John Karl Kershaw was an American attorney best known for challenging the official account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
17 Facts About Jack Kershaw
1.
2.
In 1998, Jack Kershaw sculpted a Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue that has drawn wide criticism and mockery by national media.
3.
Jack Kershaw moved to the Old Hickory section of Nashville, Tennessee with his family in his youth.
4.
Jack Kershaw attended Vanderbilt University, where he played on the school football team and graduated with a degree in geology.
5.
Ray claimed that he had been coerced into entering a plea, and Jack Kershaw helped his client push the claim that Ray was not responsible for the shooting, which was said to have been the result of a conspiracy of an otherwise unidentified man named "Raul" whom Ray had met in Montreal.
6.
Ray was one of a group of five inmates who escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in June 1977, which Jack Kershaw claimed was additional proof that Ray had been involved in a conspiracy that had provided him with the outside assistance he would have needed to break out of jail.
7.
Jack Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy.
Related searches
Martin Luther 8.
Ray fired Jack Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview, and hired conspiracy theorist Mark Lane to provide him with legal representation.
9.
In 1994, Jack Kershaw was one of the founders of the League of the South, a group that supports Southern secession.
10.
Jack Kershaw was a past chairman of the League's Cultural and Educational Foundation.
11.
Jack Kershaw was previously active in the Nashville chapter of the White Citizens' Council and the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government, both segregationist groups.
12.
Jack Kershaw sculpted the Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue, an equestrian monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate Army general and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which was unveiled to the public in July 1998.
13.
Jack Kershaw justified the memorial by saying, "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery".
14.
Jack Kershaw created a similarly large statue of Joan of Arc.
15.
Jack Kershaw married Mary Noel, a Vanderbilt graduate and attorney whose ancestors were the founders of the Downtown Presbyterian Church.
16.
Jack Kershaw predeceased him in 1989, and she was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery.
17.
Jack Kershaw died at age 96 on September 7,2010, in Nashville.