Born the second of five daughters to a Pullman Porter in segregated Kansas City, Kennedy worked in a hat shop that she opened with her sisters before she left for New York at age 26.
There, she attended Columbia Law School, where she gained admittance after threatening an anti-discrimination suit.
Shortly after her graduation, she opened her own law firm, which blossomed. She became involved in representing radical and feminist groups, and, quickly, as a leader of the groups themselves.
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"I think we should all be kicking ass fairly regularly," she wrote of her activism in her autobiography. "I don't think we should continue to permit the Establishment to feed us only what they think we should have."