About
For over five decades, Janie Sykes-Kennedy and her husband, Dr. James Scott Kennedy, used media and poetic interpretation to share the Black Experience and promote cross-cultural understanding throughout the U.S. and around the world. Through their unique work and status, Janie and Scott were friends with many notables–-African chiefs, presidents, prime ministers, congressmen, governors, mayors, political activists, intellectuals, business pioneers, philanthropists, spiritual leaders, cultural elite and celebrities. They became known as…
The "Black Kennedys"
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At a time of great cultural disruption, Janie’s expertise and historical perspective on the Black Experience is more important than ever.
From the small town of Columbia, North Carolina, Janie grew up during segregation which laid the foundation for her views on the Black Experience. Her father was British and Irish but he considered himself “Colored” because he had a drop of Black blood going back generations (even though he looked White). That allowed him to legally marry Janie’s mother, who was a brown-skinned mix of African American and Native American. The youngest of eight, Janie’s first job at eight years old was playing with and reading to a White family’s children. Although Janie was light-skinned, she still experienced discrimination, and would sometimes overhear her parents talking about lynchings. One of her greatest influences early on was her teacher, Ms. Jones, who had pictures of notable Blacks around the classroom to instill pride in the children. She put on all the plays at the church and school, and Janie was in each one. Janie also won multiple speaking awards and saw every movie that played on the town’s big screen. She felt she belonged on the stage. When she received her driver’s license at 16 years old, she was hired as Ms. Jones’ driver. Whenever an outstanding Black was speaking nearby such as Dr. Ralph Bunche at A&T College, they drove to be there. One time, her driving skills saved her when a group of rowdy White teenage boys were chasing her in their car for over 40 miles from Norfolk, VA. She was able to escape in Elizabeth City because she knew the local roads near her sister’s home. In 1953, Janie went to North Carolina College (NCC) where she became a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and was Homecoming Queen. Her boyfriend at NCC was Charles “Tex” Harrison (who went on to play and coach for the Harlem Globetrotters for six decades). Another good friend and classmate was Sam Jones (who became a five-time NBA All-Star). She then transferred to Howard University, earning a BA in Economics and Accounting in 1957. Notable professors (and later friends) included Dr. Sterling A. Brown (acclaimed poet and critic) and Prof. H. Naylor Fitzhugh (known as the “Dean of Black Business”). Her commencement speaker was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
After college, Janie moved to New York and was immediately in the mix of high society and the arts. In 1957, she started her career as the manager at Raymond & Raymond Art Gallery at 54 East 53rd Street which boasted Park Avenue clientele such as Marlene Dietrich and Doris Day. She met her husband, Dr. James Scott Kennedy (“Scott”), through a friend at Jocks in Harlem. Fourteen years her senior, he already had a Ph.D. from New York University and was an acclaimed professor at Long Island University. Called “Mr. Speech,” he was a voice and speech coach to celebrities, including tennis great Althea Gibson who sang two of his songs on The Ed Sullivan Show. When Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, she sought advice from Scott on how to raise money to stage it on Broadway. In 1958, Scott and Janie created the Scott Kennedy Players. Located at 1151 Broadway, it was one of the first multicultural repertory theatre companies in New York. They performed original plays and poetic interpretations written by Scott, as well as African American poets such as friends, Langston Hughes and Dr. Sterling A. Brown. Scott was also asked by the head of IBM to offer Leadership and Communication Training to executives, becoming a pioneer in this new field of Executive Leadership Training. In 1959, Scott became a professor in the Speech & Theatre Department at Brooklyn College. Neighbors and friends in Brooklyn included Prof. Hugh H. Smythe (who became ambassador to Syria and then Malta), Dr. Mabel Smythe (who became ambassador to Cameroon and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea), Mercedes Walker (sister of poet Margaret Walker), and Prof. John Hope Franklin (acclaimed historian who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom). Together, Scott and Janie delivered over a thousand lecture-performances at venues such as City Center and Carnegie Hall, as well as at colleges, libraries and churches across the U.S. in order to reach African American and mixed audience.
