, I've been worried about you, Stetson Kennedy. Stetson Kennedy's one of the heroes. He's the man who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan years ago. He's a southern liberal and an old time scrapper, and he's been in and out of scrapes all his life, and he was head of a WPA writer's project in Florida. And who was that great African-American who worked for? Zora...

NNAMDIZora Neale Hurston.

KENNEDYNever mind me, it's you...

TERKELNo. But he was -- he was a 20-year-old boss and he saw her greatness.

KENNEDYYeah. (unintelligible)

TERKELZora Neale Hurston.

KENNEDYYou're still four years older than I am, but my compliments on going so strong. Let's go until we stop.

NNAMDIIt's fascinating that you -- both of you guys, Stetson...

KENNEDYI have a friend who said that growing old is not for sissies.

TERKEL(unintelligible) . This guy, Stetson Kennedy, is one of the unsung heroes of our day. The man here talking right now.

NNAMDIAnd you've written about him?

TERKELOh, yeah.

KENNEDYMy own take on this dying business is, you know, that the price tag on every life is death, but it's still the greatest bargain on earth.

FISHERStetson Kennedy died this weekend. He wanted a party to be held upon his death, not a funeral, so friends and family will gather on October 1, just days before he would have marked his 95th birthday at his homestead in Beluthahatchee Park, Fla. to celebrate his remarkable life, and the future work of the Stetson Kennedy Foundation.

FISHERThanks to all my guests today. You've been listening to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" produced by Brendan Sweeney, Michael Martinez, Ingalisa Schrobsdorff, and Tayla Burney, with assistance from Kathy Goldgeier, and Elizabeth Weinstein. The managing producer is Diane Vogel. The engineer in Andrew Chadwick. A.C. Valdez is on the phones. Podcasts of all shows, audio archives, CDs and free transcripts are available at our website, kojoshow.org. I'm Marc Fisher of the Washington Post sitting in for Kojo. Thanks so much for listening.