WEBVTT - How Did a Civil Rights Photographer Become an FBI Informant? 

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:10.360
<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff. Lauren vog Obam here. Earnest Withers might

0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:12.959
<v Speaker 1>not be the best known name of the civil rights movement,

0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.920
<v Speaker 1>but he was the best known photographer. As a photojournalist,

0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.560
<v Speaker 1>Withers captured incredible images of key moments in American history,

0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:24.279
<v Speaker 1>from the iconic image of Emmett Till's open casket to

0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:27.920
<v Speaker 1>the now legendary shot of black sanitation workers standing shoulder

0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.200
<v Speaker 1>to shoulder in Memphis, Tennessee, carrying signs that read I

0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.280
<v Speaker 1>Am a man. Withers photos spread awareness about the injustices

0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:40.360
<v Speaker 1>facing black America, but his legacy got a little more complicated.

0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:45.800
<v Speaker 1>In the Commercial Appeal newspaper, which covers Memphis, discovered the

0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.080
<v Speaker 1>Withers essentially lived a double life, having worked as a

0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:53.279
<v Speaker 1>paid informant for the FBI for years. So was he

0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.320
<v Speaker 1>essentially a traitor to the civil rights movement that he's

0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.760
<v Speaker 1>so eloquently photographed or is there more to his story?

0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.240
<v Speaker 1>Ernest Withers took photography lessons in the U. S. Army

0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:05.960
<v Speaker 1>while he served during World War Two in the Pacific Theater.

0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:08.840
<v Speaker 1>After the war, he worked as a beat cop on

0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:11.399
<v Speaker 1>Beale Street in his hometown of Memphis, as one of

0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.880
<v Speaker 1>the first black police officers on the force. Thanks to

0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:16.959
<v Speaker 1>that beat, he was able to photograph some soon to

0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:19.480
<v Speaker 1>be legends in music history, from B. B. King and

0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:24.760
<v Speaker 1>Aretha Franklin to Icanina Turner. Withers was prominent in the

0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.880
<v Speaker 1>civil rights movement. He was the only photographer to document

0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.280
<v Speaker 1>the entire Emmett Till murder trial, and he captured images

0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.360
<v Speaker 1>of doctor Martin Luther King Junior and Ralph David Abernathy

0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.920
<v Speaker 1>riding the first desegregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. He also

0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.720
<v Speaker 1>photographed the Little Rock nine at Central High School in

0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.040
<v Speaker 1>Arkansas in nineteen fifty seven, after Brown versus the Board

0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:50.120
<v Speaker 1>of Education outlawed segregation in public schools. Other noteworthy pieces

0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.600
<v Speaker 1>in American history that he photographed include the Montgomery bus boycott,

0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.880
<v Speaker 1>the Black Panther Party, and the Lorean Motel after m.

0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:01.400
<v Speaker 1>L Ka's assassination. After Withers died from a stroke in

0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:05.160
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and seven, Commercial Appeal reporter Mark Paris Kia

0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:09.200
<v Speaker 1>started working on Weather's biography for the paper. That's when

0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.360
<v Speaker 1>a former FBI agent told him that they never bothered

0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:16.480
<v Speaker 1>to bug Kings meetings because they had Withers, but he

0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.440
<v Speaker 1>refused to tell Paris Kiya. More So, the reporters spent

0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.120
<v Speaker 1>years investigating the story, petitioning the FBI with Freedom of

0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.360
<v Speaker 1>Information Act requests to discover the truth of this informant,

0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:31.680
<v Speaker 1>until after a lengthy lawsuit, many of withers classified records

0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.920
<v Speaker 1>were released. That's when Periskia finally determined that Withers in

0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.959
<v Speaker 1>fact worked as an informant for the FBI throughout the

0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:43.560
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixties. Why the FBI was monitoring the movements of

0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.760
<v Speaker 1>civil rights activists isn't totally clear, but history has shown

0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.119
<v Speaker 1>that then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed the king

0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:56.680
<v Speaker 1>was influenced by communists. However, Weather's motivations are not understood.

0:02:57.320 --> 0:02:59.000
<v Speaker 1>Some think he was in it for the money to

0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.320
<v Speaker 1>support his family of eight children, though it is possible

0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.320
<v Speaker 1>that he had some anti Communist feelings himself. A few

0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:08.640
<v Speaker 1>of his sons fought in the Vietnam War. He also

0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.960
<v Speaker 1>had a history of corruption. He lost his job as

0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.679
<v Speaker 1>a police officer for bootlegging whiskey, though Periskia points out

0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.840
<v Speaker 1>that at that time the Memphis Police Department was rampant

0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:23.200
<v Speaker 1>with corruption. But in nine Withers was also caught up

0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.880
<v Speaker 1>in a cash for clemency scandal with a Tennessee judge,

0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.240
<v Speaker 1>where criminals were basically able to buy their way out

0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.320
<v Speaker 1>of prison. Weathers testified against the judge, having cut a

0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.520
<v Speaker 1>deal with the state, but even with the stakes that high,

0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:41.280
<v Speaker 1>he never revealed his work for the FBI. After the

0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.839
<v Speaker 1>news about Weathers having been an informant broke in, It's

0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.640
<v Speaker 1>been received with mixed feelings. Some civil rights leaders felt

0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.160
<v Speaker 1>that they were betrayed and their confidence abused. Others, like

0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:55.040
<v Speaker 1>Ambassador Andrew Young, who was a lieutenant of m l K,

0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.680
<v Speaker 1>told The New Yorker that he's not surprised because at

0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.920
<v Speaker 1>the time they felt the FBI bugged everything, but they

0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.440
<v Speaker 1>didn't suspect Weathers himself. Dr Manning Marrable, then a professor

0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:09.520
<v Speaker 1>of African American studies at Columbia University, told The New

0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.480
<v Speaker 1>Yorker it's important to remember the time within which he

0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.560
<v Speaker 1>lived and the inordinate pressure to inform. The best thing

0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:18.520
<v Speaker 1>we can say about Weathers is that he played a

0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.599
<v Speaker 1>dual role as an informant who undoubtedly disrupted the movement,

0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:25.760
<v Speaker 1>but also as a photographer who used his talents on

0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:36.880
<v Speaker 1>behalf of advocacy, social justice and equality. Today's episode is

0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.160
<v Speaker 1>based on the article Earnest Withers, iconic civil rights photographer

0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.279
<v Speaker 1>and FBI informant, on how stuff Works dot Com, written

0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.080
<v Speaker 1>by Diana Brown. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart

0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:48.599
<v Speaker 1>Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com as produced

0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.520
<v Speaker 1>by Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts from

0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:54.440
<v Speaker 1>my heart Radio. Visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:56.240
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.