>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:03 ^M00:00:20 >> Betsy Peterson: Betsy Peterson, the Director of the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress. And on behalf of the staff, and indeed everyone at the library, I want to welcome everyone here today for the latest presentation in our Benjamin Botkin lecture series. For those of you the Botkin series allows us to highlight the leading -- the work of leading scholars in the disciplines of folklore, ethnomusicology, world history, and cultural heritage, while enhancing our collections at the American Folklife Center. For the center and the library, the Botkin lectures form an important facet of our acquisition activity. Each lecture is videotaped, and becomes part of the permanent collections of the center. And eventually are webcast on the library's website where they're available for viewing internet patrons throughout the world, and for generations to come. So, today's lecture. Today's lecture is a two-for great pleasure for me. I have the honor of introducing our speaker, Peggy Bulger, who is a distinguished folklorist, a very dear friend and colleague, and my predecessor here as Director of the American Folklore Center at the Library of Congress. She in turn, will be speaking about a remarkable man named Stetson Kennedy who for many years was also closely alive with the center -- or, actually, yeah, the center, the archive, the library, and the field of folklore. But, first a little bit about Peggy. >> Peggy Bulger: Don't tell it all. >> Betsy Peterson: I won't, don't worry. Dr. Bulger received her MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University, and her PhD in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. She began her professional career in Florida serving as Florida's State Folk Arts Coordinator in 1975, and later as the administrator of the Florida Folklife Program from 1976 to 1989. As Florida's first State Folklorist, she was the driving force behind the creation of the Folklife program there, and the Florida Folklife collection. Which today is housed in Tallahassee at the state archives of Florida, and features documentation on Florida folk artists, performers, and folklorists. After helping to establish the Florida Folklife program, Peggy moved on to Atlanta leaving Florida, and became the Folk Arts Director and Senior Program Officer for the Southern Arts Federation. After an innovative tenure in that position in 1991, she was named Director of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center where she served with distinction as AFC Director until her retirement in 2011. In addition to this varied career and her administration work, Peggy has also authored or coauthored numerous articles and publications including, South Florida Folklife and Musical Roots of the South. She's produced several documentary films including Music Masters and Rhythm Kings. And she coproduced the double album Drop on Down in Florida, which was reissued on Dust to Digital in 2012. She also served as President of the American Folklore Society, and received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College in 2012. After retiring, Peggy returned to Florida where she's remained extremely active, which wouldn't be a surprise for anyone who knows her. And in fact, she joins us today to talk about her most recent project, a biography of the folklorist Stetson Kennedy. As you are going to hear, Stetson Kennedy has also lead a remarkable life as a political activist, writer, and folklorist. He was a longtime friend and supporter of the AFC, and he maintained an influential circle of friends throughout his life including, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax, Richard Wright, Jean-Paul Sartre, Zora Neal Hurston, and also used folklore and oral history as a vehicle towards progressive change. Copies of Dr. Bulger's book, right here, are on sale in the foyer after the lecture. And Peggy will be available to autograph copies immediately after her talk. So, now, please join me in welcoming Dr. Peggy Bulge for her talk on Stetson Kennedy; Applied Folklore and Cultural Advocacy. ^M00:05:13 [ Applause ] ^F00:05:18 ^M00:05:19 >> Peggy Bulger: Thank you. Well, it's really wonderful to be back here at the library. And I want to especially the American Folklife Center and staff, you know, Betsy, thank you very much for that. Nancy Gross, Thea Austin, Jennifer Cudding, all of you, Steve Winnick, all of you have put a lot of work. I know how much work goes into these things, because we used to put them on when I was here. So, I'm happy to be on the other side of the lectern, and I telling somebody when I was getting ready for this, I said, you know, I really need a staff. I had to learn how to do a Power Point on my own for the first time, that's the downside of retirement, but, now I'm up and running. Let me just take this, and page up and page down. See, I'm getting really good at this here, page up and page down. This lecture though, is really meant to introduce you all to a most amazing activist as Betsy had said, and an extraordinary, ordinary man who many people have never heard of outside of Florida. I imagine, maybe all of you did, does anybody not have heard about Stetson? Oh, good. Oh, good. Well, you are going to be amazed. All of you are going to be amazed actually, because even if you know Stetson, or think you know about Stetson, if you delve into his life it's much more amazing than even you know. But, so to begin, I really have to talk about how I met Stetson, and that was back in 1976. As Betsy said, I was hired -- my very first job as a folklorist was to come down and be the State Folk Arts Coordinator for a year on one of those NEA one-year grants, you know, to do a folk arts survey of the state in 12 months. And I was young and often naive enough to think it was possible. Yes, I'm going to -- I'd never been to Florida before in my life. So, the good thing is, I decided I'd better find out who had done any work in Florida before me. And so, I went to the University of Florida Library collection, and met up with Dr. Alton Morris, who at the time was the Editor of Southern Folklore. And he was also the Senior Folklorist really working in the state of Florida. And I was going through a lot of the WPA materials, the Federal Writers Project materials that were at the P.K. Yonge Collection. And, you know, reading Zora Neal Hurston, Alan Lomax, Herbert Halpert, all kinds of people who had been doing wonderful work all over the state. But, I kept running across the names Stetson Kennedy, I'd never heard of Stetson Kennedy. And so, I was talking to Dr. Morris and I said, gosh, you know, this guy Stetson Kennedy did so much work, it's really too bad he's dead. And Morris goes, "Stetson? He's not dead, he's alive