Mixed reactions to civil rights photographer's FBI ties
By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2010; 3:51 PM
In many ways, civil rights photographer Ernest Withers would have been the perfect FBI informant, said leaders of the movement whom he photographed during quiet moments in their hotel rooms, at strategy meetings and in the midst of powerful street protests.
He was known to them as "Ernie" and later lionized as the "original civil rights photographer." It was Withers who took photos of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the day he was slain on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and it was Withers who documented the trial of the men who killed young Emmett Till.
The revelation this week by the Memphis Commercial Appeal that Withers also assisted an organization that many in the movement considered an enemy further exposes the desperation of the federal government to gain access to the highest levels of the civil rights leadership.
The FBI kept an extensive file on King and his aides, and distrust between the movement's leaders and the agency was great. Civil rights leaders knew their hotel rooms were bugged and were careful about what they said even on their home phones, knowing that federal agents were listening. They felt like people inside and outside of their organizations were always watching them.
"It was just par for the course," said Juanita Jones Abernathy, widow of King's close friend Ralph Abernathy. "They could be in strategy sessions, and the FBI had a way of calling almost immediately after they had made plans for something to inform them of what they had planned to do. They would check into hotels, and the FBI was in the room across the aisle."
"But they kept moving," she said.
Withers, who died in 2007 at 85, provided photographs, scheduling information and biographical sketches to two FBI agents in Memphis, according to files the Commercial Appeal attained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The photographer was a former police officer, and the Memphis newspaper noted that Withers had eight children and may have needed the money paid to informants to support them.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, knew Withers well and said he is disappointed. The photographer moved freely in the tight circle of King's lieutenants, taking pictures and selling them to black magazines such as Jet and other outlets. He would give the photos free to the ministers who led the movement and could not afford to pay.
Those pictures have been collected in books and show a rare intimacy with civil rights leaders.
"He was very close," Lowery said from his home in Atlanta. "He was beloved. I'm surprised and I'm a little disappointed, but I suspect he did it with his tongue in check knowing that he was not doing anything to hurt the movement."
According to FBI files obtained by the Memphis newspaper during a two-year investigation, Withers worked closely with two FBI agents in the late 1960s.
"There was nothing he could report on us that would hurt us," Lowery said. "We were not an undercover group. We didn't have any need to hide. We weren't planning any ambushes or surprise attacks. We were quite open with what we were planning to do. We publicized it and invited people to join it. He probably knew that as well as anybody."
Julian Bond, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said FBI agents came to the group's office at least once a week to get information. Most often it was a matter of agents looking for runaway kids.
"We felt there was nothing wrong with saying who we had or hadn't seen. Lots of people talked to the FBI and did so innocently," Bond said. "They believed that they were helping in some legitimate law enforcement reason."
When agents began asking questions about politics - who was a communist, or about specific political figures - the SNCC leaders became more wary.
"We know some people in the movement were informants. I grew up in a political culture in which an informant - somebody who told on his friends - was the lowest form of life," Bond said.
Withers's daughter, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the newspaper report convincing. "This is the first time I've heard of this in my life," she told the Commercial Appeal. "My father's not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation."
Abernathy said Withers's family has her sympathy and concern. Withers was closer than any other journalist when King traveled to Memphis in 1968 for the sanitation workers' strike. It was there that King was assassinated, and Withers, who lived in Memphis, captured the sad, bloody aftermath beyond police lines.
Many details of Withers's relationship with the FBI have not been disclosed. The bureau keeps information on all its informers but has declined repeated requests to release any files on Withers.
As a whole, journalists were largely supportive of the movement's aims, said former Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, who was part of the small cadre of black journalists who covered civil rights. "There's a distinction to be made between those informants who pretended to be something other than what they were and those who were pressured," said Raspberry, who noted that civil rights activist Julius Hobson - who ran the D.C. chapter of the Congress on Racial Equity - was later revealed in FBI files to have been an informant.
