The double life of civil rights photographer Ernest Withers

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Photographer Ernest Withers captured some of the most indelible images of the civil rights era. The photo of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., writing one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, the iconic image of black sanitation workers carrying I Am A Man signs in Memphis, and he was the only photo journalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till.

  But Withers was also an FBI informant funneling information to the bureau about the civil rights movement and its leaders. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Wesley Lowery joins us now to talk about his new podcast called "Unfinished Ernie's Secret," which explores the government's efforts to infiltrate and disrupt the civil rights movement, and to the man who was caught in the middle. It's great to have you here, the podcast is phenomenal.

• Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist:

  Thank you so much. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So tell me more about Ernie Withers, who he was apart from his life as an FBI informant because his biography, in so many ways is a cross section of Memphis history. It's a cross section of American history. He's this World War II vet the first one of the first black cops in Memphis. And then he becomes a freelance photographer.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  Yes, Ernest Withers is fascinating. And he gets into photography, in part while he's in the armed services. He would take photos of the other enlisted men and sell them to them so they could send them back to their wives and girlfriends, or maybe both their wife and girlfriend depending on the guy —

• Geoff Bennett:

  Selling them not giving.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  Correct, right? Yes, well, he was he was a smart industrious guy, right. And so he when he gets back to Memphis, there's a stint as a police officer but then becomes essentially the black photographer in Memphis. And so he documented everything homecomings, repasses that just everyday black Back life. He also was obsessed with Negro League baseball and so he would travel and shoot photos of all of these black baseball players across the country that also Memphis has Stax Records in it.

  And so he photographed so many musicians be Elvis and Aretha Franklin and Tina (inaudible), and so many folks. And so in fact, when you go to Memphis, his old studio on Beale Street is now a museum, where you can see this remarkable collection of photographs by Ernest.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And how did he find his way into those moments where he was so close to Dr. King, so many other icons of the civil rights movement?

• Wesley Lowrey:

  Ernest Withers is probably best known for his civil rights work. He photographed basically, every major campaign across the south. He's present when James Meredith is integrating Ole Miss. He's in the room when two men are being charged with the murder of Emmett Till. He's there when King is riding the first desegregated bus. He part of it was that. He was just kind of everywhere who was someone you trusted. He was a piece of the furniture, you know.

  And he was someone who, especially the civil rights leaders knew and respected and believed would tell the story accurately, right, that would document what was happening. And so people were happy to have Ernest around, you know, Andrew Young, when a king's chief lieutenants told us, you know, that they always answered during this call, he wanted information, they always gave it to him.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And all the while he was living this second life as an FBI informant during what is now this infamous period of American history, where the FBI was involved in domestic surveillance, illegal domestic surveillance, why wouldn't Ernest Withers be valuable to J Edgar Hoover at the time?

• Wesley Lowrey:

  So we have to remember the FBI at the time had no black agents, right? They couldn't just show up at a civil rights meeting. In fact, this was a time when FBI agents were particularly being recruited by Hoover to be, you know, white guy Republicans from Omaha, right? There's a specific look, and we love Omaha, right. But you know what I read, right? They had a very specific, clean cut look, that is not the best workforce if the thing you're trying to do is infiltrate a black civil rights movement that's playing out primarily in urban centers across the country, right.

  And so these human assets became vitally important for the FBI, people who could be in a room who knew everyone's name, who would introduce themselves who could ask for someone's address and not be suspicious. And so what Earnest sense of being as a sponge of information. Now, he already was one, right? He was a local photographer. He knew everybody and their mother and their cousin, he knew where they live, you know, when their birthday was, right.

  So what he had a lot of that information. But now the FBI was able to kind of prime him for it. And it asked for questions. You know, a lot of what Ernest did was he sold them photographs, photographs he would take otherwise, and that he might otherwise sell to the Associated Press, or to the black paper, he'd shoot a protest all day, he'd get all the caption information. And then he'd sell a roll of film to the FBI.

  And now suddenly, at a time before the internet, before a lot of the databases we now have in law enforcement now has, they now have photographs and names, and in some cases, addresses and phone numbers for people who they otherwise might not have known how to track.

• Geoff Bennett:

  One of the primary threads that runs through the podcast is sort of the moral ambiguity of the day that in many ways, Mr. Withers didn't have a choice that when the federal government comes and says, you know, we want information that only you can provide, he didn't really have a choice.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  It's interesting, right? When you listen to Ernest Withers' family, and the one time he ever addressed this, before he passed, right, there was an insistence that he was not an informant in the worst sense of the word, right, that he was someone who was selling photographs. The FBI was a customer like anyone else, and that also, what was he supposed to do? He's a black man at a time when black men don't even have the right to vote.

  The federal government has come to him and said, We need to stop the communist infiltration, because that was the pretense under which Hoover harassed the civil rights leaders, including King. And here you have this black man with six children to feed who's not particularly wealthy. And how do we gauge now so many years later, if he thought he had a real choice when he was asked to do these things, or if he did it.

• Geoff Bennett:

  As I was listening to the podcast, my ears perked up when I heard the voice of Ambassador Andrew Young. The reason I bring him up is because he told you that he wasn't surprised that there was someone spying on the work that they were doing that there was an FBI informant in their midst.

  But he also suggested that he didn't care all that much that in his mind, he had nothing to hide. The SCLC at the time had nothing to hide. And as he saw it, it was good to be super transparent, whether it was with the FBI or whomever about the work that they were doing.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  That is what Andrew Young said, it's actually interesting, because I've gotten a lot of feedback on that particular quote from people, right. I know, modern day activists who are like, what's wrong with Andrew Young? He's serious. Like, can you believe that from other people? Oh, I guess that makes sense.

• Geoff Bennett:

  I bet those activists are pretty young.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  Yes. So they are right.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yes.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  Yes. And I think it cuts in a few different directions. The first is that a lot of the people from the time, people who knew Ernest and real time had been pretty forgiving of this information that's come out. Part of it, I think is so much time has passed. Right. A lot of this is in the rear view mirror.

  There's also a reality where as frustrated and upset as people are about the FBI surveillance, the idea of holding Ernest personally accountable for what was clearly the sense of one of those powerful institutions in American society is something I think a lot of the black activists are willing to, you know, kind of be kind about.

  But there are other activists who are furious with him who are really upset. Dick Gregory when this news initially broke called him Judas. I do wonder if we could go back in time and interviewing Andrew Young, 40 years younger, 50 years younger, if perhaps he might be less generous to Ernest Withers in real time, as he is, in retrospect.

• Geoff Bennett:

  It's an interesting question, Wesley Lowery. The podcast is a fascinating look at a really important part of American history. Congratulations.

• Wesley Lowrey:

  Thanks so much for having me. It's available everywhere, wherever you listen your podcasts.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Wherever you listen to your podcasts. Appreciate you man.