and well, and lives outside of Jacksonville." And of course, I was 25 years old, and I figured anybody who had been doing that work in the 1930s, this was 1976 had to be dead, you know? So -- and I'm embarrassed to say, he was only 62 years old in 1976. Whoo! You know, older than I am now [inaudible]. Anyway, so, that started, I made an appointment to go over to see Stetson on his land. He had an estate I would say, south of Jacksonville in St. Johns County called Beluthahatchee, which is word that he got from Zora Neal Hurston, which kind of means a paradise on earth, at least that's what he tells me. So, I went over to interview him about his work with the Federals Writer Project, because that's all I knew about him. And that actually began a friendship that lasted over 35 years until he died. But his work with the Florida Writers Project was just the tip of the iceberg in an amazing life that really used his skills as a documentarian to affect political, environmental, and cultural change. Stetson Kennedy was actually, he was born on October 5, 1916 to George Kennedy and Willie Stetson in Riverside, which is a wealthy neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida, it still is today. He is descendent from southern Georgia and Florida aristocracies, so the surnames in his family are Woodward, Sanford, Lanier, Wallace, Stetson, and Kennedy. His most celebrated relative was his great uncle John B. Stetson, as many of you might have heard of him. He was a northern hat manufacturer who moved actually to Deland, Florida in the 1880s ^M00:10:28 And founded the first law school in the state, Stetson University. So, Stetson was the eldest of five children who grew up with all of the rights, privileges and prejudices of their station in life. And so, from right to left that's Stetson, the oldest, Martha, George Junior, Nancy, and Margaret. And Stetson said to me that the, "He grew up steeped in southern culture of the 1920s. Salt and pepper were the only condiments, and garlic was frowned upon as not only alien, but positively subversive." Stetson as a teenager would help in his father's retail furniture business in Jacksonville, which catered to poor and working-class customers both Black and White. And they would pay a dollar down and a dollar a week for all of their purchases. And it was Stetson's job to go collect that dollar a week. So, it was at that early age, you know, at about 15, that he first began to document the speech, idioms, jokes, and stories of those families. It was also the beginning of his interest in folklore and in activism to help combat poverty and hunger. Stetson was always considered to be the black sheep of his family. His interest in Black culture, traditions of the working class, and in the inequality of southern life was not welcomed within his family as you can imagine, and also within his "social peers." He began college at the University of Florida in 1935, which was the height of The Depression. He was studying literature and writing, he was also active in social causes though right from the beginning. He joined the North American Committee to aid Spanish democracy. And he had the University of Florida ROTC members send their used boots to the Spanish Republican troops. And he mobilized the cigar rollers of Tampa in Key West by appealing to their Spanish heritage. He also -- this is really interesting, he founded the Florida International Peace Council, which was the very first integrated student group in the segregated South. Their slogan was, and this was before World War II, "Keep America out of the war by keeping war out of the world." But, as Stetson says, he invented independent studies by dropping out of college in 1937, and hitchhiking to Key West where he intended to collect narratives, and become a working writer for a year or two. So, remember, this is at the height of The Depression. Key West was actually under federal jurisdiction, and it was an experiment to use WPA labor to create a tourist mecca and save the bankrupt town in this effort. It was also the beginning of what would evolve into the Civilian Conservation Corp. The WPA workers were taking houses like this, and restoring them into this. The WPA was creating jobs to develop roads, bridges, and critical infrastructure. As well as jobs that would encourage economic development through tourism. So, when Stetson first arrived, he got a WPA job raking seaweed off the beaches to attract these elusive tourists, one of the many jobs that got people to work. And he immediately started collecting folklore from his fellow workers who were also destitute and grateful for the job. So, one story he told me -- and he said it was great to have this job, because the sea was very obliging by depositing another crop of seaweed every day, and so, there was never an end to the job. But he said, "These fellas on the beach, one fellow took out a loaf of Cuban bread, slices it, holds it up to the breeze, and then he takes it down. He cuts a lime, he squeezes the lime juice on the bread, puts it together and eats it. So, all the other workers are asking, "What the hell he's -- was he doing?" And he said, Well, I just made a sea breeze sandwich. So, I guess he was getting a little fishy flavor and imagining that he had a fish sandwich. But there was that kind of good humor in the face of the awful economic situation." Stetson began to document the traditional occupational lure of Key Westers. He went down on the wharfs, he went on the sponge boats and the docks, and he collected from the Bohemian conch fisherman of the day. Because of this, he came to the attention -- I love this picture, she -- doesn't even look like-- I know, what a babe. And she was the head of the Florida -- Florida Writers Project. Anyway, he came to the attention of Dr. Carita Corse, who was a family friend from Jacksonville, and the new head of the Florida Writers Project. She hired Stetson at the age of 21 to be a Junior Interviewer covering Key West. And that was because of his family connections. The project was gathering material, as most of you know, to publish a state guide book. And most of the states, of course, were engaged in similar field work for a series that would be published and encourage visitation across the country. It was kind of an economic development thing through writing. Stetson submitted manuscripts were full of folklore and cultural narratives. And he then came to the attention of who else? Dr. Benjamin Botkin, who this lecture series is named for. Botkin was the head of the Federal Writers Project Folklore and Oral History Unit in Washington D.C. overseeing all of the states. And Botkin encouraged Corse to hire Stetson to be in charge of the "Folklore Oral History and Social Ethnic Unit" of the Florida team. And so, at the age of 22, Stetson became