Memphis photographer Ernest C. Withers certainly kept his own counsel on his employment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as “ME 338-R,” a “prolific,” paid, covert “racial informant” on the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. So the revelation of this aspect of his life and work, the outcome of a two-year investigation by Marc Perrusquia of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, has sent shockwaves through a set of overlapping circles: journalism, documentary photography, and what’s become the civil-rights establishment — old warriors, historians, archivists, and others. (See Perrusquia’s September 12, 2010 report, “Photographer Ernest Withers doubled as FBI informant to spy on civil rights movement.”)
Known as “the original civil rights photographer,” the African American Withers covered many of the historic events of the civil-rights movement in the southeast, from the Emmett Till murder trial through the assassination of Martin Luther King and beyond. Perhaps more than any other such photographer, he had unparalleled access to private as well as public situations involving the major and minor figures among the desegregationists.
None of his journalist colleagues, none of his subjects, not even his family appear to have had the slightest inkling of the double life Withers led. Absent the discovery of some secret journal or other confessional writing, we’ll likely never know what motivated him to snitch on Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and countless other integrationists to J. Edgar Hoover and his malevolent posse.
Did he need the money? Did they have something on him? Was he gaming them by feeding them trivia? Withers apparently took that information with him to his grave in October 2007. Now Dick Gregory has called him “Judas” and “a thug.” Julian Bond, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, has said “I grew up in a political culture in which an informant — somebody who told on his friends — was the lowest form of life.” Others have proven more forgiving, suggesting that since the anti-segregation forces were doing nothing illegal Withers’s disclosures couldn’t have jeopardized them in any way.
His family’s clearly in denial: “This is the first time I’ve heard of this in my life,” Withers’ youngest daughter, Rosalind Withers, told the Commercial Appeal. “My father’s not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation.” She subsequently told the Associated Press, “Personally, and as a family, we do not believe what has been alleged. It still has to be proven” — this in the face of the exhaustive investigation by the Commercial Appeal, extensive documentation obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and confirmation by the Bureau itself, as well as by several political figures who were in the know. (See “Newspaper’s revelation rocks photographer’s family,” by Adrian Sainz, September 17.)
What we on the left in the 1960s called “the movement” included a wide variety of social causes, among them civil rights, black power, peace, anti-Vietnam, marijuana legalization, free speech, women’s lib, gay lib, and more. Savvy about the impact of the lens media (still photographs, video, film) on public opinion — “the whole world is watching” — movement activists in general and the younger cohort in particular welcomed coverage and those providing it, with still photographers having probably the easiest access due to the portability, unobtrusiveness, and unthreatening size of their equipment.
The presence of FBI and police spies and provocateurs within any of the groups under such surveillance was taken for granted. Moreover, most of us understood that at any public event we’d likely get photographed by hostile forces, ranging from the FBI down to the local police, energetically building dossiers on anyone and everyone and anyone daring to speak out in public. The making of those secret files by the U.S. police state has undergone much unmasking over the past half-century, but their existence comes as no surprise to anyone who participated in left politics back then. Indeed, spotting the plainclothes cops with the cameras became a form of sport at demonstrations.
But the specific use of photographers to infiltrate the movement didn’t get envisaged as commonplace — at least not as I recall those years and my own involvements (and yes, I remember a lot from the Sixties, and yes, I was really there). Dozens of photographers, most of them young, committed themselves long-term to covering one or more aspects of the movement, making their bones by undergoing the same hazards as the demonstrators at the hands of forces of law and order no more sympathetic to the press (which they saw, not wrongly, as biased in favor of “the movement”) than to the activists. These photojournalists frequently got tear-gassed, water-hosed, clubbed, trampled, punched, dragged around, jailed, and worse, receiving, in Mick Jagger’s fine phrase, their “fair share of abuse” alongside their subjects.
Which means, of course, that showing up, carrying a camera, looking the part, and publishing some images provided perfect cover for a secret agent. Inevitably, the revelation that Withers played that role opens a can of worms. If the FBI successfully suborned one photojournalist, it certainly tried to acquire many more as “assets,” and almost surely succeeded with some. That raises the unsettling, heretofore unasked question of how many, and which ones.
The Ernest C. Withers Museum is still scheduled to open at 333 Beale Street in Memphis next month. The Withers family continues to negotiate with the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress over possible acquisition of the bulk of the Withers archive — more than a million photographs made over the course of his 60-year career. (Withers’ daughter Rosalind serves as trustee of the collection.) How this news of his complicity with the F.B.I. will affect public and critical regard for his work I can’t say. The revelation doesn’t invalidate the work he did as a documentarian and photojournalist, but it surely nuances my response to know that he was slipping prints of some of these images, and other documents, and verbal information to his handlers on the sly.