"His experience was that sometimes you have to throw them a little something to get them off your back," Raspberry said.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2010; 3:51 PM
In many ways, civil rights photographer Ernest Withers would have been the perfect FBI informant, said leaders of the movement whom he photographed during quiet moments in their hotel rooms, at strategy meetings and in the midst of powerful street protests.
He was known to them as "Ernie" and later lionized as the "original civil rights photographer." It was Withers who took photos of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the day he was slain on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and it was Withers who documented the trial of the men who killed young Emmett Till.
The revelation this week by the Memphis Commercial Appeal that Withers also assisted an organization that many in the movement considered an enemy further exposes the desperation of the federal government to gain access to the highest levels of the civil rights leadership.
The FBI kept an extensive file on King and his aides, and distrust between the movement's leaders and the agency was great. Civil rights leaders knew their hotel rooms were bugged and were careful about what they said even on their home phones, knowing that federal agents were listening. They felt like people inside and outside of their organizations were always watching them.
"It was just par for the course," said Juanita Jones Abernathy, widow of King's close friend Ralph Abernathy. "They could be in strategy sessions, and the FBI had a way of calling almost immediately after they had made plans for something to inform them of what they had planned to do. They would check into hotels, and the FBI was in the room across the aisle."
"But they kept moving," she said.
Withers, who died in 2007 at 85, provided photographs, scheduling information and biographical sketches to two FBI agents in Memphis, according to files the Commercial Appeal attained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The photographer was a former police officer, and the Memphis newspaper noted that Withers had eight children and may have needed the money paid to informants to support them.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, knew Withers well and said he is disappointed. The photographer moved freely in the tight circle of King's lieutenants, taking pictures and selling them to black magazines such as Jet and other outlets. He would give the photos free to the ministers who led the movement and could not afford to pay.
Those pictures have been collected in books and show a rare intimacy with civil rights leaders.
"He was very close," Lowery said from his home in Atlanta. "He was beloved. I'm surprised and I'm a little disappointed, but I suspect he did it with his tongue in check knowing that he was not doing anything to hurt the movement."
According to FBI files obtained by the Memphis newspaper during a two-year investigation, Withers worked closely with two FBI agents in the late 1960s.
"There was nothing he could report on us that would hurt us," Lowery said. "We were not an undercover group. We didn't have any need to hide. We weren't planning any ambushes or surprise attacks. We were quite open with what we were planning to do. We publicized it and invited people to join it. He probably knew that as well as anybody."
Julian Bond, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said FBI agents came to the group's office at least once a week to get information. Most often it was a matter of agents looking for runaway kids.
"We felt there was nothing wrong with saying who we had or hadn't seen. Lots of people talked to the FBI and did so innocently," Bond said. "They believed that they were helping in some legitimate law enforcement reason."
When agents began asking questions about politics - who was a communist, or about specific political figures - the SNCC leaders became more wary.
"We know some people in the movement were informants. I grew up in a political culture in which an informant - somebody who told on his friends - was the lowest form of life," Bond said.
Withers's daughter, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the newspaper report convincing. "This is the first time I've heard of this in my life," she told the Commercial Appeal. "My father's not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation."
Abernathy said Withers's family has her sympathy and concern. Withers was closer than any other journalist when King traveled to Memphis in 1968 for the sanitation workers' strike. It was there that King was assassinated, and Withers, who lived in Memphis, captured the sad, bloody aftermath beyond police lines.
Many details of Withers's relationship with the FBI have not been disclosed. The bureau keeps information on all its informers but has declined repeated requests to release any files on Withers.
As a whole, journalists were largely supportive of the movement's aims, said former Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, who was part of the small cadre of black journalists who covered civil rights. "There's a distinction to be made between those informants who pretended to be something other than what they were and those who were pressured," said Raspberry, who noted that civil rights activist Julius Hobson - who ran the D.C. chapter of the Congress on Racial Equity - was later revealed in FBI files to have been an informant.
"His experience was that sometimes you have to throw them a little something to get them off your back," Raspberry said.
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