Stetson Kennedy October
5th 1916 – August 27th 2011
Stetson & Woody
story by John (JB) Birney with photography by John Berna
Stetson Kennedy is someone everyone should know. He is a man of action. He is our own local civil rights legend, whose life will be admired and revered for generations. His stories will make your jaw drop and make you question what you have done lately to change the world. He was also a hero to Woody Guthrie (who, according to British social activist and singer-songwriting legend Billy Bragg is “the father of our tradition”). They first met through a “fan letter” that Woody wrote on the jacket cover of Stetson’s book “Palmetto Country” which was given to him by an associate of his friend and Blues music recording archivist Alan Lomax.
I was blessed to spend some time chatting with Stetson recently at his home in Northwest St Johns County called “Beluthahatchee”. The name was created by Stetson’s famous friend; the Columbia educated Zora Neal Hurston (who worked with him on the FDR’s Works Progress Administration Writer’s Project in Florida) which meant a kind of all forgiving Nirvana. A mythical Florida Shangri-la, where all unpleasantness is forgiven and forgotten. No doubt, that’s why Woody Guthrie loved the place so much.
As Stetson tells the story, in the above mentioned book jacket fan mail piece Woody wrote, “Don’t be surprised if I show up on your doorstep someday.” Although they had never met, true to form, one day Stetson got a call from the Greyhound bus station in Jacksonville to come pick Woody up. When he got to the depot, there was a man fast asleep in the middle of the sidewalk with his head on his guitar case. People were walking over and around him and as Stetson woke Woody and asked where his luggage was. Woody pointed to his shirt and revealed that he was wearing five of them. He was wearing his luggage. They were close friends throughout the years and Woody visited Beluthahatchee many times. Stetson says they didn’t have many long deep conversations over the years because they agreed on EVERYTHING.
Woody was hungry for the writings of Stetson which told stories about human hardship in the South. Recently the Woody Guthrie archives in New York uncovered over 80 songs that Woody wrote but never recorded, which tell about his days in Florida and cover the writings of Stetson Kennedy. In the spring of 1953 Woody lived in the bus with a lean-to kitchen and mosquito netting porch at Beluthahatchee which Stetson called his home. It’s in Switzerland in the northwest part of Saint Johns County on CR 13. On my visit I got to gaze at these historic “lost” pages with songs about the area which included wildlife (buzzards, racoons, turtles, snakes and gators), turpentine camps, and the oppressive working conditions of farm workers in labor camps. There is even a song about a day trip to The Alligator Farm in Saint Augustine, although Stetson questioned where Woody would have gotten the money to pay the admission fee. Woody also wrote some campaign songs for Stetson’s write-in candidacy for US Senator when he ran against George Smathers (who the library at Stetson’s alma-mater UF is named for) who had allegedly smeared Stetson’s political hero Claude Pepper in a previous race. Stetson said his campaign was all about “Rights Supremacy”. Some of the other “lost” songs from the archive even touch on Woody’s other kind of wildlife; alcohol and different specific parts of the female anatomy.
Stetson tells a story about his African-American neighbors stopping by to fish at his place (while he was in exile in Europe after exposing the KKK) and finding Woody and his third wife Anneke frolicking stark naked around Beluthahatchee. They asked Stetson upon his return, “What type of people did you have staying at your house while you were away?” Stetson told them it was just Woody Guthrie. This was the early 1950s and it would not be uncommon for FBI helicopters to be circling the grounds at Beluthahatchee on account of either Woody or Stetson’s presence. They were no doubt the troublemakers of their day.
When I interviewed Billy Bragg last March, he was supporting our own local migrant workers by appearing at the Harvest of Hope Festival which was held at the Saint Johns County Fairgrounds. In 1998 Bragg, along with the alt-country band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (from the band 10,000 Maniacs), put out two albums of unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs called Mermaid Avenue I and II. They had the lyrics and created new music including one of the anti-Smathers campaign songs titled “Stetson Kennedy”. Bragg said, “We don’t often find ways to connect with important social issues in the US and I’ve always been interested in the kind of work that Stetson Kennedy has done….. Working with the Woody Guthrie Archive was like a primer for American 20th century history.” (Woody wrote over 2500 songs that were never recorded, kept the tunes in his head and they died with him). Billy Bragg learned about Stetson Kennedy and a lot about the history of the left in America through his access to the archive. A great performer, songwriter and social activist in his own right, Bragg describes himself as just a link in this chain (along with the Clash and Bob Dylan and others) but, if you follow it back all the way, Woody is not another link but a great big copper spike in the ground.
Woody Guthrie travelled the country singing and fighting for the oppressed. He covered Oklahoma, Texas, New York, California, the Pacific Northwest and all points in between, but his connection to Florida is a straight line to Stetson Kennedy, Beluthahatchee and Saint Johns County. Woody completed his autobiography, “Seeds of Man” while staying in Florida. Only Woody’s latter day sidekick and folk singing great Ramblin’ Jack Elliot knows some of the true stories about Woody’s days in the Sunshine State, having made the trip with him numerous times, but Stetson knows many more. Make no mistake; there would be no Woody Guthrie connection to Florida without his hero, our hometown boy, Stetson Kennedy. Remarkably, through the generosity of a collector, Woody’s original copy of Palmetto Country was reunited with its “fan letter” jacket last year and now sits on display in “The Woody Room” at the water’s edge at Beluthahatchee.
Although Stetson often “seasoned” his Writer’s Project interviews with songs (and jokes) and, with friends like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and others, you would think that Stetson was a big music fan. When asked about his favorite song or music, Kennedy replies, “Absolute silence!”
Stetson turns 95 this year and throughout his life people ask him how he got the way he is. He says he never changed and wonders how the world ever got the way it did.
Here are the lyrics to the Woody Guthrie song entitled “Stetson Kennedy” that was recorded by Billy Bragg and Wilco and appears on Mermaid Avenue II. (Look for a box set re-issue with 20 unreleased tracks from the 1998 sessions possibly entitled “All The Way Down Mermaid Avenue” to commemorate Woody’s 100th birthday in 2012.
I done spent my last three cents Mailing my letter to the president
I didn’t make a show, I didn’t make a dent
So I’m swinging over to this independent gent Stetson Kennedy writing his name in
I can’t win out to save my soul Long as Smathers-Dupont’s got me in the hole
Them war profit boys are squawking and balking That’s what’s got me out here walking and talking
Knocking on doors and windows
Wake up and run down election morning
And scribble in Stetson Kennedy
I ain’t the world’s best writer nor the world’s best speller
But when I believe in something I’m the loudest yeller
If we fix it so’s you can’t make money on war
We’ll all forget what we’re killing folks for
We’ll find us a peace job equal and free
Dump Smathers-Dupont in a salty sea
Well, this makes Stetson Kennedy the man for me
He is the man for all of us. Now go change the world. Woody’s music can’t do it alone.