a Federal Folklorist. Stetson was able to borrow the acetate disk recording machine of the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Song, and I believe we still have that machine here. Yeah, we do. And along with photographer Robert Cook, they documented the folk arts and culture of Key West. And here, he is documenting Edith Ogden, who became his first wife. Stetson had seven wives, but that's another story. And she's singing a Cuban folk song for the project. And after the talk, you should go see some of the materials that Todd Harvey and staff have pulled. Stetson's materials that are here, right here in our archive. These are all coming from interviews that I did with him over, I don't know, 200 hours of interviews over maybe 15 years. He said, "I lived in the Cuban Quarter, and it was my first exposure to any culture other than the Black and Cracker southern cultures. So, to find myself in a Cuban, Spanish speaking community was quite an eye-opener. In spite of all the hardships, they were having a ball. They were really enjoying life in a way I'd never seen anybody enjoying life. It had something to do with the Creole outlook on life, making the most of it. Wine, women, and song, and making music. You can't beat it, it was all new to me, and I've never gotten over it. I probably never should have left. So, Stetson really was, you know, you imagine, 22 years old, he's excited. He did so much documentation down there, this is documentation Cuban Comparsas dancers. He documented second line funeral parades in Key West. And of course, Bohemian Goombay and Junkanoo Festivals. He also was sent on field trips by Carita Corse to other communities. And this is from a trip he made to Tarpon Springs where many of you might know that 60% of the population of Tarpon Springs were immigrants from the Dodecanese Islands. They were brought over to get the natural sponges out of the bay, and they were really very good at that occupation. But, to this day, the Greek culture of Tarpon is a tourist draw, and so, it, you know, could be a dream come true, I guess for at the time. Stetson also documented the cigar rollers in both Key West and Tampa for occupational lure, as well as political activism pertaining to the Batista Regime in Cuba. And I should say that, the Cigar rollers were really interesting in that, they started -- you know, the Cuban cigar rollers first came to Key West, and when they wanted to unionize, the owners of the cigar companies moved lock, stock, and barrel up to Tampa to Ybor City to avoid unionizing. And one of the jobs though in these factories, which you can see they're all just working away mind -- it's pretty mindless work after a while, was to be electore[Phonetic]. If you were a electore, you were a man who sat up on a high - high stool, and you read to the workers. So, it's like books on tape before books on tape. ^M00:20:26 And you could read anything that the workers wanted. And what they increasingly wanted read were the political newspapers of the day, and activist materials. And so, it was a sad day, but eventually, the cigar rolling companies got rid of that job, and tore down electores high seats. And that was -- the was cause for a great consternation within the industry there. But, Stetson also documented cigar rollers' houses vernacular architecture in Key West, shot gun houses like this. And typical street scenes in his Cuban neighborhood. This give me -- you can see that they had Turtle burgers, turtle burger sandwich at the time, you know, which sea turtles are endangered now, so you wouldn't get a turtle burger sandwich. But, I wonder what that tasted like, well -- he also documented cock fighting, which at the time was not illegal down in Key West. And he became great friends with an emerging young Cuban-American folk artist, Mario Sanchez. Sanchez's work is not internationally collected, but back in the 1930s, he was a young, unknown artist. And the Florida Writers Project documentation would help to start his career. He would do bas-relief paintings on cibar -- cigar box covers, and other found wood pieces. And they celebrated the traditional, everyday life of Key West. This one is called Gossip, this one is called Street Vendors. But, I want you to see he -- during the middle of his career, he got really into the clouds. And the clouds are telling all kinds of stories, there's bull fighting, and there's you know, fishing. And so, the clouds are just as interesting as what's going on in the street. This one is called Pets. And this is simply called a street scene, because it's got so much detail, and it gives you a good inkling of what Key West must have been like in the 1930s. Of course, Stetson was now in charge of the folklore unit and the folklore connection all over the state. So, Cartia Corse called him back to Jacksonville to supervise the field workers from the main office. He was soon to become the supervisor of Zora Neal Hurston, if that's possible. He -- she was moving back down to Florida from New York City where she had been with the brilliant anthropologist Franz Boaz. She was also a Pulitzer Prize winning author at the time. And Stetson remembers the day that she was hired. ^M00:23:22 ^M00:23:27 He says, "When it was announced that Zora was coming into the Jacksonville headquarters, Dr. Corse called a meeting of the Editorial staff. She said that we would have to make allowances for Zora, because she had been lionized by New York literary circles, and was consequently given to putting on airs. She would, for instance, smoke cigarettes in front of White people." So, I asked Stetson, what happened? "So, Zora came, Zora smoked, and we made allowances. Although she was an award-winning published author, Zora was hired at the minim wage for the WPA, $26.50 a month, as a junior interviewer to collect Negro Folklore with the Negro Unit. Of course, as you know, in the South the WPA, the Federal Writers Project units were separated by race at the time. She did amazing work, and sent in important documentation of everything from the juke joints of Eatonville, to the railroad workers from the state prison yards, to Blues musicians in Pahokee, and to turpentine workers at Chipley. And I'm very happy to say that if you want to hear and see, and get into some of these materials, it's all digitized. It's up online, and it's here at the American Folklife Center. So, get into the website, and get into collections online, and it's the Florida collection. But, it was also during this time that Stetson met and became friends with Pete Seeger, as well as many of the other Folk Song Revival members from the North. And remember, this was the era where Pete Seeger was the first archive of folksong's first intern. And he was working with Alan Lomax. Alan Lomax, of course, was the head of the