"Shortly after attending that Ku Klux Klan parade, Kennedy began to see the truth about the men in hoods and robes. He had thought that the KKK was a club for grown-ups who got to dress up in Halloween costumes year-round until his mother told him that the organization actually kept the folks in “colored town” in line. But his real lesson occurred at the bedside of his family’s African-American housekeeper, whom Klansmen had beaten for the offense of talking back to a white streetcar operator who had shortchanged her. Hearing the woman describe the brutal attack, Kennedy realized that the men behind the masks were bullies who terrorized innocent black people. He began to detest the ingrained racism that infected the world around him and to feel out of step with those who accepted it. “I’ve always felt like an alien in the land of my birth,” he recalled later.]]"