Pastor’s fight against KKK now a film that may help
ownership of the old theater building upon Kennedy for $1,000.
But there was a twist. Under the agreement, John Howard, who owned The Redneck Shop, would be allowed to stay and run his store as long as he lived.
Howard abandoned the store years ago, ignoring maintenance. Duct work and piping were ripped from the walls. He died in 2017, giving Kennedy complete control over the building.
Kennedy estimates it needs at least $500,000 in repairs that must be done carefully because of the theater’s age and historic location. That seems impossible for the minister whose New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church congregation meets in a converted gun store several miles west of Laurens.
But a movie may provide a Hollywood ending.
The story of the unlikely friendship between Kennedy and Burden has been made into a film called “Burden,” scheduled for national release Feb. 28. Starring actor Forest Whitaker as Kennedy, it was shown at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
101 Studios, which distributed it, has promised Kennedy it’ll help repair and reopen the theater. They have created a website at www.rehabhate.com/ to accept donations and tell more about the project.
“The South cannot rid itself of its past. But we could rid ourselves of the Redneck Shop,“Kennedy said.
The studio is getting companies to donate materials and time and is selling commemorative bricks that can be placed at the theater.
The movie’s director, Andrew Heckler, first entered The Redneck Shop in the late 1990s after reading a short article about Kennedy’s fight. He knew it had to be a movie and finished the screenplay in 2001, finally getting the green light from 101 Studios to make the film a few years ago.
“I knew this story would mean something to people. Three people in the middle of nowhere South Carolina did something that would be meaningful to all people,” Heckler said. “There is a pathway for fighting hate. It’s not easy. It’s love, faith and not giving up.”
Kennedy knows about not giving up. He protested when a South Carolina county refused to observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and he helped lobby to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome. In his church office, he keeps a postersize photo of a lynched black man swinging at the end of a rope. It is his great uncle, killed more than 100 years ago by a white mob in Laurens County.
Kennedy also has a photo of white people 15 years ago in the back of the theater, wearing uniforms with a Nazi swastika and raising their arms and hands in a white power salute.
“Racism is a strange kind of organism. It is systemic. And it probably will not go away in our lifetimes,” Kennedy said.
Burden and Kennedy remain friends, though not as close as they once were. Burden got married, turned his life around and now drives a truck across the country.
“When I changed my lifestyle, I buried that guy,” Burden said of his racist past.
Burden cautiously shares his story with those he thinks need to know that change is possible.
The movie named after him is a way to do that on a larger scale.
“I’m willing to go through this again,“Burden said. “Am I happy about it? Some days yes, some days no.”
Kennedy recently gave a tour of the theater to a few visiting reporters. Through the soft winter afternoon sunlight, faded two-story paintings of Nazi and U.S. flags can still be seen on a wall. A Confederate flag remains on the theater marquee.
The images are deteriorating, but they linger.
“Racism and hatred, they are both destructive and they have no future,” Kennedy said. “But love, forgiveness and mercy will always have a future because they are constructive.”