archive of folk songs at the Library of Congress. And he would come down to Florida to do field work with Stetson, Zora Neal Hurston, Herbert Halpert, and other prominent folklorists. And he and Stetson maintained a friendship throughout their lives. So, at the end of the 1930s, and the beginning of the 1940s, Stetson became involved -- before the WPA had -- you know, wound up, he became involved in the early civil rights struggles and labor struggles of the South. He joined the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. He met and worked with other Progressive reformers, Josephine Wilkins, Claude Pepper, W.T. Couch. Ellis Arnall, George Stoney, Clark Foreman, Don West, and Virginia Durr. He would also meet and work with Miles and Ziphia Horton of the Highlander Center in Tennessee. And this is Ziphia, and she is actually credited with being the first person to use a traditional African-American hymn as a tool for activism at this time, and of course, it's We Shall Overcome. Many of you know it, because a young folk singer Guy Carawan was working with Highlander -- at the center at the time. And he actually, was doing a lot of the song leading at song rallies and gatherings. Stetson would note that this was one of the most effective ways to use folklore for positive change. Traditional tunes would be joined by progressive lyrics to bring people to their feet and move them in ways that speeches alone could not. And I was privileged to interview Miles Horton on December 5, 1989 three weeks before he died. And he explained to me why he used Stetson as a consultant. ^M00:27:24 ^M00:27:30 So, Miles Horton said, "At Highlander, we used a lot of consultants, Stetson was working on books, and so, he came to meet people, and to talk the students. We were always happy to have him around. It was good for the students to know people like that. He had a broader base than most folklorists. Most of the folklorists don't get political, they're afraid they'd be called Communists, and have their book sales go down. But, he, Stetson, was very open about it. Stetson, he was a philosopher, he was totally interested in the significance of folklore. When he put folklore in his books, it was for its significance, not just as a fact. It's only the folklorists like Stetson that I like to work with. I don't have any patience for the fact collectors. I find them exceedingly boring." There you go. ^M00:28:24 ^M00:28:28 By this time -- no, in 1942 the WPA programs as many of you know, were shut down very abruptly due to the entry of the U.S. into World War II. But, by this time, Stetson had taken much of the state guide book material that he had collected, that was not going to be used in the official tourism tool, and he wrote his first successful book, Palmetto Country, and there's a copy of it back there on the table. Which depicted Florida not just in all of its good characteristics, but also all of its bad qualities too. And then, he tried to join the Army. He was rejected from joining the Army because of a back injury, so he determined to fight Fascism at home. For the next five years, Stetson lived a double life. He moved to Atlanta, under the name of John Perkins he infiltrated the Stone Mountain klavern of the Klu Klux Klan. He was determined to document secretly the Klan's own folklore, and use this to expose their unlawful activities, and also their tools for communication that would be less affective without secrecy. So, this following section I'm going to be talking about, which is his work, and how he used folklore to get the charter revoked in the Georgia Klan. It was written back in 1992 when the dissertation came out, and it held true then. ^M00:30:00 Unfortunately, recent events may put this commentary into question again, because without overwhelming public outrage and sanction against blatant racism and abuse of human rights, the tactics that Stetson Kennedy used would have been minimally affective. Fortunately, they were very affective at the time. Kennedy knew that naming is power, exposing the secret names and signs of the Klan would steal the symbolic heart from the organization, and make them vulnerable. He determined to sap their strenght by turning their own rituals against them, by revealing their cherished passwords, and destroying their exclusive brotherhood. By exposing this elaborately constructed folk society, and its destructive ideology, the cultural glue melts, and by holding those in power accountable without the cloak of secrecy and mysticism, the society breaks apart. This then was the methodology adopted by Stetson Kennedy and his role as an implied folklorist. And I just have to say, I love this picture, it's Klansmen with Kewpie dolls. It's I think at a country fair, and I'm just like going -- oh, it was so ubiquitous that you know, this was -- this would not like, stop people in their tracks, I guess, I can't imagine. In all, Stetson as John Perkins joined over 20 hate groups in Georgia where he -- and this is him in his Columbian Brown shirt. The Columbians were a rival hate group competing with the Klan. But, all of them were dependent upon secrecy, and bogus traditions. This is a map of the Klavern, and he did give information that showed all of the positions of power, and their place in the clubhouse, and what they were used for, and what the crazy naming meant. This is a secret salute. He did a bunch of documentation of hand gestures, and what they meant. So, if you met -- for instance, if a Klansman met another Klansman on the street, they could make these hand signals, and the other person would know what they're talking about. If they weren't a Klansman, I guess they'd just think you're crazy, I don't know. And Stetson also would collect handouts and wires as much as he could while he was undercover. During 1946 and 1947, Stetson fed nationally famous journalist Drew Pearson the secret minutes of the Stone Mountain Klan meetings. Pearson would announce these secrets on his Sunday night radio show, the Merry-Go-Round. Stetson also gave this information to Robert Maxwell, the producer of the Superman radio show. And he was working undercover for Daniel Duke, the Attorney General for Georgia, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But, he knew it was time to come out from under cover and bring his information to Capitol Hill in January of 1947. In his full regalia, he entered the office, believe it or not of Martin Dies, and the House on American Activities Committee. Dies refused to see Stetson, and maintained the Klan was not un-American, it was as American as apple pie. Of course, showing up announced to the Capitol in a Klan robe had some consequences, and Stetson though was able to testify to several Congress members, and many members of the press. Of course, this blew his cover, and his