James Kennedy, mayor and civil rights advocate

James C. Kennedy Sr., 98, a longtime mayor of South Coatesville, who fought discrimination by becoming active in Chester County's civic life, died Thursday, Aug. 11, of an infection at Phoenixville Hospital Hospice.

As a young man in 1938, Mr. Kennedy said, he and others stood outside the Coatesville jail one night to prevent the rumored lynching of a black man by a group of whites, allegedly because the man had kissed a white girl.

No violence occurred, but the spark of activism kindled that night led Mr. Kennedy, then 21, and his friends to found the NAACP of Coatesville. In 1951, Mr. Kennedy became the first African American on the Coatesville Area school board and later was its president.

Over the next several decades, while working at Lukens Steel, Mr. Kennedy sat on the borough council in order to fight local "kangaroo courts" and other forms of prejudice, he told the Inquirer.

He left the council and ran successfully for mayor in the early 1990s, eventually serving five terms. His duties: keeping order in the borough of about 1,300 residents, obtaining grants, declaring snow emergencies, and looking after elderly and low-income residents. He also oversaw the police department and hired the town's first female police officer.

In 2013, he declined to run for a sixth four-year term because, at age 96, he had trouble getting around.

"The walker," he told the Inquirer, "told me it was time to retire."

Mr. Kennedy not only served his own community, he also quietly reached out to other leaders in Chester County, seeking to share his wisdom and advice.

Josh Maxwell, then 26, had just been elected the youngest mayor in Downingtown history in 2009 when Mr. Kennedy tapped him on the shoulder at a public event, Maxwell wrote in an online tribute.

"Do you know who I am?" Maxwell said Mr. Kennedy demanded. "I'm the oldest mayor in the United States, and I think we should get our picture together."

The two pulled up chairs, and Maxwell said he "listened to an amazing man share his life's work and so many incredible experiences with me."

"In so many different ways, he's one of the greatest men I have ever met," Maxwell wrote.

The son of a minister, Mr. Kennedy and his seven siblings grew up in Coatesville during the Great Depression. He scoured the streets for dropped pieces of coal to sell to help support the large family.

In 1933, he experienced racial bias when the white classmates he had studied with through eighth grade entered Gordon Junior High School. Black students had to go to the segregated James Adams School.

"That was all colored. And I didn't like it, but I couldn't do anything about it," he told the Inquirer.

Since that time, his active public life, including his activities as mayor, was aimed at weeding out any kind of racial prejudice against borough residents.

"What I was seeking was equal justice for my people," Mr. Kennedy said. "And I think we've got it."

"It is because of the work of Kennedy ... that African Americans have a true voice in Chester County, a wide range of elected officials in both parties, and no longer have to face the overt racism so common here throughout much of the 20th century," wrote Mike McGann, editor of the Coatesville Times.

Mr. Kennedy attended services at Bernardtown Baptist Church in Coatesville, where he taught for and superintended the Sunday school.

"He was wise, he was compassionate, and he was fun," said daughter Jean E. London. "And he was the greatest father, grandfather, and son" to his own father.

Mr. Kennedy married Ernestine High, and the two had three children. She died in 1985. He then married Nettie R. Kennedy, who died in 2005.

Besides his daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Joan Hubert; a son, James C. Jr.; and 42 grandchildren.

A viewing will be held from noon to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, at Bernardtown Baptist Church, 1208 Youngsburg Rd., Coatesville. Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, at Olivet United Methodist Church, 310 E. Chestnut St., Coatesville. Burial will follow at Church of Christ Cemetery, East Fallowfield Township.

bcook@phillynews.co