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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. Lauren vog Obam here. Earnest Withers might

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Speaker 1: not be the best known name of the civil rights movement,

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Speaker 1: but he was the best known photographer. As a photojournalist,

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Speaker 1: Withers captured incredible images of key moments in American history,

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Speaker 1: from the iconic image of Emmett Till's open casket to

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Speaker 1: the now legendary shot of black sanitation workers standing shoulder

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Speaker 1: to shoulder in Memphis, Tennessee, carrying signs that read I

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Speaker 1: Am a man. Withers photos spread awareness about the injustices

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Speaker 1: facing black America, but his legacy got a little more complicated.

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Speaker 1: In the Commercial Appeal newspaper, which covers Memphis, discovered the

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Speaker 1: Withers essentially lived a double life, having worked as a

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Speaker 1: paid informant for the FBI for years. So was he

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Speaker 1: essentially a traitor to the civil rights movement that he's

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Speaker 1: so eloquently photographed or is there more to his story?

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Speaker 1: Ernest Withers took photography lessons in the U. S. Army

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Speaker 1: while he served during World War Two in the Pacific Theater.

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Speaker 1: After the war, he worked as a beat cop on

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Speaker 1: Beale Street in his hometown of Memphis, as one of

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Speaker 1: the first black police officers on the force. Thanks to

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Speaker 1: that beat, he was able to photograph some soon to

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Speaker 1: be legends in music history, from B. B. King and

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Speaker 1: Aretha Franklin to Icanina Turner. Withers was prominent in the

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Speaker 1: civil rights movement. He was the only photographer to document

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Speaker 1: the entire Emmett Till murder trial, and he captured images

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Speaker 1: of doctor Martin Luther King Junior and Ralph David Abernathy

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Speaker 1: riding the first desegregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. He also

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Speaker 1: photographed the Little Rock nine at Central High School in

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Speaker 1: Arkansas in nineteen fifty seven, after Brown versus the Board

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Speaker 1: of Education outlawed segregation in public schools. Other noteworthy pieces

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Speaker 1: in American history that he photographed include the Montgomery bus boycott,

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Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party, and the Lorean Motel after m.

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Speaker 1: L Ka's assassination. After Withers died from a stroke in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, Commercial Appeal reporter Mark Paris Kia

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Speaker 1: started working on Weather's biography for the paper. That's when

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Speaker 1: a former FBI agent told him that they never bothered

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Speaker 1: to bug Kings meetings because they had Withers, but he

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Speaker 1: refused to tell Paris Kiya. More So, the reporters spent

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Speaker 1: years investigating the story, petitioning the FBI with Freedom of

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Speaker 1: Information Act requests to discover the truth of this informant,

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Speaker 1: until after a lengthy lawsuit, many of withers classified records

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Speaker 1: were released. That's when Periskia finally determined that Withers in

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Speaker 1: fact worked as an informant for the FBI throughout the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. Why the FBI was monitoring the movements of

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Speaker 1: civil rights activists isn't totally clear, but history has shown

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Speaker 1: that then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed the king

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Speaker 1: was influenced by communists. However, Weather's motivations are not understood.

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Speaker 1: Some think he was in it for the money to

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Speaker 1: support his family of eight children, though it is possible

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Speaker 1: that he had some anti Communist feelings himself. A few

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Speaker 1: of his sons fought in the Vietnam War. He also

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Speaker 1: had a history of corruption. He lost his job as

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Speaker 1: a police officer for bootlegging whiskey, though Periskia points out

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Speaker 1: that at that time the Memphis Police Department was rampant

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Speaker 1: with corruption. But in nine Withers was also caught up

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Speaker 1: in a cash for clemency scandal with a Tennessee judge,

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Speaker 1: where criminals were basically able to buy their way out

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Speaker 1: of prison. Weathers testified against the judge, having cut a

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Speaker 1: deal with the state, but even with the stakes that high,

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Speaker 1: he never revealed his work for the FBI. After the

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Speaker 1: news about Weathers having been an informant broke in, It's

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Speaker 1: been received with mixed feelings. Some civil rights leaders felt

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Speaker 1: that they were betrayed and their confidence abused. Others, like

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Speaker 1: Ambassador Andrew Young, who was a lieutenant of m l K,

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Speaker 1: told The New Yorker that he's not surprised because at

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Speaker 1: the time they felt the FBI bugged everything, but they

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Speaker 1: didn't suspect Weathers himself. Dr Manning Marrable, then a professor

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Speaker 1: of African American studies at Columbia University, told The New

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Speaker 1: Yorker it's important to remember the time within which he

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Speaker 1: lived and the inordinate pressure to inform. The best thing

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Speaker 1: we can say about Weathers is that he played a

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Speaker 1: dual role as an informant who undoubtedly disrupted the movement,

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Speaker 1: but also as a photographer who used his talents on

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Speaker 1: behalf of advocacy, social justice and equality. Today's episode is

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Speaker 1: based on the article Earnest Withers, iconic civil rights photographer

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Speaker 1: and FBI informant, on how stuff Works dot Com, written

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Speaker 1: by Diana Brown. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com as produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts from

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