Withers, Ernest Columbus Sr.
1922-2007 · Contribution: 1948-2007
Photojournalist
Photographed nearly every major event of the Southern civil rights movement over a 60-year career, including the Emmett Till murder trial, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the “I Am a Man” Memphis sanitation strike, while also — as revealed decades after his death — secretly reporting information about the movement to the FBI
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- 1922, Memphis, Tennessee
- Active since
- 1948
- Category
- Press & Photography
- Best known for
- Photographing the Southern civil rights movement, and, secretly, informing on it
Impact on the world
Withers produced some of the movement's most enduring images, even as later revelations of his FBI role complicated, without erasing, the historical value of the photographs themselves.
Sources
- NPR
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