life would be in danger. Meanwhile, Georgia Attorney General Dan Duke would use evidence from Stetson's work to confront the former governor of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, who was a Klan member himself with the whips that were used in several hate crimes against Blacks in Atlanta. And really, it -- the Klan was a huge -- huge factor in American life back at this time. This is Stetson with Ellis Arnall who was the progressive governor who succeeded Eugene Talmadge. And with Stetson's evidence, Arnall was able to get the Georgia Klan's charter revoked, and -- because they were chartered as an educational, charitable organization. And they had enough evidence to show that the Klan was actually conspiring to deny people their civil rights. But, this of course, made things very difficult for Stetson. His land in Florida was set on fire, and his house was ransacked by local Klansman. He was getting death threats every day, so he was weighing his options let's say. He decided to go visit his friend Alan Lomax in New York city who was working with the Henry Wallace campaign. And it was at a party at Lomax's apartment finally met somebody he'd been corresponding with for over three years, Woody Guthrie. They had amazing correspondence going on, but this is how it started. Kennedy's first contacts with Woody were by mail. In April of 1945, Wood wrote to Stetson concerning an article that Stetson had written for Southern Patriot, about the racist group called Christian Americans. Woody had been so impressed with the article that he sent Stetson a book of 10 songs. And Stetson had answered him detailing how he himself was a collector of folk songs. So, Wood replied with a two-page, single spaced letter that would begin a long friendship between the two activists. And the end of that letter it says, "Your Southern Patriot is doing a fine job of making it clear how the Fascists will try every known trick in their booby-trap to plant their seeds in the soils of our Southland. It is the ignorance caused by poverty that keeps Fascism alive. And you're in the big middle of the land where the light of prosperity has never shined for a whole day. Your friend, Woody Guthrie." So, Woody had also written to Stetson after he had read Palmetto Country. And that of course, was a book that got Stetson on the map in many ways. So, he wrote to him -- ^M00:37:10 ^M00:37:14 About Palmetto Country. "Dear Stets, I don't know of a book on my whole shelf Stet, that hits me harder than your Palmetto Country. I've read it, and I'm still reading it, and I can now say that if only, and if only all our library books could say what you did, the jokes, the songs, the old ballads about the Voodoo and the Hoodoo and the Bigley winds down in your neck of the wood vine. If every book on the shelf hit, and kicked, and jumped in just the right direction just 2/3 as much as your Palmetto Country does, I'd feel much more like a man. Most damn books make me feel like an asshole. But -- but if -- and that's spelled A-S-S, new word, W-H-O-L-E. But a few like yours have kept me standing up like a Saw Leaf palm. I'm going to go down some day and try a piece of that sweet Palmetto Country. Keep on traveling where your own free conscious takes you -- as you always do anyway. And there's no earthly ends to the goods and benefits you can perform. Your Stud Buddie, Woody Guthrie." See, he was amazing. Woody and Stetson began -- of course, became fast friends. And In 1951, Woody would come to stay with Stetson at Beluthahatchee. He had -- by this time, he had devised -- divorced his wife Marjorie, and he was showing signs of what we now know was Huntington's Korea, but he was just as prolific and creative as ever. While staying at Beluthahatchee, he would write several songs for Stetson's campaign, and this picture is actually Woody at Beluthahatchee. So, he was writing songs for Stetson's campaigns. Stetson was running for Florida State Senate as a Color-Blind Write-in candidate. He didn't win. He was running against George Smathers, who was a proud member of what was known as the Porkchop Gang, and if you're from Florida, or know Florida, the Porkchop Gang is incredibly infamous. And Smathers was a demagogue who used language and innuendo to exploit the intolerances of his audiences, what we might call his base. One of Smather's speeches against Stetson's good friend, the progressive candidate Claude Pepper, is a master piece of cultural sabotage. And this is an actual quote that was used by Smathers. And I've seen it in other places, but Stetson had told me about it. He said about Claude Pepper, and this is to a rally that he was at. ^M00:40:08 "Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law. And he has a sister who was once a Thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage practiced celibacy." ^M00:40:34 [ Laughter ] ^F00:40:36 ^M00:40:37 Yeah. You know, some things never change, I just -- anyway. That was George Smathers. You know, if you don't know Florida politics, you really should read up on it, because it's quite interesting. So, interestingly, one of Woody's campaign songs that he wrote titled Stetson Kennedy, would be recorded in 2000 by Billy Bragg and Wilco. And it's on, I think, Mermaid Avenue number II. So, if you have that CD or anything, go back and listen to Stetson Kennedy. Another one of the songs is Kennedy, he's that man, I'll just read a little chorus of it. As I say, these songs were great, they didn't swing the election, but they were great. This -- Kennedy, He's That Man. "Stetson Kennedy, he's that man, walks and talks across our land. Talking out against the Ku Klux Klan, for every fiery cross and note, I'll get Kennedy 100 votes. And I'll walk him to his office on that morning, yes, I'll walk him -- meet him in his office on that day. I'll write Kennedy in that square box on the sweet election morn, and I'll writer old Smathers Dupont down the drain. I'll melt all your guns and tanks into homes for every Yank. Stetson Kennedy knows my troubles, he's that man. Stetson Kennedy, he's that man, he knows my hopes and prayers and plans. Knows I need a job of work for life from cradle to my grave. From Key West, north to Jacksonville. Stetson Kennedy fills my bill, and I'll walk him to his office on the morning, yes, I'll take him to his office on that day." Woody Guthrie actually would come back to stay at Beluthahatchee in 1952, where he would write a total of 88 songs. And he -- and at the same time, he finished his manuscript for Seeds of Man while he was there. So, Beluthahatchee was designated a Florida landmark in 2003 by The Friends of Libraries USA due to Woody's creativity while he was in Florida. Woody had an a -- now, you have to understand, Stetson was not on his land at that time, I'll tell you about where he