Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 13)
Former Memphis resident and popular historian Preston Lauterbach puts a new focus on that city’s Civil Rights-era story–including that of critical events that led to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.–in his newest book, Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers.
Although Withers’ story has been relatively little-known since he made his mark on photojournalism covering some significant events of that time, the bigger picture of his life included his secret undercover work for the FBI at the same time.
While describing the emotions and culture of Memphis during the 1950s and 60s, Lauterbach explains the complicated life that Withers led, and why his dual roles as journalist and spy were not necessarily a betrayal of his beliefs at the time.
Lauterbach’s narrative brings both questions and answers to the ways in which everyday citizens navigated the reality of a new era–sometimes through divergent and challenging paths.
Preston Lauterbach
A former visiting scholar at Rhodes College and a Virginia Humanities Fellow, Lauterbach earned an MFA in Southern Studies from the University at Mississippi in 2003. He calls his time at Ole Miss “by far the most important educational experience to building my career, figuring out what I’m interested in, and learning how to listen, find sources, and tell a story.”
Lauterbach’s previous books include The Chitlin’ Circuit, a Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe book of the year; and Beale Street Dynasty. Today he calls the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia home.
I’ll start with asking the same question you began with on the flap of your book Bluff City: The Secret Life of Ernest Withers: Who was Ernest Withers?
He’s best known as a photojournalist of the civil rights movement. He worked freelance for the largest African-American newspapers, chiefly the Chicago Defender. He ended up covering the major stories in the South from the Emmett Till murder trial and Montgomery Bus Boycott in the mid-1950s, through the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis.
One of the major episodes of Withers’ career took place in Jackson. He covered the funeral of Medgar Evers in 1963. During the disturbance that broke out on Farish Street, after the funeral, Withers was beaten and arrested. He had been taking pictures of the clash between police and mourners. A police officer confiscated his film and destroyed it. He pursued a First Amendment case against the Jackson police, seemingly with tacit encouragement from the Kennedy White house, but the FBI seems to have quashed it.
How did Withers and his story come to your attention, and why did you decide to write a book about it?
I was working on a book about the history of Beale Street in Memphis when the news came out about Withers having worked for the FBI during his years covering the (civil rights) movement. The Withers studio was located on Beale during the 1950s and ’60s, and he’d been a cop on the Beale Street beat in the ’40s. He’d seen everyone from Elvis to Dr. King come through Beale, and so he emerged as the most compelling character to tell the story through.
Every book I’ve done starts off one way and ends up going in all sorts of different directions once I get going, so this one isn’t strictly about Beale, but I can’t ask for a more colorful setting or more compelling cast of characters.
What are some events or themes that Withers’ body of photojournalistic work is best known for?
His work hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and the National Civil Rights Museum. Withers boarded one of the first integrated city buses in Montgomery and photographed a young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to make King an icon.
Withers also took some tremendous photographs of Elvis Presley. There’s still some debate about whether Elvis was racist. Withers said, emphatically, no. Withers tailed Elvis on Beale Street during the singer’s earliest days and observed how Elvis interacted with African-American people. Withers came away impressed with the respect and humility Presley carried himself with. This character trait really shows up in Withers’ pictures of Elvis with B.B. King. And by the way, it was a highly risky PR move for Elvis to pose with an African-American man on equal terms in 1956, when challenges to segregation were causing major turmoil in this country.
Do you believe Withers felt “compromised” working in his dual roles as a photojournalist and an informant for the FBI? His was a complicated situation.
I don’t believe that he felt compromised. One of the challenges of this story is seeing past the shocking headline that this civil rights icon secretly worked for the hated J. Edgar Hoover, and reading the facts.
Many of Withers’ case files have become available, thanks to Memphis reporter Marc Perrusquia, who broke the story and had the documents declassified. To me, it becomes clear that Withers had a rapport with his FBI handler, and through their relationship, Withers acted as a mediator or translator, in many cases, for the Beale Street community. He explained to the Bureau what groups like the Nation of Islam–a target of Hoover–were really up to, and successfully kept the heat off. Withers was an NAACP lifetime member and came from a long line of military veterans, and so he was against the presence of Communists in the movement, which aligned with the FBI reasons for investigating civil rights groups.
He acted also as a threat gauge, judging the likelihood of groups to engage in violence. But, you can’t get involved with the Hoover FBI without getting wrapped up in some fishy stuff, and Withers certainly did.
Explain Withers’ role in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and demonstration in spring 1968, and how that day’s activities compelled Martin Luther King, Jr., to return to Memphis a week later, where he was assassinated.
Withers took one of his most famous pictures on March 28, 1968, the I AM A MAN photo, that shows the striking sanitation workers displaying signs with that iconic slogan. He helped make those signs, by providing the lumber for signposts. Those posts became weapons during the march that King led that day in Memphis, in the hands of a lot of younger demonstrators.
King had never led a march that turned violent from within. He vowed to change his schedule and return to Memphis to prove that a peaceful demonstration could be held there. He needed this both for the strike and his own reputation. No one at the time knew that Withers was on the Bureau payroll, and so his involvement with the photo props that became riot weapons has eluded attention until now.
Ultimately, how do you look back on Withers’ life and career, and why do you call him a “flawed hero’?
He had a talent for getting himself into very sticky situations. Both his time as a police officer and a state liquor board member were scandal-shortened. He’s got cojones. That makes him a highly interesting figure, but also prone to trouble. His heroism is a bigger part of his life, having braved the South in the 1950s and ’60s, to show America what was happening down here. He was beaten, arrested, and threatened with death for doing his job, and he did it anyway.
What can we all learn from the tangled and intriguing story of this African American man who had a birds-eye view of some of the nation’s biggest news stories, and who some apparently viewed as a traitor on both sides?
If we’re to really get something out of history, and I think this applies to the present as well, we can’t oversimplify our understandings of each other and say, well he’s black, therefore he can only be pro-civil rights in this one acceptable manner or else he’s a scoundrel. There are good, important people who are torn between opposing forces, or, in courageously attempting to bring those forces nearer together, they risk their livelihoods, reputations, and lives. And, we can’t judge a person’s role in history entirely on what we know now.
You have authored two previous books (Beale Street Dynasty and The Chitlin’ Circuit) that are also in the narrative or historic journalism genre. What drew you to this type of writing, and do you have another book project on the horizon at this time?
I love research most of all, but research itself doesn’t pay, so writing narrative history emerged as the best way to fund my research habit. It’s still costly, but I have something to show for it.
My next project is either top secret, or I haven’t figured out yet what to do. I have a Withers figure in my life, alluded to in the introduction to Bluff City. My grandfather was involved with intelligence. He was the person I admire most and pattern myself after, and yet he’s also the biggest mystery in my life. I’ve reached a point where I need to and want to answer my questions about his role in history, and I have some ideas about where to look.
Preston Lauterbach will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, January 16, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Bluff City. Bluff City is Lemuria’s January 2019 selection for our First Editions Club for Nonfiction.
Comments are closed.