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Kennedy was born into an old family of Jacksonville's high society in 1916. As a teenager he began collecting Cracker and African American folksay material while he was collecting ''dollar down and dollar a week'' accounts for his father, a furniture merchant. After high school, Kennedy enrolled at the University of Florida, where he took a creative writing course taught by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. But in 1937, he dropped out to join the WPA Florida Writers' Project, an arm of the federal government's Work Progress Administration. At age 21, Kennedy found himself in charge of the project's folklore effort. In this role he served as the supervisor of Zora Neale Hurston, who joined him on numerous field trips. Infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world. Fled the country for France when his home was firebombed by enemies. After returning to the U.S. in 1956, Kennedy stayed active crusading for human rights, fighting the Jim Crow laws and helping equality take hold in the south. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2005. Kennedy later died on August 27, 2011 at Baptist Medical Center South in Jacksonville.