was. So, Woody and his girlfriend at the time, his companion at the time, Andike[Phonetic] had come to Beluthahatchee, they were living in the woods. It was very scandalous, because apparently, they were taken to going naked a lot of the times. But, he had an accident with lighter fluid when he was there, and his -- there was -- this was great. I found -- this is the file on record when he went to the emergency room. They had a little fire, you know, when you go in and they have to take information from you, and they never show you what's on file. This was it, "Patent says he plays stringed instruments. The patient is a peculiar, he wears shaggy hair and beard, which he says is to keep the mosquitos away. This couple are drifters, came down here several months ago. Patient is supposed to be a musician, folk music. He has quite a history." ^M00:44:08 [ Laughter ] ^F00:44:10 ^M00:44:11 So, anyway, Woody was down there, and as I said, Stetson was not there, he was in Europe. In 1952, the UNESCO Conference of the U.S. National Commission was meeting in Paris and Geneva. And there was an ad hoc committee that would hear evidence on forced labor and slavery across the world. Stetson had heard that they had concluded there was no forced labor in the United States. He contacted the committee to insist that he had irrefutable evidence of forced labor in Florida. He was referring to the recordings that he had done as a folklorist in the Turpentine camps of the Pan Handle. With testimony by poor Black workers who were kept in virtual slavery by being quartered out in the pinewoods under the eye of a White overseer. And they were paid in script, which meant they could only spend their money at the company store, which was also in the middle of the woods. And they were forever in debt, and those who tried to run away were murdered if caught. And Stetson, actually, this is an aside, he would tell me about when they were doing this recording, he had gotten permission to bring the big recording machine into the woods by saying he was collecting folk songs. And so, as long as the overseer was around, they would be collecting folk songs. And when the overseer went away, he started collecting stories about the life. And he had a lookout there, and -- who would say, "Quick! The man coming, sing a song!" And so, they'd go back to singing songs. But, he collect -- collected quite an amazing amount of material. Similar conditions were found in the migrant labor camps of South Florida's vegetable farms. And so, on November 5, 1952, Stetson Kennedy boarded a plane for Geneva to present this evidence to the UNESCO Committee. He had a one-way ticket and seven dollars to his name, and he wouldn't return for eight years. After the UNESCO conference where he did give testimony, Stetson went behind the Iron Curtain illegally, and this is a funny story. He -- back at that time, he was in West Berlin, and he got on the subway. And when you hit the end of West Berlin and you're going into East Berlin, at the time, they would just tell you, if you don't have papers to go into East Berlin, you've got to get off the subway now, well, he just didn't get off. And so, he comes up in East Berlin, and that's another whole story for another whole day, but it's in the book, and what happened to him behind the Iron Curtain. But, he was hoping to find that Communism was a system of equality and fairness. At this time, of course, everybody was really looking for answers any way they could. And he was crushed to find that the Roma people, the Gypsies of the Soviet Union were just as oppressed as the Blacks of the American South. So, Communism was not the answer either. So, Stetson escaped the Soviet Union, believe it or not. He was in Hungary and Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. And he escaped back to Paris where he was basically put under house arrest by the Paris Jean d'armes, because he was a person without a valid passport. So, he would be let go during the day to have a 24-hour pass, but he had to check himself back into jail at night. It worked out well for him, actually, he was -- he got three squares a day, yeah. It was at this time that Stetson met and became friends with a large community of American ex-patriots, including Richard Wright, who was trying to get him a new passport. But, as you can imagine, the House on American Activities Committee did not look favorably on a man who had been writing for the Soviet TASS. Finally, it was Jean Paul Sartre who pulled strings and got Stetson a passport to return home in February of 1960. Now, when he was overseas, he was not just lying around. While in Europe, Stetson had been published in 20 different languages. And so, these are just some of the book covers -- books that he was writing when he was there. And when he came back, he again stared his civil rights and labor advocacy immediately. And this is a letter he received from Martin Luther King in 1965 thanking him for his work. So, my original dissertation was written in 1992, and my research really revolved on Stetson's life up until this time, the 1960s. But, Stetson's life continued to revolve around cultural advocacy. And you know, he lived another 50 years, so it's a very full life. During the 1970s and 80s, this was when I knew Stetson, he was working with the Seminole Tribe on traditional cultural issues. This is him with Jim Billy who's still the, again, the tribal head. He also worked with Alan Lomax on several projects, and reacquainted with him in his later years. This is from 1999, I think that's when Alan actually came up to be a living legend. In his later years, they, you know, connected again, and up until Lomax's death they were fast friends. ^M00:50:07 He also caught up with Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and here they are at Pete Seeger's 90th birthday party in Madison Square Garden backstage. And they became, of course, great friends again. And he worked with Arlo Guthrie to get Woody's unpublished songs published. Now, before I retired and moved back to Florida, this picture's from 2009, I began working with Stetson and the Stetson Kennedy Foundation on several issues. And this is one of my favorite photos, it's of course, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Arlo Guthrie, and Stetson at a festival that we held to raise money to open a Writers Residency at Beluthahatchee. Stetson was also great friends with MaVynee Betsch. Has anybody heard of MaVynee Betsch, the Beach Lady? Yeah, she was a force of nature, and she and Stetson were fast, fast friends. MaVynee Betsch is the great-granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, who was the very first Black millionaire from Jacksonville. He had the African-American life insurance company. And back then, even the ocean was segregated, and