Martin Luther King must have imagined that the man with the camera so often at his side was doing no more than recording history. But it has been revealed that Ernest Withers – who was on hand to capture King riding newly desegregated buses and the shock of the civil rights leader's allies immediately after his murder – was also an FBI informer.
The double life of one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era was exposed by the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, which reported that Withers passed on photographs to the FBI along with names and background information about activists and details of schedules.
Withers, who was a police officer before becoming a photographer and died three years ago aged 85, documented the civil rights movement from the beginning, covering pivotal moments such as the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, and the Little Rock school integration showdown. He came to be so familiar and so trusted to King and other leaders that he sat in on strategy meetings.
Records released under a freedom of information request show that from at least 1968, and possibly earlier, he spied on not only black civil rights activists but Catholic priests who supported a Memphis-wide strike by sanitation workers, and political candidates, recording car number plates for the FBI.
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