Although her college training was in business, Janie dove into her first love of the arts after meeting Scott. She did professional studies with the Lee Strasberg Actors Studio and the Herbert Berghof Studio. Music was another love. Scott wrote scores of songs for her when they met. Her brother, Robert “Bobby” Sykes, was a singer with The Ink Spots. With a beautiful voice herself, Janie took voice lessons from Leola Carter in the CBS building on 54th and Broadway, where the Ed Sullivan Theater is now. She had her lessons alongside the 18-year-old Aretha Franklin. Atlantic Records would send their artists to Ms. Carter for polishing. While they were waiting for their teacher, Janie and Aretha would chat about everyday life. In 1960, Janie founded ID: Inner Dignity in Brooklyn, and led a free learning program focused on promoting self-esteem in low-income, inner city girls. The philosophy was “dignity, respect and beauty come from the inside by knowing who you are.” With a deep belief in justice and equality, Scott advised many of the civil rights organizations such as The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He was a co-chairman of The National Core Community Relations Advisory Council for Brooklyn, organized Youth In Action in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and was involved in community uplift with early political leaders like Shirley Chisholm. He advised Barbara Ann Teer as she was seeking to create the National Black Theatre in Harlem.
Scott’s mother, Cara Atkins Kennedy, had a deep love for Africa and that influenced every one of her six children. Scott’s brother, Dr. Joseph C. Kennedy, worked with Sargent Shriver helping to set up the Peace Corps in Africa. He was deputy director for Africa, director in Sierra Leone, and regional director for East Asia and the Pacific Region, and then later co-founder and International Director of Africare. In the early 1960s, Scott’s sister, Mary Kennedy Carter, built schools in Uganda as part of Columbia University’s Teachers for East Africa and spent time in Ethiopia traveling with their mother, Cara. From 1966 through 1969, Scott and Janie lived in Africa with their three children (the youngest born there), working at the University of Ghana. They performed with the Ghana Drama Studio, gave talks for various groups and did original cultural research. Janie studied for her MA in African Culture and Theatre at the University of Ghana. They also produced for the 1966 First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, participating along with other notables such as Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey. In 1969, they were invited by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to perform and participate in the First Pan African Cultural Festival in Algiers, Algeria. Blacks who were visiting West Africa would often come to see Scott and Janie. They travelled back from Africa to England. Then, for the journey to New York, boarded the QE2 maiden Atlantic crossing in 1969 and dined and became friends with philanthropists Elizabeth and Daniel D. Brockman, philanthropist Huntington Hartford (heir to the A&P supermarket fortune), and British conductor Leopold Stokowski.
Back in the United States, Scott founded the first African American Theatre Studies program at Brooklyn College as Janie taught and performed while raising their three children. In 1971, Janie was an instructor of acting and theater, and delivered a lecture-performance series at The College of Old Westbury. That same year, Scott’s nephew, actor and radio personality Leon Isaac Kennedy, married Jayne Harrison who had been crowned Miss Ohio USA. Leon’s best friend, Smokey Robinson, was the best man. Janie and Jayne Kennedy not only shared similar names but were kindred spirits with a mix of beauty, kindness, talent and brains. In 1972, Janie was the Title I Coordinator and Creative Director for the State University of New York. She developed a pilot program for Learning Through The Arts designed to see if inner city children would learn to read better if teachers utilized the different art forms in teaching. The day the program ended, Janie almost died of an ectopic pregnancy. She collapsed and had a miscarriage. To recover, she got into holistic health–juicing wheat grass, making her own yogurt, and practicing yoga and meditation. In 1973, Scott’s book, In Search of African Theatre, was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. It was the first book ever written on African Theatre in the Western world. Right around that time, Janie was walking down the street in Queens wearing African clothing (what she was used to wearing) and a young Black man yelled out, “Why are you wearing African clothing? You’re not Black!” He was apparently looking at her light skin and making a judgment. Janie didn’t respond but remembered thinking, “Black is not a color but an experience based on color” –a statement her and Scott would often use. The young man had no idea about the depth of her knowledge on the Black Experience.