so, Abraham Lincoln Lewis bought 200 acres on Amelia Island, which is my home now. And he started American Beach which was advertised as the, really the first African-American resort and vacation community in Florida. And MaVynee was an opera singer at one time, she left that and came down back to American Beach. When I met her -- I met her a couple of times. She had dreadlocks that were like, seven feet long, literally, a dreadlock that went down to her ankles, and she's got it piled here. She was doing advocacy work for -- she got a dune system on the National Historic Register, the largest dune system in Florida called Nana. And she was just an amazing woman, and go any of you know Jeanetta Cole? >> Yeah. >> Peggy Bulger: Okay. Well, when I was getting ready -- so, I knew MaVynee and I knew Jeanetta, because I'd worked with Jeanetta when she was the president of Spellman College. And then, she became the director of the Smithsonian's Museum of African Art. And so, we were having lunch, and I said, well, I'm going to be retiring, you know, soon. And she says, "Oh, are you going to stay up here?" And I said, well, no, I'm moving to Florida. And she says, "Oh, Florida, where are you moving to?" And I said, well, it's a little island, you probably never heard of it. And she says, "What island?" And I said, Amelia Island. She put down her fork, and she says, "My great-grandfather Abraham Lincoln Lewis founded American Beach, and MaVynee is my sister. >> Oh! >> Peggy Bulger: And I could see the family resemblance, there's like the yen and the yang. I mean, Jeanetta always perfectly coiffed, yeah, but anyway, it was just great. So, these two women forceful in their own areas, and still have a connection with American Beach. So, Stetson of course, worked with MaVynee on several environmental issues. And in his last decade, Stetson was featured in several exhibits on the Klan, and on Florida's, I guess, Civil Rights history and labor history. And he worked with the NAACP, the Center for Democratic Renewal, the Southern Regional Counsel, Klan Watch, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was a consultant, and also donated many objects to museums and archives. And I believe that this Klan robe he donated to the new African American Museum here on the mall. ^M00:54:20 ^M00:54:23 Beluthahatchee was dedicated a literary landmark for the second time in 2014, and this time for Stetson's writing. And these are just photos of Stetson at Beluthahatchee in his last years, and he continued to be active. This is Beluthahatchee Lake, and he has a statue of blue heron there. He had a pet blue heron he loved for many years. At the age of 90, Stetson married for the seventh time. On November 24, 2006 to Sandra Parks, who is an activist from St. Augustine. And then, they continued to fight for civil rights, labor struggles, and environmental conservation. And these are just the last photos I have of Stetson. This is in D.C. of course, at a demonstration, at an anti-Klan demonstration. Also, back in Florida, he was protesting public supermarkets, because they wouldn't support a once cent increase in the price of tomatoes, so tomato pickers could get health insurance. So, he was very active in helping them. I love this, out with his walker, and has a sign, yes! And this is with NAACP workers. This tree Stetson saved from developers, they were going to tear it down for development, and it's now a Heritage tree. And then, in 2005, Stetson was inducted to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. And here he is with the -- our governor at the time was Jeb Bush. And this is him with Lawton Childs, the Progressive politician from Florida, had that same dedication. And of course, he was a speech -- featured speaker here at the Library of Congress in 2005, and that's all videotaped. And as I was talking to somebody before, most of his papers are at the PK Yonge collection at the University of Florida. And they're also at the Schaumburg Collection in New York, and the Georgia State University Labor archives. and of course, Florida Archives from the WPA collections is up online here. And if you haven't gotten in to it, I recommend it. August 27,2011, Stetson Kennedy died. It was just before his 95th birthday, and there was a huge celebration in honor of his life. And this is of course, Beluthahatchee Lake, and his daughter is spreading his ashes on the lake. And, although it was sad, I'm kind of glad Stetson has not been alive for the past several years in terms of what's happening with our country. And I just have to -- I have to put that in, but I won't get political. And that's it. ^M00:57:34 [ Applause ] ^F00:57:44 ^M00:57:45 I could probably take a few questions, if anybody's got any questions? Yes? >> Thank you so much, Peggy. What an incredible life, and can't wait to read your book. My question is, what started this young man from a privileged background? What got him thinking against the grain, and in particular, perhaps going into folk lore. I mean, not only is there the world view, but I'm astonished at this young kid going out and doing serious field work. So, that's actually a couple different questions that come up [inaudible]. >> Peggy Bugler" Yeah. Well, there were two things that he mentions to me over and over again in the interviews I did with him. One was that they had a Black maid when he was growing up. And he had -- when he was a very young boy, he had seen her being beat up by a, I think it was a trolley car operator, because she didn't have the fare, and he was just horrified as a young boy. But, I think what really started him was that he had to go into these neighborhoods to get the dollar a week. And he would hear stories, first of all, about why they don't have the dollar. But, also stories that would just evolve from there, both Black and White, and realize that -- you know, that got him totally out of his bailiwick into, you know, the kind of poverty that was just all around, but nobody was recognizing it. And then, just because he started realizing that he was hearing words he'd never heard of before. And he would make notes of them, and that just started then jokes. He would, you know, do jokes, and so, that was really the start of his education. He would be like 15 years old when he really kind of, got into it. And then, of course, when he went away to college, then the rest was history. Yeah. Yeah? >> What was the callous theme to actually go undercover? Was there an incident, or was it just [inaudible]? >> Peggy Bulger: What's that? >> Was it one incident that caused him to do -- it was a very profound act to go undercover like that? ^M01:00:04 >> Peggy Bulger: Well, his uncle was named John Perkins, he was dead at the time, and his uncle was a Klan member when he was alive. And so, Stetson, you