Jack Kershaw

John Karl Kershaw (October 12, 1913 – September 7, 2010) was an American attorney best known for challenging the official account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, claiming that his client James Earl Ray was an unwitting participant in a ploy devised by a mystery man named Raul to kill the civil rights leader.

Kershaw was also a member of The General Joseph E. Johnston Camp 28 Sons of Confederate Veterans and a Southern secessionist and segregationist who helped found the League of the South. In 1998, Kershaw sculpted a Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue that has drawn wide criticism and mockery by national media.

Early life Kershaw was born on October 12, 1913, in Missouri. He moved to the Old Hickory section of Nashville, Tennessee with his family in his youth. He attended Vanderbilt University, where he played on the school football team and graduated with a degree in geology. The Nathan Bedford Forrest Equestrian Statue project was sponsored by the Southern League, the Mary Noel Kershaw Foundation, and all interested chapters of Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The Nathan Bedford Statue has been widely mocked by national media and local political leaders have tried to hide it. The 25-foot-high Kershaw justified the memorial by saying, "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery". Kershaw also created a similarly large statue of Joan of Arc. She predeceased him in 1989, and she was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. it "funds firearms self-defense training for the League of the South."

Kershaw died at age 96 on September 7, 2010, in Nashville. He left no other immediate survivors.