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As that story emerges, here’s another at which we can all be shocked, shocked: On September 14 the government-majority owned Al-Ahram newspaper, based in Cairo, Egypt, published a picture depicting Egyptian strongman President Hosni Mubarak leading U.S. President Barack Obama, Jordanian King Abdullah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a red carpet, with the caption “The route to Sharm Al-Sheikh.” The phrase referred to that day’s Sharm Al-Sheikh peace talks.)
The original photo, taken September 1 and widely published in the west, had Obama leading the group. Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil discovered the altered image had been Photoshopped, swapping Mubarak for Obama at the head of the pack.
According to the CNN report, Al-Ahram Editor-in-Chief Osama Saraya “wrote Friday that the controversial picture was ‘expressive’ and it underscored Egypt’s historic role in the peace process.” (See “Altered photograph in Egyptian newspaper continues to make waves,” September 17, by Ben Wedeman.) And “The expressionist photo is … a brief, live and true expression of the prominent stance of President Mubarak in the Palestinian issue, his unique role in leading it before Washington or any other,” Saraya also wrote. (See AP story, “Al-Ahram newspaper defends doctored photo of Hosni Mubarak.”) Brief? Live? True? I gather these words have substantially different meanings in Arabic than they do in English.
Expressive it surely is — expressive of the fact that Al-Ahram is in the pocket of the Mubarak government, that its main job is to make the 82-year-old Mubarak look good, and that nothing published therein can be trusted as objective journalism. A government-run newspaper creates and publishes a photograph faked to make its aging president look more leader-like . . . Quelle surprise!
Hosni Mubarak (l); Osama Saraya (r).
The real stunner: That, entering the second decade of the 21st century, the editor of an Egyptian newspaper didn’t know that this fraud would get quickly and internationally unmasked. Clearly Egypt needs to increase dramatically its funding of post-secondary journalism programs, since obviously these lag decades behind those of the west. We can assume that EIC Osama Saraya is a government appointee and a yes man, thus presumably secure in his position. But embarrassing public demonstrations of incompetence, such as this one, do sometimes lead to shake-ups. Saraya may opt for early retirement, to spend more time with his family.
Unclear to me why — in a region of the world where government management of the press is widespread — this particular instance should strike a nerve, but it has. The opposition 6 April Youth Movement and the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm, among others, have condemned the deception, and the Middle East blogosphere is having a field day with it. In place of the original page, Al-Ahram has run a story on the switcheroo, which you’ll find here (in Arabic). It shows both versions of the image, presumably with the rationale for the doctoring thereof. I’d consider it ironic if this mild and relatively insignificant instance of photo-fraud — which does not in any meaningful way affect our understanding of important facts — should prompt an ethical upgrade of journalistic practice in that troubled part of the world.
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As a geezer geek whose geekdom extends far enough that I actually write some tech reviews of consumer-end digital products, I’m aware that I’m a step or two ahead of some of my cohort as an adapter of new media. And as a member of the AARP who reads its several publications, with their regular ads for the complete recorded works of Mitch Miller and Dean Martin, I know that some members of the generation before mine never really entered the second half of the 20th century, much less the beginning of the 21st.
Still, I’m perplexed by the new promotional campaign for Vivitar’s 35-mm. film camera, directed by Fred Vanore and produced by Blue Moon Studios. Am I the only one who sees something bizarrely ageist in this blatantly geriatric appeal?
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Geeky I may be in some areas, but I’m not yet up to speed in social networking: no tweets yet. My personal page at Facebook has gotten too big, so I’ve started an FB “Fan” page. You can access it here to join — or click on the Facebook link in the left-hand column.
re Ernest Withers: As a casual demonstration photographer in the late 60’s in Chicago, at one event two detectives from the “Red Squad” tried to recruit me (unsuccessfully).
To try and be charitable to Withers, he may well as a Southern Black Man of the older generation been threatened in ways we cannot know — subjectively or objectively. And we cannot know how he perceived these threats.
On another occasion, I was photographing the Shah of Iran for the U Chicago Mag, and the State Dept. liasson guy ordered me to photograph the student demonstrators — some of whom may now be part of the thuggish current Iranian dictatorship. I told the State Dept (C.I.A.?) guy to fk off and he not only threatened me with this and that, he was deeply shocked at being told to fk off.
A little perspective please.
best, Richard
I wrote, “Did he need the money? Did they have something on him? Was he gaming them by feeding them trivia?” I didn’t condemn Withers; mostly I reported the responses of others, which cover quite a range, from outrage to forgiveness.
As I also wrote, unless he left some message explaining this — his family, apparently, has uncovered nothing in the three years since his passing — we’ll most likely never know his motivation. Of course there may have been mitigating factors. Regardless of that, some take a harsh view of collaborating with those perceived as the enemy.