Jack Kershaw
John Karl "Jack" Kershaw Kershaw was born on October 12, 1913 in Missouri and grew up in Tennessee. He made a splash in the world in ways few would have expected. His mother and father were Karl and Ethel Norton Kershaw. His father had a degree in geology and civil mining. His mother was born in Wyoming and after her mother's death, her father abandoned his four children. Her uncle took the boys and raised them in Wyoming and Jack's mother and sister were sent to live with an aunt in Tennessee. She was raised in a home of privilege and received a good education, becoming a school teacher. She met and married Karl Kershaw in Missouri, and from this union Jack was born. Karl moved his family to Old Hickory, TN when WWI broke out, and was the engineer in charge of building the DuPont power plant. Mrs. Kershaw returned to the classroom to teach. Jack attended Warner school, MBA where he played football, and attended a military school at Stone Mountain, GA and then Vanderbilt University where he played football while majoring in geology, history and art. When the first pro football team was formed in Nashville in the late 1930's, he was the quarter back playing with such notable local characters as Haynes Noel. This team was dissolved due to the war. Jack was a member of the State of Tennessee Militia as a Calvary member. He was a member of the first Tennessee Arts Commission. His majors of geology, history and art were a simple foundation on which he built a law degree and a law practice that would eventually represent the accused assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., James Earl Ray. He was the first to invite Special Investigator Gary Revel to associate with his office in investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Jack became associated with a group of intellectuals who called themselves the 'Fugitive Poets' of Vanderbilt in the 1920's. This group of students who also were significantly involved in the 'Fellowship of Southern Writers' would go on to make a great impact of how the history of the south would be told. The Fugitive is considered to be one of the most influential publications in the history of American letters. The Fugitives made Vanderbilt a fountainhead of the New Criticism, the dominant mode of textual analysis in English during the first half of the twentieth century. Included in this group among the most notable Fugitives were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, John Crow, Merrill Moore, Donald Davidson, William Ridley Wills, Robert Penn Warren, Andrew Lytle, Cleanth Brooks, and the poet Laura Riding, although not a member was West Tennessean Jesse Hill Ford. Andrew Lytle was a first cousin of Jack's late wife.
Primarily beginning as a group of students these 'Fugitive Poets' became a powerful addition to the literary fabric of America. They published ‘The Fugitive’, one of the most influential publications in the history of American letters. One of Jack’s peers in the group, Robert Penn Warren-United States Poet Laureate and receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for ‘All The King’s Men’. He went on to write over 50 other significant literary works and is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. Among his many achievements was the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
Kersaw continued to paint, sculpt and draw throughout his life. For much of his career, Kershaw kept records of what he made and who bought it; purchasers of his art from 1938-1980 included recording artists Dinah Shore and Grace Creswell, Robert Penn Warren, Tupper Saussy, The City of Nashville, and Prince Alexander of Hohenzollern (who commissioned a portrait). Kershaw exhibited at the Holbrook Museum (University of Georgia at Athens, with Phillip Perkins), Florence State Teachers' College, University of Connecticut (one man exhibition), the University of Kentucky, Yale University, University of Tennessee (one man exhibition), Peabody College, the University of Chicago, McNeese State College, Mercer University, Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala., Kalamazoo College in Michigan, Carlton College in Minnesota, Bridgewater College in Virginia, The Centennial Club of Nashville; the Ray Jordon Gallery, Cohen Memorial and Art Investments Gallery in Nashville; and Avanti Gallery and Caravan House in New York City.
Another of his Fugitive associates, John Crowe Ransom not only was the founding force behind ‘The Fugitives’ but also helped found the school of literary criticism, ‘New Criticism’. The 1941 volume of essays ‘The New Criticism’ began the American literary thought of criticism based on the text of literature rather than extraneous information. One of his works, a collection of essays first published in the Kenyon Review was subsequently published in 1972. He served as a Senior Fellow of the Kenyon School of English and subsequently as a Senior Fellow of the Indiana School of Letters.
The American poet, essayist and social commentator John Orley Allen Tate was another friend and associate of Jack Kershaw.
The poet/psychiatrist Merrill Moore was also a peer of Jack Kershaw. Merrill the poet was a prolific sonnet writer as well as a bit of an activist psychiatrist during WWII. He had the distinction also of being, for a short period of time, the medical doctor caring for Chiang Kai-Shek, the Nationalist Chinese Supremo, and Generalissimo.
