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.

Ray fired Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview, and hired conspiracy theorist Mark Lane to provide him with legal representation.

[4] 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.

[6] The 25-foot-high[3] statue was constructed on an area between two cell phone towers on private land facing Interstate 65 and was accompanied by an array of 13 Confederate battle flags and was lit up at night.

[9] The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Mary Noel Kershaw Foundation as a Neo-Confederate organization based in Lobelville, Tennessee on their hate map;[10] it "funds firearms self-defense training for the League of the South.