The body of work that the late Ernest C.
Withers had amassed during his ennobled career as a civil rights photographer
brought him a measure of fame, and suspicion, too, after the news broke in 2010
that he secretly supplied the FBI with information and photographs of
stakeholders in the movement.
On Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, U.S. District Court
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, in a response to a lawsuit filed by The Commercial
Appeal, which broke the story, “officially confirmed” that Withers had been
informant ME 338-R.
The judge’s ruling came 14 months after the
newspaper filed a suit against the FBI in November 2010 in hopes of forcing the
FBI to release Withers’ informant files. The government still hasn’t confirmed
whether Withers was a paid informant or not.
The initial report and repeated coverage of
Withers’ suspected clandestine involvement with the FBI, from at least 1968 to
1970, produced a shockwave that reverberated around the world. In this latest
episode of the newspaper’s hunt for Withers’ FBI files, the judge’s ruling
barely registers on the Richter scale. Does anybody care?
Withers is still
viewed by many as the kingpin of civil rights photography. The recent
revelation, however, has done little to diminish his legacy. The overwhelming
consensus is that the tens of thousands of powerful images that he snapped with
his film camera did more to shed light on the tumultuous era rather than the
information he is suspected of supplying the FBI.
Did Withers
rendezvous with the FBI or not? Jackson’s ruling did not convince Rosalind
Withers-Guzman one iota that her father supplied information to the FBI. In
fact, she’s resolved to build upon the legacy that he’d bequeathed his family
and over one million of enduring images that he left to posterity.
“The allegations have been around for a long time.
That’s no different than what was stated before,” Withers-Guzman, president
and board chairman of the museum and trustee of the Ernest C. Withers Trust, said
about Jackson’s ruling. Last year in February, months after the news
broke, the Withers family opened the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery, 333
Beale St., to preserve the history of their father’s work.
“Whether my father was an FBI informant or not,
I really don’t know,” said Withers-Guzman. “I can only look at what they
investigate. The thing that is not properly represented is a major concern for
me: Communicating with the FBI was a standard back then, a protocol. He was
following the leadership at that time. He wasn’t trying to do something to harm
the movement, which they’re alluding to.”
Withers-Guzman said she has a problem with the whole
shebang. “I personally think they really want to cause disdain so that the
record of work my father left behind will be tarnished,” she said. “No one has
the evidence of our past more than Ernest Withers. He has 60 years of history
covering five categories in an indebt way.”
Withers died in 2007 at age 85.
Withers-Guzman said she wouldn’t have known what
to do “if I didn’t have the quarterback,” a reference to a Jan. 26, 2012,
premiere showing of “Quarterback: A Documentary on Dr. Ernest Withers” at the
museum and gallery. The short film depicts Withers’ life of work through the
eye of his camera.
Whatever is
gleaned from the judge’s ruling and the newspaper’s insistence on tracking
Withers’ files doesn’t negate the fact that Withers was the quintessential
civil rights photographer, Withers-Guzman said, whose photos remain an integral
part of history.
“They use my father’s work as a benchmark,” she
said. “Our history is in black and white. And no one else has that.”
