A recent visit to Beale Street in Memphis with some friends led me to the gallery of Ernest C. Withers, one of history’s most prolific photographers of African American history in 20th century America. Having taken many art history and photography classes, I’ve run across Withers’ work numerous times, but this particular visit finally brought his work to life for me.
In late December of last year I was devastated to read that the famous civil rights photographer had been a covert FBI informant in Memphis. Withers provided a first hand visual account of southern civil rights movement: the murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery bus boycott, the crisis of the Little Rock nine at Central High School, the integration of Ole Miss, the Memphis sanitation strike, and eventually the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.
One of his most famous photographs is of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the funeral of Medgar Evans, a man who literally fought to the death for the abolition of the Jim Crow laws. Withers captured the tireless hardship of the fight against segregation, shown clearly in the pain and stress apparent on King’s face.
Though it has been proven through a series of investigations that he was in fact working for the government during the time he spent with King and his contemporary revolutionaries, does the value of his work diminish? I think not. He managed to document one of the greatest movements in American history and despite his reasons, he gave us some of the most incredible examples of documentary photography in photographic history. The Ernest C. Withers Gallery remains open on Beale Street in Memphis, TN if you are willing to visit and make your own judgments of the photographer's merit.