In 1973, as Fulbright Scholars, Janie and Scott were invited by Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to introduce new concepts of people–African American and African–to the continent through media, the arts and academia. Based out of Flinders University in Adelaide, they worked in various parts of the country. Using lectures, performances, courses and multimedia experiences, they helped White Australians to better understand the African American and African experience, including doing radio for the Outback at Adelaide University as another way of reaching the Aboriginal people. It was at the forefront of what is now known as a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) initiative. They also taught at the Institute of Technology where the Prime Minister had a two-year leadership training program for select Aborigines from every section of the continent. Those students became leaders within their communities. The Kennedys were the first African American family to live on the continent of Australia. Their presence inspired the first land rights march by the Aborigines in that region. The Jackson Five came to Australia during this time to perform (as the first Black group to tour the continent) and the Kennedys spent time with the family. They also produced three plays and performed for the Papau, New Guinea Independence Arts Festival.
Janie and Scott were friends and advisors to many notable people in the African American community. In the mid-1970s, after returning from Australia, they began spending a lot of time with Muhammad Ali at his Deer Lake training camp in Pennsylvania and the Concord Resort Hotel in the Catskills. Scott and Ali would intently walk and talk on the training grounds and they would watch Ali’s sparring matches with other notables like Joe Louis and his wife Martha. Civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory was usually offering health advice and making shakes. Janie even helped Ali babysit his infant daughter Hana in 1976 while his wife Veronica went to Manhattan to buy post-pregnancy clothes. Janie and Ali talked and shared poetry, and Ali expressed interest in Janie and Scott helping him find a theatre in Manhattan to purchase. Whenever Ali had a fight and they were in town, they attended. They were at Yankee Stadium for the Ali-Norton III title fight and Madison Square Garden for the Earnie Shavers fight. In 1978, when Betty Shabazz found out they were going up to the training camp, she asked Janie to talk with Scott about helping her mend the relationship with Ali. One of her deepest regrets was the split between her husband Malcolm X, who had been assassinated, and Ali. Scott planned a trip to Deer Lake and took Betty for the historic meeting. The entire family was there and watched as she and Ali reunited.
In 1980, Janie received a MS from the Graduate School of Journalism-–Columbia University and became an independent consultant focused on public relations, advertising and events. She had also studied writing at the New School for Social Research under Don Wolf and screenwriting at Columbia with Samson Raphaelson, the writer of the first talking movie, The Jazz Singer. In 1982, she joined Muhammad Ali on his exhibition tour to the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi. He had exhibition bouts against American heavyweight Jimmy Ellis and German boxer Reiner Hartmann. It was unusual for a female journalist to be part of the entourage at that time. Her nephew, Leon Isaac Kennedy, was also a key part of the tour, and she spent time with Lonnie Williams (who would marry Ali in 1986). That same year, Janie was on the African American National Advisory Committee for the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. She produced and directed the main event for the African American Pavilion and booked a curated set of notables which included Alex Haley, her niece Jayne Kennedy, Wintley Phipps, Xernona Clayton, and others. Janie also performed three pieces: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Negro Mother,” and “Every Man Is My Brother.” Around this time, Scott was a professor at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus brought in by Perry Knight, a close friend and head of the Black Studies Institute.
As President of Sykes-Kennedy & Associates, Inc., Janie produced marketing materials, articles and books as a consultant to corporations, organizations and individuals. She was hired to write The Little Black Book for Schenley Affiliated Brands. She reformatted and branded the book, EXCEL: Excellence in Black Organizations and Black Achievers, which grew to one million in print. She advised the Booker T. Washington Foundation on major event planning and ghost wrote a monthly column in Dollars & Sense Magazine on economic development for the Foundation’s president Charles T. Williams. Mr. Williams helped to establish the Jackie Robinson Foundation, along with his sister Rachel Robinson. In 1983, Janie consulted on the planning of an historical Booker T. Washington Foundation Dinner in Washington, DC. with 1,000 in attendance honoring 200 Black Mayors and others such as Percy Sutton and Earl Graves. In 1986, Janie contributed to Theatre Companies of the World: USA, Western Europe. Janie also was a trusted advisor to Val Washington, a confidant and political strategist for President Dwight D. Eisenhower; John H. Sengstacke, Publisher of the Chicago Defender and other Black newspapers; and Elizabeth Brockman, a pianist and philanthropist whom she had met on the QE2 in 1969 (the Brockmans were integral in efforts to save Carnegie Hall). In addition to traveling frequently between New York, Chicago, and Washington, Janie spent a lot of time in Atlanta due to her close working relationship and friendship with Jesse Hill, Jr., civil rights activist and longtime president of Atlanta Life Insurance Company; and real estate mogul Herman J. Russell.
