Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff. Lauren vog Obam here. Earnest Withers might not be the best known name of the civil rights movement, but he was the best known photographer. As a photojournalist, Withers captured incredible images of key moments in American history, from the iconic image of Emmett Till's open casket to the now legendary shot of black sanitation workers standing shoulder to shoulder in Memphis, Tennessee, carrying signs that read I
Am a man. Withers photos spread awareness about the injustices facing black America, but his legacy got a little more complicated. In the Commercial Appeal newspaper, which covers Memphis, discovered the Withers essentially lived a double life, having worked as a paid informant for the FBI for years. So was he essentially a traitor to the civil rights movement that he's so eloquently photographed or is there more to his story?
Ernest Withers took photography lessons in the U. S. Army while he served during World War Two in the Pacific Theater. After the war, he worked as a beat cop on Beale Street in his hometown of Memphis, as one of the first black police officers on the force. Thanks to that beat, he was able to photograph some soon to be legends in music history, from B. B. King and Aretha Franklin to Icanina Turner. Withers was prominent in the
civil rights movement. He was the only photographer to document the entire Emmett Till murder trial, and he captured images of doctor Martin Luther King Junior and Ralph David Abernathy riding the first desegregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. He also photographed the Little Rock nine at Central High School in Arkansas in nineteen fifty seven, after Brown versus the Board
of Education outlawed segregation in public schools. Other noteworthy pieces in American history that he photographed include the Montgomery bus boycott, the Black Panther Party, and the Lorean Motel after m. L Ka's assassination. After Withers died from a stroke in two thousand and seven, Commercial Appeal reporter Mark Paris Kia
started working on Weather's biography for the paper. That's when a former FBI agent told him that they never bothered to bug Kings meetings because they had Withers, but he refused to tell Paris Kiya. More So, the reporters spent years investigating the story, petitioning the FBI with Freedom of Information Act requests to discover the truth of this informant, until after a lengthy lawsuit, many of withers classified records
were released. That's when Periskia finally determined that Withers in fact worked as an informant for the FBI throughout the nineteen sixties. Why the FBI was monitoring the movements of civil rights activists isn't totally clear, but history has shown that then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed the king was influenced by communists. However, Weather's motivations are not understood. Some think he was in it for the money to support his family of eight children, though it is possible
that he had some anti Communist feelings himself. A few of his sons fought in the Vietnam War. He also had a history of corruption. He lost his job as a police officer for bootlegging whiskey, though Periskia points out that at that time the Memphis Police Department was rampant with corruption. But in nine Withers was also caught up in a cash for clemency scandal with a Tennessee judge, where criminals were basically able to buy their way out
of prison. Weathers testified against the judge, having cut a deal with the state, but even with the stakes that high, he never revealed his work for the FBI. After the news about Weathers having been an informant broke in, It's been received with mixed feelings. Some civil rights leaders felt
that they were betrayed and their confidence abused. Others, like Ambassador Andrew Young, who was a lieutenant of m l K, told The New Yorker that he's not surprised because at the time they felt the FBI bugged everything, but they didn't suspect Weathers himself. Dr Manning Marrable, then a professor of African American studies at Columbia University, told The New Yorker it's important to remember the time within which he
lived and the inordinate pressure to inform. The best thing we can say about Weathers is that he played a dual role as an informant who undoubtedly disrupted the movement, but also as a photographer who used his talents on behalf of advocacy, social justice and equality. Today's episode is based on the article Earnest Withers, iconic civil rights photographer and FBI informant, on how stuff Works dot Com, written
by Diana Brown. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com as produced by Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.