Tearing Up the Master’s Narrative: Stetson Kennedy and Oral History

Stetson Kennedy (1916–2011) was one of the premier dissident writers in the United States in the generation before the emergence of the modern civil rights movement. Yet, despite his extensive work in oral history as a former supervisor of the Works Progress Administration unit on folklore, oral history, and social-ethnic studies in Florida, surprisingly little has been written on Kennedy’s oral history methods. This essay connects Stetson Kennedy’s radical politics with his experience interviewing generations of narrators who lived on the margins of the New South. Kennedy’s classic works, such as Palmetto Country, Southern Exposure, and Jim Crow Guide, had deep social impact because they were based on an intellectual approach that privileged the voices of ordinary people.