In 1987, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Commerce invited Janie as one of fourteen delegates to go on the first trade mission of American women entrepreneurs to the People’s Republic of China. She secured a contract with the China Building Technology Development Center (equivalent to HUD) and, for five years, was the worldwide distributor of the journal, Building in China—the first publication (journal) on the building industry in China. In 1992, she performed and lectured at the United States International University (U.S.I.U.) in Nairobi, Kenya. Janie and Scott worked with the Now Africa Theatre Company and performed compilations pieces: Rivers of The Black Man and The Poetic Life of Langston Hughes. Scott had taught at U.S.I.U. for many years during the summers and his sister, Dr. Lillian Kennedy Beam, was for 18 years a visionary builder and former Vice Chancellor of the university. In 1996, Janie and her daughter, Teresa Kay-Aba Kennedy (an executive at MTV Networks at the time), consulted on the development of the Cote d’Ivoire Music Festival in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Janie was widely known as an expert in marketing and for her commitment to highlighting excellence in the African American community. She was a frequent guest at formal events like the Congressional Black Caucus Gala in D.C., the Jackie Robinson Foundation’s Robie Awards Dinner in New York, and The King Center’s Salute to Greatness Awards Gala in Atlanta. In the late 1990s through early 2000s, Janie paused her business and social activities to take care of Scott who had prostate cancer and then Alzheimer’s disease. During the early stages of his dementia, Scott and Janie did one last performance together in New York. He couldn’t remember what day it was but came alive on the stage, remembering all of their performance pieces. Scott passed away in 2005. Right after that, Janie was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. Her daughters used what they had learned from her about holistic health and helped her triumph over the cancer. In 2010, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal invited Janie to participate in the Third World Festival of Black Arts & Culture in Dakar to provide historical context and media commentary about arts and the African Diaspora. She spoke to over 5,000 Senegalese before an Akon concert and was covered extensively by their media. Watch Return To Senegal.
In 2011, historical icon and yoga master Tao Porchon-Lynch asked Janie and her daughter, Teresa, to work with her in telling her life story. Teresa had founded the first yoga studio in Harlem and was Chair of the Board of Yoga Alliance. She became Tao’s protégé and their work together evolved into the Tao Brand-Legacy Project. In 2015, the three women co-authored Dancing Light: The Spiritual Side of Being Through the Eyes of a Modern Yoga Master, which received a front cover endorsement from Dr. Deepak Chopra. The book won ten awards including the 2016 IPPY Award, 2016 International Book Award (three categories), 2016 Best Book Award (three categories), 2016 Bookvana Award (two categories) and the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award. In 2017, they co-authored Shining Bright: Quotes & Images to Inspire Optimism, Gratitude & Belief in Your Limitless Potential, which won the 2018 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. They also produced two online courses based on Tao’s teachings: Master Course with Tao Porchon-Lynch and Stretch & Relax with Tao Porchon-Lynch. When Tao passed away in 2020 at 101 years old, she had become a global historical icon through their branding and media management.
Now, at 90 years old, Janie continues to perform, write and serve as a cultural consultant on creative projects. During the pandemic, she did virtual events on the Black Experience moderated by her daughter Teresa. Her insights and reflections are also included in the book, Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson (MacMillan Publishers, 2023) by Sally H. Jacobs. Along with Teresa, her grandson Daniel Marsh Kennedy and her late daughter, Sheila Kennedy Bryant (who passed away of colon cancer in 2023), Janie is also co-founder of Inner Dignity (inspired by her initiative from the 1960s). The organization uses arts and media to empower people of color, support their mental wellbeing, and promote cross-cultural understanding. In addition, Janie and Teresa are developing online courses such as The Poetic Life of Langston Hughes, as well as The Kennedy Archives™, an interview series where Janie shares personal insights and historical commentary on notable African American friends such as Langston Hughes, Sam Jones and Muhammad Ali, as well as outstanding family members such as Dr. James Atkins (member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet”).
Invaluable insights...
- Decades of speaking and performing
- Expertise in cross-cultural communications
- Global experience in leadership development
- Deep understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion
- First-hand historical context on notable people and events
Using poetic interpretation for cross-cultural communication and sharing the Black Experience.
© 2024 Teresa Kay-Aba Kennedy. All rights reserved.