Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Martin Luther King friend and photographer was FBI informant
#1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep...i-informer

Quote:Martin Luther King friend and photographer was FBI informant

Ernest Withers, who was trusted by civil rights leader to sit in on strategy meetings spied on black activists and white radicals

Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 September 2010 18.03 BST

Martin Luther King must have imagined that the man with the camera so often at his side was doing no more than recording history. But it has been revealed that Ernest Withers – who was on hand to capture King riding newly desegregated buses and the shock of the civil rights leader's allies immediately after his murder – was also an FBI informer.

The double life of one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era was exposed by the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, which reported that Withers passed on photographs to the FBI along with names and background information about activists and details of schedules.

Withers, who was a police officer before becoming a photographer and died three years ago aged 85, documented the civil rights movement from the beginning, covering pivotal moments such as the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, and the Little Rock school integration showdown. He came to be so familiar and so trusted to King and other leaders that he sat in on strategy meetings.

Records released under a freedom of information request show that from at least 1968, and possibly earlier, he spied on not only black civil rights activists but Catholic priests who supported a Memphis-wide strike by sanitation workers, and political candidates, recording car number plates for the FBI.

Withers also helped the bureau to break a militant black group called the Invaders, which had a following in Memphis in the late 60s.

"He was the perfect source for them," the Pulitzer prize-winning historian of the era, David Garrow, told the Commercial Appeal. "He could go everywhere with a perfect, obvious professional purpose."

Withers was identified by the newspaper after the FBI failed to black out his name on a number of documents related to the agency's spying on civil rights activists, released under freedom of information legislation.

The FBI was fixated on King. The then attorney general, Robert Kennedy, authorised it to spy on the civil rights leader, and the FBI director, J Edgar Hoover, went so far as to bug King in bed.

Andrew Young, a former mayor of Atlanta, said activists had been aware that they were closely watched by the FBI, although no one suspected Withers was an informant.

"I always liked him because he was a good photographer. And he was always [around]," he said. "I don't think Dr King would have minded him making a little money on the side."

One of Withers's sons, Rome, who is also a photographer, said he had been unaware that his father worked for the FBI, but said it did not diminish his work documenting the civil rights movement.

"He had been harassed, beaten, shot at. He was a victim," he told the Commercial Appeal. "At that time, when you are the only black on the scene, you're in an intimidating state."

Scripps-Howard back on form:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/withers-exposed/
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"

Joseph Fouche
Reply
#2
I can't understand why Jesse Jackson was on the History Channel as one of the narrators for a program on the military history of the Roman Empire? There were all the American generals and other military people as co-narrators with Jesse Jackson as one of them.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  William F. Pepper - An Act of State - The Execution of Martin Luther King Peter Lemkin 27 49,116 08-04-2018, 09:25 AM
Last Post: Peter Lemkin
  Robert Vaughn, friend of RFK, critic of official story, dies Tracy Riddle 4 14,340 15-11-2016, 06:46 PM
Last Post: Dawn Meredith
  The Assassination of Malcolm x and Martin Luther Jr. Magda Hassan 7 11,823 01-02-2015, 11:47 PM
Last Post: R.K. Locke
  Long-lost video of Martin Luther King killer James Earl Ray unearthed Magda Hassan 0 4,399 05-04-2013, 09:46 AM
Last Post: Magda Hassan
  Richard Aoki: Man who armed Black Panthers was FBI informant, records show Magda Hassan 19 10,653 24-08-2012, 07:25 AM
Last Post: Peter Lemkin
  THOMAS Petition for Dr.King's files; Radio Bernice Moore 0 2,589 21-11-2011, 05:09 PM
Last Post: Bernice Moore
  The King Centre Bernice Moore 0 2,397 16-07-2011, 01:37 AM
Last Post: Bernice Moore
  The King Anniversary at CTKA Jim DiEugenio 0 2,445 03-04-2011, 05:03 AM
Last Post: Jim DiEugenio
  Sisters say RFKS emotion, words, about King stilled '68 crowd Bernice Moore 0 2,784 13-02-2011, 03:06 PM
Last Post: Bernice Moore
  The assassination of Loyalism's King Rat Jan Klimkowski 6 7,522 20-01-2011, 09:24 PM
Last Post: David Guyatt

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)