Posted on 09/14/2010 11:35:19 AM PDT by speciallybland
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.
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. informer.
On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two F.B.I. agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement. It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the Original Civil Rights Photographer, whose previous claim to fame had been the trust he engendered among high-ranking civil rights leaders, including Dr. King.
“It is an amazing betrayal,” said Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books about the F.B.I. “It really speaks to the degree that the F.B.I. was able to engage individuals within the civil rights movement. This man was so well trusted.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Whaaaaa?
A “journalist” being two-faced?
Who’d thunk it?
That rat Bobby Kennedy. How could he support the monitoring of such a saint as MLK and such a holy mission as civil rights?
“It is an amazing betrayal,” said Athan Theoharis,
Only in liberal looney land would co operating with the FBI be considered “betrayal.”
I should want to read the whole article, but I don’t have the stamina.
So, what earth-shattering information did this “great betrayer” reveal? That King was unfaithful to his wife? :yawn:
“the civil rights movement”. Oh yeah, the CPUSA agitation and provocation projects.
The ‘civil rights’ movement. One of the biggest frauds ever foisted on America led by one of the biggest phonies of all...MLK.
I love the way leftist organs like the NYT pretend the photographer and FBI (and by extension, J. Edgar Hoover) were the culprits when anyone who reads history knows it was Bobby Kennedy who was behind the order to keep files on MLK and his group.
Perhaps he just wanted too keep the movement focused on its mission, rather than being hijacked and corrupted by communists, who have always had a tendency to do that sort of thing. That would be no betrayal of the movement, though communists would, of course, portray it as such.
Correct. RFK knew that MLK controlled the vote of a core Democrat demographic, and - as an aspirant to the presidency - he wanted continuous updates on who MLK was meeting with and what topics he was discussing.
I don’t think Kennedy was thinking about running that early. Both he and JFK were true anti-Communists and MLK had hardcore connections to the American Left.
He turned a quiet, ancillary government role into a vehicle of celebrity, made sure that he was given credit for counseling and implementing his brother's most popular decisions and was shamelessly campaigning from the beginning.
They were not "true anti-Communists" - they were family friends with Joe McCarthy and hated Castro for obvious, personal reasons.
So, Thurgood Marshall was also an FBI informant!
I'm not saying, had they lived, they wouldn't both have morphed into today's typical Democrats, but 60s Democrats were true anti-Communists.
“It is an amazing betrayal”?
I’m more amused than amazed.
Please.
Everything JFK did was because of his dedication to increasing the Kennedy family's influence and power.
If defeating the Soviets was his sole focus, why did he choose to turn tail in Italy and Turkey instead of taking Cuba?
60s Democrats were true anti-Communists
No they weren't. 60s Democrats gave us the Great Society.
b
The fact remains, this photographer was dispatched by the FBI to monitor the civil rights movement and MLK, on orders given by Bobby Kennedy. If you want to believe it was because he just wanted to run for president at some point, fine, I don't see the correlation, but fine.
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