Florynce Rae Kennedy (February 11, 1916 – December 21, 2000) was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, and activist.

[2] Kennedy remembered a time when her father had to be armed with a shotgun in order to ward off the strong neighborhood Ku Klux Klan presence that was trying to drive her family out.

Kennedy graduated at the top of her class at Lincoln High School, after which she worked many jobs including owning a hat shop and operating elevators.

After the death of her mother Zella in 1942, Kennedy left Missouri for New York City, moving to an apartment in Harlem with her sister Grayce.

In her autobiography Kennedy wrote, The Associate Dean, Willis Reese, told me I had been rejected not because I was a Black but because I was a woman.

[2] In a 1946 sociology class at Columbia University Kennedy wrote a paper that analogized the discourses of race and sex.

[6] Kennedy aimed to make white people nervous by wearing her typical cowboy hat and pink sunglasses.

[9] Kennedy also acted in Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow alongside Morgan Freeman and directed by Edward Mann)[10] and was seen on the TV series Some of My Best Friends are Men (1973).

Kennedy had a summer home on Fire Island, and was a popular fixture on the social scene there, entertaining many activists whom she invited to visit her.

According to Jason Chambers in his book Madison Avenue and the Color Line: African Americans in the Advertising Industry, "After graduating high school, [Kennedy] organized a successful boycott against a Coca-Cola bottler who refused to hire black truck drivers.

"[18] "Kennedy recalled being arrested for the first time in 1965 when she attempted to reach her home on East 48th Street and police refused to believe she lived in the neighborhood.

She was close friends with fellow Columbia law graduate Morton Birnbaum MD, whose concept of sanism she influenced during the 1960s.

Kennedy also represented prominent radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who was on trial for the 1968 attempted murder of Andy Warhol.

If a man asked the pair if they were lesbians – a stereotype of feminists at the time – Kennedy would quote Ti-Grace Atkinson and answer, "Are you my alternative?

Sherie Randolph outlines in her article "Not to Rely Completely on the Courts" that Kennedy was one of the lawyers in the Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz case, the class action suit that wanted to repeal New York's strict abortion laws.

[22] Randolph stated: "This case was one of the first to use women who suffered from illegal abortions as expert witnesses instead of relying on physicians.

[25] When asked about this, she said: I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I'm crazy.

She also collaborated with William Francis Pepper on the book Sex Discrimination in Employment: An Analysis and Guide for Practitioner and Student.

[2][17] Kennedy was an atheist who was once noted as saying: "It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses".

[33] In Mel Brooks' 2023 sketch comedy limited series History of the World, Part II, Kennedy is portrayed by Kym Whitley.