Podcasts News Reveal The Double Life of a Civil Rights Icon

The Double Life of a Civil Rights Icon

Published: Jan. 14, 2023, 5 a.m.

Some of the most enduring photos of the civil rights movement were taken by Ernest Withers. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Withers earned the trust of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders. But as it turns out, he was secretly taking photos for the federal government as well. This week, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wesley Lowery brings us the story of Withers in an adaptation of the podcast \u201cUnfinished: Ernie\u2019s Secret,\u201d from Scripps News and Stitcher.

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Lowery starts by explaining how Withers earned his reputation as a chronicler of the civil rights movement. We tour a museum of Withers\u2019 photographs with his daughter Roz, who deconstructs his famous \u201cI Am a Man\u201d photo of striking sanitation workers. Civil rights leader Andrew Young explains that without Withers\u2019 photographs, they wouldn\u2019t have had a movement.

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We then learn that after Withers\u2019 death, a Memphis reporter named Marc Perrusquia followed up on an old lead about the photographer: that he was secretly working for the FBI. Perrusquia gained access to thousands of reports and photos taken for the FBI by Withers. We hear excerpts from several reports and meet the daughter of the agent who recruited Withers. During the 1950s, \u201960s and \u201970s, the bureau recruited thousands of informants as part of a covert program originally created to monitor communists in America but ended up targeting the civil rights movement, as well as other individuals and groups.\xa0

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We close with reflections on Withers by people who knew him. While some believe Withers betrayed the cause of civil rights, others are more forgiving. They say his actions were part of a larger narrative about the U.S. government\u2019s unchecked power to spy on its own citizens and extinguish ideas and movements it felt were a threat.\xa0

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