Rev. Earl Kennedy. Source: Raymond Bial, In All My Years: Portraits of older blacks in Champaign-Urbana.

Rev. Earl Kennedy (December 4,1918 - August 29,1995) was a minister at St. Luke C.M.E. Church in Champaign from 1974-1989. Reverend Kennedy was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1918 and raised on a farm in Greensboro, Alabama. He moved to Chicago and attended high school there.
He studied for the ministry at ITL Seminary in Atlanta and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, after which he became pastor of his first church in Robbins, Illinois. He is currently in his eleventh year as pastor of St. Luke's Methodist Church in Champaign. He was an active volunteer Douglass Center where he supervised the gameroom, refereed volleyball games, organized a volleyball team, worked with Senior Citizens, and announced softball games over the P A system. He founded the Kennedy Club, the Crowder Club, the E.P. Murchison Club, the Children's Choir and Children's Usher Board, and the Male Chorus at St. Luke C.M.E. During Rev. Kennedy's pastorate at the Church, the church's interior was modernized, the exterior upgraded, and its property holdings increased.

His wife is Ethel Mae Kennedy.

The following comes from a 1983 biography of Kennedy:

"Reverend Kennedy was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1918 and raised on a farm in Greensboro, Alabama. He moved to Chicago for" economic reasons" and attended high school there. He studied for the ministry at ITL Seminary in Atlanta and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, after which he became pastor of his first church in Robbins, Illinois. He is currently in his eleventh year as pastor of St. Luke's Methodist Church in Champaign. "I love working with young people," says Reverend Kennedy, an active volunteer at Douglass Center where he supervises the gameroom, referees volleyball games, and announces softball games over the PA system. "I have certainly enjoyed my years as pastor at St. Luke's," he says. "When I leave St. Luke's I will retire. I won't pastor
at another church."