{"id":25490,"date":"2022-07-27T10:48:37","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T17:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&#038;p=25490"},"modified":"2026-03-04T12:45:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T20:45:45","slug":"the-picture-taker","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/the-picture-taker\/","title":{"rendered":"The Picture Taker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-sheets-value=\"{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;From his Memphis studio, Ernest Withers' nearly 2 million images were a treasured record of Black history but his legacy was complicated by decades of secret FBI service revealed only after his death. Was he a friend of the civil rights community, or enemy\u2014or both?&quot;}\" data-sheets-userformat=\"{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0},&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}\">From his Memphis studio, Ernest Withers&#8217; nearly 2 million images were a treasured record of Black history but his legacy was complicated by decades of secret FBI service revealed only after his death. Was he a friend of the civil rights community, or enemy\u2014or both?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From his Memphis studio, Ernest Withers&#8217; nearly 2 million images were a treasured record of Black history but his legacy was complicated by decades of secret FBI service revealed only after his death. Was he a friend of the civil rights community, or enemy\u2014or both?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":26364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1260,1257,1264],"class_list":["post-25490","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-civil-rights-2","topic-law-administration","topic-race-ethnicity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Picture Taker | Ernest Withers, Civil Rights Photographer, FBI Informant<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Meet Ernest Withers, civil rights photographer, and FBI informant. 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