Donald Davidson, poet and historian, was no less remarkable than any of the other friends and associates of Jack Kershaw. He would not only write poetry and prose but also write one of the most influential textbooks for English courses in American colleges, American Composition and Rhetoric.
Laura Riding was one of the few ‘Fugitives’ not a peer or colleague from Vanderbilt. She gained her status through her association with Allen Tate. Nonetheless her poetry, much of it free verse, made its distinctive mark in the ‘The Fugitive’ publication.
The novelist, poet and journalist William Ridley Wills was another ‘Fugitive’ that demands recognition for being in that class of intellectuals along with Jack Kershaw. The novels ‘Hoax’ and ‘Harvey Landrum’stand alongside his poetry and work as a journalist.
Another ‘Fugitive’ Cleanth Brooks revolutionized the teaching of poetry in America with the publication of his ‘The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry’. Besides being most prominent in ‘New Criticism’ he also was the driving force behind the structure and doctrine of ‘Formalist Criticism - the interior life of a poem’. Among his other most influential textbooks were: An Approach to Literature, Understanding Poetry, Understanding Fiction, Modern Rhetoric and Understanding Drama.
American novelist, dramatist, essayist and professor of literature Andrew Lytle was not only a friend and associate of Jack Kershaw via ‘The Fugitives’ but he was also the first cousin of Jack’s wife, Mary Noel. On a side note my daughter Mary was named Mary Noel Revel due to the support and encouragement I received from Mary Noel-Kershaw during the years I worked with her and Jack in the 1970s. ‘The Velvet Horn’ is considered one of Lytle’s best works but his biography of General Nathan Bedford Forrest: ‘Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company’ and his ‘A Wake for the Living’ was also important works of American Literature.
There are other ‘Fugitives’ who most certainly deserve recognition but this writing is more about the man and the legend, Jack Kershaw. He was a leader as shown by his role of quarterback in one of the first professional football teams in our nation formed in Nashville Tennessee in the late 1930s. He later became a publisher and published the book, ‘The Stringbean Murders’ about the killing of Stringbean (David Akeman) and Stringbean’s wife Estelle. I knew Jack well and can assure you he was as much an artist as anything else, of course a sculptor as well and not only a lawyer and lecturer juxtapositionally built many homes in the extended Nashville Tennessee area. A complex man, being a farmer and was known in the intellectual circle as being a southern historian and lecturer. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in the early 1930's. I guess the one classification that is most appropriate for Jack is that he was truly a renaissance man, non conforming in style, dress and flourishing with magic to some extent as he persued his endeavors with relish and inspired focus and concentration. Jack was one of those unforgettable characters portrayed in the Readers Digest Articles. A gold plated eccentric. His most famous client was the late James Earl Ray. In his latter years he became a bit of a practical jokester, his antics in the court room by such 'co-conspirators' as the late Dave and J.W. Rutherford, Dan Garfincle, Sam Wallace and Judge Zuccarella are legendary. His most notable art piece is that of General Nathan Bedford Forrest Horse and Rider, located on I-65 South just north of Brentwood, and Joan of Arc - In The Flames, a two story statue depicting her death, burning at the stake. Jack was a co-founder of the League of the South; member of the (SCV) Sons of Confederate Veterans; M.O.S.B. the officer corps of the SCV; member Joe Johnston Camp 28 SCV. He was an heir of Admiral Kershaw CSA of South Carolina. During those latter years his close friends were Ryan and Terry Reeves of Old Hickory, Frank Ritter, Ross Massey, Wes Shofner, Henry Hood and Sir William Dorris.
Kershaw has two 2nd cousins, Mike Jamison of Los Angeles, CA and Debra Pronto of Indianapolis, IN. His works of art have received little attention but deserve to be recognized as the great works of abstract and the surreal paintings, sculptures and statues that they are. His statues of General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joan of Arc are absolutely stunning and giants in their fields. He led the way in helping many understand how the US Government had perpetrated a fraud on the American people with the House Select Committee on Assassinations. As all insightful students of government committees know now, the HSCA was not interested in investigating the assassinations of JFK and MLK for the purpose of finding the real killers but only for the purpose of continuing the cover-up of the actual crimes. Jack was misunderstood by many, he was not only a Renaissance Man but a prince of a fellow and loved people regardless of their race, creed or color.
