The scars and legacy of racism in America and poverty has ways of bubbling up to the surface in surprising ways. Today that legacy shows up in the story of the life and death of a famous American folklorist, journalist and author, Stetson Kennedy, who died at the age of 94 over the weekend. Kennedy became famous for allegedly infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan as an undercover journalist, then exposing their secrets in a book, “I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan,” which was published in 1954. He spoke with This American Life's Ira Glass about his experience, in 2005.
It was only in recent years, when journalist Ben Green started digging into some of Kennedy’s documents, that questions arose about the validity of Kennedy's claims of going undercover in the KKK. Green joins us to explain the complicated legacy of Stetson Kennedy.
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The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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