know, throughout his life was really dedicated to civil rights issues. And he couldn't go in the army, and I think he felt very bad about not being able to -- well, this -- wait, let me go back. Like I said, he was really trying to figure out what is the answer? It wasn't like democracy was, you know, totally had a lock on it. He was looking at Communism, he was looking -- some -- how can we alleviate the poverty? Because in Florida at the time, and living through The Depression. And then when he went down to Key West, you know, and he saw that, you know, people are resilient. He decided that the hate groups were Fascists. And Fascism was the thing that we really have to fight. And so, you can fight the Nazis in Germany, or you can fight them here. And that's what he decided, especially since, you know, the governor of Georgia was a member. Most of the policemen were members, and so, the people in power were hiding under the hoods, but they were Fascists. And so, that's what made him do it. >> I was curious about how his family reconciled his difference? Did he maintain a good relationship with parents and siblings, or were they just like, "You are too out there?" >> Peggy Bulger: No. Over the years -- at the very end of his life, he had a fairly okay relationship with his younger sister. But, his parents they -- he could never keep his mouth shut. You know, if -- you know how -- I don't know about you, but when I go to a family, you know, Thanksgiving, I just kind of don't talk about religion and politics. Just don't talk about it, you know, because it is, you know, you're in a family where -- he was just so out there. And they were so embarrassed by him, because they were, you know, society. They were southern society, yeah. >> Not to take anything at all away from this great man, but it -- there have been suggestions in recent years that to some extent, he may have embellished the degree to -- >> Peggy Bulger: You're talking about Steven Dubner Freakanomics, yeah. >> [inaudible] >> Yeah. That was the saddest -- that was a sad day. Here's Stetson who's in his 90s, who's been working all of his life for -- okay, in my dissertation, Steven Dubner, who's one of the coauthors of Freakanomics. They -- in their original book they did one of the chapters on why is the Klu Klux Klan like an insurance company or something like that? Anyway, they had come down and interviewed Stetson, and Stetson never asked them for a dime. They used his story to make, you know, a kazillion dollars on Freakanomics. Anyway, after the book came out, there is an author if Florida, Ben Green, and who's a historian, who has a long-standing -- I wouldn't say feud. But, a long-standing animosity with Stetson. And he contacted them and said, "Oh, you know Stetson didn't do all that. He --" well, and in fact, he was very -- almost to the point of libeling Stetson. So, I get a call from Dubner, and he wanted my dissertations, so he could read what I had written. So, I gave it -- you know, I told him where he could get it. And I -- and he asked me about it, and I said, no, in my dissertation even -- and you know, and Stetson, when he was talking to me, he said, "You know, I was undercover with another man who never wanted to be -- he was smart. He never wanted to be identified, so, be didn't want anything, no mention of him at all." But, I said, he -- we're calling him, you know, John Doe. But, there was another man who was also working with Stetson and doing this work. But, somehow that got blown complete -- and here's my own -- my own theory is that, the authors of Freakanomics wanted to sell more books, so they wrote this article in the New York Times Magazine called Hoodwinked. In which they, you know, took everything that Ben Green had said, and you know, said, "Oh", you know, "He's made this up." Well, they used my dissertation as a citation. And I was furious, so I wrote to the New York Times Magazine, and do did Studs Terkel. And so, I'm very happy that my letter, and Studs Terkel's letter are right there together. But, I said, where is the smoking gun? You know, Dubner -- he admitted to me, never read my dissertation, all he did was look at the one citation. And he's writing like he knows what he's talking about, he doesn't. And first of all, if he had gone down and done all this work with Stetson, shouldn't he had found that out right away? I mean, it was no big secret. And the way that Stetson writes, if you can get a copy of I Rode with the Klu Klux Klan, which is his book, you know, the expose. It reads like a Mickey Spillane novel, it's -- you know, and it was like Stetson wanted his audience to be the people who were under the hoods who were thinking about getting under the hoods. He wasn't writing for an academic audience. He wasn't writing for the history books, he was writing something that would capture their imagination, and make them realize, this is not the way to go. You know, this is -- and how crazy this is, you know? This is -- so, it was like a big brouhaha. And unfortunately, it about killed Stetson, I mean, he was so upset, because, you know, he just didn't want to have to go to court and everything like that. But, it kind of -- that's what it was. And I do -- in the book, I get into that, yeah. >> Okay, one more question, we're going to do one question, we're [inaudible]. >> Peggy Bulger: Okay. No? Oh. >> I've heard Stetson tell the story of going down in Key West a number of times, and he always made it very clear, the he shipped a crate of books ahead of him, so that it got there before he did, so he continued his studies. So, the question I have is , do you know why he did drop of school, and do that? >> Peggy Bulger: Yeah, he ran out of money, mm-hmm. It was the Depression, and his family wasn't -- you know, because he was so radicalized, they weren't going to support him. He had one aunt who would send him five-dollars a month back in Key West. And back in that time that was enough to survive on -- with his WPA job, or, you know, racking seaweed. Yeah. That -- good point. Yeah. >> I want to thank Peggy Bulger for a wonderful talk, and for coming. ^M01:07:46 [ Applause ] ^F01:07:48 ^M01:07:49 >> Peggy Bulger: Thank you. Thank you. >> She'll be signing books in the foyer, and there's also a small exhibit over on the side on some of the material on Stetson Kennedy from the American Folklife Center. And thank you so much for coming. And please come back tomorrow, tomorrow we have another event called the American Folklife Centers Archive Challenge. Where we have a group of wonderful musicians who have taken material from our collection, and are going to be performing it. So, here tomorrow at noon. Please come back and join us then, thank you. ^M01:08:25 [ Applause ] ^F01:08:29 ^M01:08:30 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov