NYTimes: Civil Rights Photographer Unmasked as Informant

herzundseele:

ATLANTA — That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am a Man” signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, Dr. King’s room, on the night he was assassinated.

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Ernest C. Withers courtesy Smithsonian Institution

Withers’ 1961 photograph, “Colored Waiting Room, Memphis Greyhound Bus Terminal.”

But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era: He was a paid F.B.I. informant.

Who do you trust?