Infiltrated Ku Klux Klan

MIAMI — Author and folklorist Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan six decades ago and exposed its secrets to authorities and the public but was also criticized for possibly exaggerating his exploits, died Saturday. He was 94.

In the 1940s, Mr. Kennedy used the "Superman" radio show to expose and ridicule the Klan's rituals. In the 1950s, he wrote I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan," which was later renamed The Klan Unmasked, and The Jim Crow Guide.

Mr. Kennedy began his crusades against "homegrown racial terrorists" during World War II after he was rejected for military service because of a back injury. He served as director of fact-finding for the southeastern office of the Anti-Defamation League and served as director of the Anti-Nazi League of New York.

Using evidence salvaged from the Grand Dragon's waste basket, he enabled the IRS to press for collection of a $685,000 tax lien from the Klan in 1944, and he helped draft the brief used by Georgia to revoke the Klan's corporate charter in 1947.

Kennedy infiltrated the Klan by using the name of a deceased uncle who had been a member and began giving its secrets to the outside world. He testified before a federal grand jury in Miami about the Klan chain of command in the 1951 bombing death of Florida NAACP leader Harry Moore and bombings aimed at black, Catholic and Jewish centers in Miami.

He presented evidence in federal court of Klan bombings and other violence aimed at preventing blacks from voting in the 1944 and 1946 elections.

Late in life, Mr. Kennedy was miffed at allegations that some of his writings were fabricated or exaggerated. Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, co-authors of Freakonomics, alleged that Mr. Kennedy misrepresented portions of I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan, as did critic Ben Green, who wrote about the civil rights era.

"He stood up against the Klan at a time when that was an unpopular position," Green once said. "The problem . . . is that what he actually did was apparently not enough for him. So Stetson has felt compelled to exaggerate and embellish what he actually did."

Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that some of the material came from another man who also infiltrated the Klan, but did not want his name used.

AP

StetsonKennedyDaron Dean