Stansbury Publishes Book of Exclusive Photos

Markhum L. “Mark” Stansbury Sr. captures history
in new book. Courtesy photo.

Not many photographers living today have in their possession a trove of never-before-seen historic photographs of history-makers covering more than 50 years. 

Markhum L. “Mark” Stansbury Sr. does. In his newly published book titled “Through the Lens of Mark Stansbury,” the photographer captured some of the most intriguing images of notables and some not-so-famous people from the 1960s to 2010.

Published by GrantHouse Publishers (December 2021), the 132-page hardcover book is no doubt a keepsake of black and white photographs of legendary civil rights leaders, entertainers, business magnates, sports figures, politicians, educators and more. 

Jimmy Carter, Julian Bond, Lena Horne, Lyndon B. Johnson, Marin Luther King Jr., Michael Jackson, Coach Larry Finch, Elvis Presley, Bill Clinton, Benjamin L. Hooks, The Beatles, Barack Obama, James Brown, Carla Thomas, Bair T. Hunt, and others.

Dr. Shirley Raines, president emerita of the University of Memphis (2001 to 2013), where Stansbury worked as her special assistant, joins the cadre of notables in the book as well.

“Whether on assignment or with a sense of where history was being made, Mark seized opportunities to use his camera to record history or to celebrate life…,” Raines wrote.

Stansbury noted in the book’s introduction that he used several different cameras during his career to photograph his subjects: the Yashica, a Japanese-manufactured camera; the Roliflex, a high-end camera originally manufactured by a German company; and the Nikon-F 35mm, Nikon’s first SLR camera.

No matter the brand, it was Stansbury’s critical eye and his instinct for capturing history in real time that set him apart from his contemporaries. In fact, one would need a critical eye to get the best shot.

Ekpe Obioto, a musician extraordinaire known for playing the djimbe drum and kalimba (thumb piano), is aware of Stansbury’s critical eye for taking the right shot and encouraged him to publish a book of his exclusive photos.

Stansbury made Obioto a promise during a visit to M.J. Edwards Funeral Home in 2020 to pay respect to the late Fred L. Davis, a civil rights leader, politician, founder of the first Black-owned insurance company, and their friend.

“I’m going to do it,” he told Obioto. 

Stansbury said he initially thought about publishing a book a decade ago but was super busy working at the University of Memphis, WDIA AM 1070 Radio Station, where he’s been a longtime radio personality, and LeMoyne-Owen College.

Much of what Stansbury was able to do with the camera derived from his connection to the late civil rights photojournalist Ernest C. Withers, who captured racial tumult in the South. 

Stansbury was inspired. He met Withers once as a young budding photographer but decided he’d write to the noted photojournalist to ask if he could take him under his tutelage as an apprentice.

He’d worked weekends at WDIA AM 1070, the first radio station in the country with all-black programming. In 1959, the station sent him to a journalism conference at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo.

“I always wanted to go to the University of Memphis (then-Memphis State University),” he said, “but that was never to be.”

Lincoln University was the alternative because of its journalism department. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1960 but could no longer attend the university.

“I knew I was going to drop out and I always wanted to be in college,” said Stansbury, deciding then to contact Withers, who agreed to mentor him.

“He taught me a lot. I learned how to process film in his darkroom,” he said. “When he would go out of town, I would run the office for him. When he was in town, sometimes I would go and shoot pictures for him.”

Over lunch one day, Stansbury said Withers thought of ways to get him back in school. He said Withers talked to Thaddeus Stokes, then-editor of the Tri-State Defender, as well as AC “Moohaw” Williams and Nat D. Williams, both popular radio personalities at WDIA.

“Each one of them wrote a letter on my behalf (to the president of Lane College, the Rev. Dr. Chester Arthur Kirkendoll),” said Stansbury, who would go on to matriculate at the historically black college in Jackson, TN.

While attending Lane College, Stansbury served as a photojournalist for the Tri-State Defender, Jet Magazine, and EbonyMagazine. He would go on work as a news anchor and has been a popular gospel radio personality at WDIA for more than 60 years.

“Through the Lens of Mark Stansbury” is the photographer’s contribution to photojournalism and the world at-large.

Perhaps there’s a little of Ernest C. Withers in Markhum L. “Mark” Stansbury Sr.

The book retails for $29.95. For more information or to order copies, contact the photographer at mstnsbry@gmail.comor by phone at 901-270-3780. 

The hunt for Ernest Withers’ informant files

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.”