Ernest Withers, the most important photographer in Memphis history and one of the most significant documentary photographers of the American civil rights era, had his studio near where you now walk. Withers had a studio on Beale Street for decades and spent his career photographing the full texture of Black life in Memphis: the musicians on Beale Street, the crowds at Stax concerts, the athletes and the preachers and the ordinary citizens. But he is most celebrated for his civil rights photography.
He was present at the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the integration of Little League baseball in the South, the murder trial of Emmett Till's killers, and the Memphis Sanitation Strike. His photographs of sanitation workers holding 'I Am a Man' signs are among the most iconic images of the entire civil rights movement. In 2010, after Withers's death, it was revealed that he had for years been an informant for the FBI, feeding information on civil rights leaders to the bureau.
The revelation shattered many who loved his work and complicated his legacy in ways that remain unresolved. Withers left us the most complete visual record of a movement — and carried a secret that complicates every image he made.