Famed civil rights photographer doubled as FBI informant
- Thread starter oneofmany
- Start date
<font size="5"><center>
The Secret Life of Ernest Withers</font size></center>
Two famous personalities: Johnnie Cochran (right) greets photographer Ernest Withers and his wife
Dorothy at a 2001 open house for The Cochran Firm, which just opened an office in One
Commerce Square. Cochran was signing copies of his book for those in attendance. (Lance
Murphey/The Commercial Appeal)
Jesse Walker
September 15, 2010
The Memphis Commercial Appeal has an explosive exposé about the late Ernest Withers, a photographer famous for covering the civil rights movement:
A veteran freelancer for America's black press, Withers was known as "the original civil rights photographer," an insider who'd covered it all, from the Emmett Till murder that jump-started the movement in 1955 to the Little Rock school crisis, the integration of Ole Miss and, now, the 1968 sanitation strike that brought King to Memphis and his death....
The grief-stricken aides photographed by Withers on April 4, 1968, had no clue, but the man they invited in that night was an FBI informant -- evidence of how far the agency went to spy on private citizens in Memphis during one of the nation's most volatile periods.
Withers shadowed King the day before his murder, snapping photos and telling agents about a meeting the civil rights leader had with suspected black militants.
He later divulged details gleaned at King's funeral in Atlanta, reporting that two Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers blamed for an earlier Beale Street riot planned to return to Memphis "to resume ... support of sanitation strike" -- to stir up more trouble, as the FBI saw it.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/15/the-secret-life-of-ernest-with
<font size="4">And the spying went well beyond that:</font size>
The Secret Life of Ernest Withers</font size></center>
Two famous personalities: Johnnie Cochran (right) greets photographer Ernest Withers and his wife
Dorothy at a 2001 open house for The Cochran Firm, which just opened an office in One
Commerce Square. Cochran was signing copies of his book for those in attendance. (Lance
Murphey/The Commercial Appeal)
Jesse Walker
September 15, 2010
The Memphis Commercial Appeal has an explosive exposé about the late Ernest Withers, a photographer famous for covering the civil rights movement:
A veteran freelancer for America's black press, Withers was known as "the original civil rights photographer," an insider who'd covered it all, from the Emmett Till murder that jump-started the movement in 1955 to the Little Rock school crisis, the integration of Ole Miss and, now, the 1968 sanitation strike that brought King to Memphis and his death....
The grief-stricken aides photographed by Withers on April 4, 1968, had no clue, but the man they invited in that night was an FBI informant -- evidence of how far the agency went to spy on private citizens in Memphis during one of the nation's most volatile periods.
Withers shadowed King the day before his murder, snapping photos and telling agents about a meeting the civil rights leader had with suspected black militants.
He later divulged details gleaned at King's funeral in Atlanta, reporting that two Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers blamed for an earlier Beale Street riot planned to return to Memphis "to resume ... support of sanitation strike" -- to stir up more trouble, as the FBI saw it.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/15/the-secret-life-of-ernest-with
<font size="4">And the spying went well beyond that:</font size>
<font size="4">Invaders:</font size> Members of the Invaders, a black power group that was worrisome to the FBI,
were photographed by Ernest Withers on the steps of City Hall on April 8, 1968, a few days after
the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (© Ernest C. Withers Trust, courtesy Decaneas
Archive, Boston, Mass.)
It is interesting, to say the least, to hear the contrast between how Andrew Young portrays a totally open and transparent civil rights movement within which this would be no big deal and how Earl Caldwell presents this as a devastating betrayal and the attitudes of people within the civil rights movement as totally different.
Caldwell's NPR interview
Caldwell's NPR interview
I saw Sanchez's piece with Andrew Young about the time it first ran and Sanchez constrasted Young's interview with that of a white guy whose name I didn't get who placed Ernest Withers' actions in context with other FBI shenanigans of the period, i.e., COINTELPRO. That guy saw Withers' conduct more closely to the way I see it: racial treason. I can appreciate Earl Caldwell's attempt to withhold judgment, sort of out of disbelief that a thought-to-be-comrade has let him/us down as it appears Withers did, but even he is disappointed at what the facts seem to show.
On the other hand, Andrew Young to me is somewhat of an enigma. I don't know whether age has caught-up with Andrew or he has always lacked depth. Clearly, King and other players intentionally telegraphed much of their intent to the public -- since they were without question in the business of winning hearts and minds. However, disclosure of certain intimate details, as Withers may have done, not only could have given opponents of the movement disruptive "fodder", it also could have placed untold lives in danger. Despite Andrew Youngs "Open Book" theory, it is clear that the Civil Rights Struggle is replete with involuntary martyrs.
QueEx
Fucking Snitch, plain & simple.
Another 1 added to the neverending list
wonder when Jesse Jackson will be exposed. I guess a few corporations got too much riding on him to let him be exposed. If Jesse and people like Al Sharpton lose the people that they always exploit for financial gains...i.e. uneducated Black folks....then its game over for both of them.
Wing nuts are all up in arms over government spying. I wish they were as concerned when "Black" folk were the exclusive targets.
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