Civil rights-era photographer Withers doubled as FBI mole

http://www.scrippsnews.com/content/civil-rights-era-photographer-withers-doubled-fbi-mole

http://www.commercialappeal.com/photos/galleries/2010/sep/11/ernest-withers-files/

A veteran freelancer for America's black press, Ernest Withers was known as "the original civil rights photographer," an insider who'd covered it all, from the Emmett Till murder that jump-started the movement in 1955 to the Little Rock school crisis, the integration of Ole Miss, to the 1968 sanitation strike that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis and his death.

Hours after a sniper shot King on the Lorraine Motel balcony, Withers slipped past a police barricade and walked into room 306 -- King's room. Ralph Abernathy and others hardly blinked. After all, Withers had marched with King and sat in on some of the movement's strategy meetings.

Withers' camera captured the scene:

Bernard Lee, tie undone, looking weary yet fiery.

Andrew Young raising his palm to keep order.

The grief-stricken aides photographed by Withers on April 4, 1968, had no clue that he was an FBI informant -- evidence of how far the agency went to spy on private citizens in Memphis during one of the nation's most volatile periods.

Withers shadowed King the day before his murder, snapping photos and telling agents about a meeting the civil rights leader had with suspected black militants.

He later divulged details gleaned at King's funeral in Atlanta, reporting that two Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers blamed for an earlier Beale Street riot planned to return to Memphis "to resume ... support of sanitation strike" -- to stir up more trouble, as the FBI saw it.

The April 10, 1968, report, which identifies Withers only by his confidential informant number -- ME 338-R -- is among numerous reports reviewed by The Commercial Appeal that reveal a covert, previously unknown side of the beloved photographer who died in 2007 at age 85.

Those reports portray Withers as a prolific informant who, from at least 1968 until 1970, passed on tips and photographs about the civil rights and anti-war movements in Memphis.

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