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Title: Know Your Enemy Author: Michael Calderone Date: September 15, 2010 Language: en Topics: FBI, civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. Source: https://voicesofliberation.blogspot.com/2010/09/know-your-enemy-civil-rights.html
Ernest Withers, a revered civil rights photographer who captured iconic
images of Martin Luther King Jr. on the night King was shot in Memphis,
actually played a different role the day before: FBI informant.
The Commercial Appeal, a newspaper in Memphis, just completed a two-year
investigation that reveals how Withers provided the FBI with details
about where King was staying and information on his meeting with black
militants on April 3, 1968 — the day before the assassination.
Withers' spying, however, extends far beyond the slain civil rights
leader.
The Commercial Appeal found FBI reports indicating that Withers
collaborated for years with FBI agents monitoring the civil rights
movement. Those FBI reports, the paper's Marc Perrusquia writes, "reveal
a covert, previously unknown side of the beloved photographer."
Withers is certainly beloved in Memphis, where a namesake museum is
scheduled to open next month. It remains to be seen how these new
revelations may affect Withers' legacy.
The Memphis paper reports how Withers' spying assisted J. Edgar Hoover,
the controversial FBI director who long covertly monitored King and
others considered radicals. Withers, the paper notes, gave the bureau a
"front-row seat to the civil rights and anti-war movements in Memphis."
In the 1960s, he provided information on everyone from the Invaders — a
militant black power group — to church leaders, politicians and business
owners. Experts believe the FBI paid Withers for spying.
D'Army Bailey, a retired Memphis judge and former activist once watched
by the FBI, told the paper that such covert tactics are "something you
would expect in the most ruthless, totalitarian regimes."