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Unfinished

Introducing: Ernie's Secret

Unfinished

SiriusXM

Society & Culture, Documentary, True Crime

4.72.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2022

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story of Ernest C. Withers, an African-American journalist dubbed the "original civil rights photographer" -- who also happened to be an FBI informant. In this third season of Unfinished, co-produced with The E.W. Scripps Company, host and journalist Wesley Lowery (CBS News, Washington Post) brings listeners through a story of dual loyalties, hidden histories and one man caught in the middle. Lowery also provides new perspectives and insights on government overreach, and explores whether Withers was coerced and simply caught up in FBI surveillance during the Civil Rights Movement. New episodes start June 29

Transcript

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0:00.0

The legal citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses to Marlomo and a non-secreted station.

0:08.0

When Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the first desegregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama,

0:13.0

Ernest Withers shot the photo.

0:15.0

The town of Oxford is an armed cannon following riots that accompany the registration of the first Negro in the universities.

0:22.0

And James Meredith integrated Ole Miss. Ernest shot the photo.

0:26.0

Many of the demonstrators are carrying the sign, I am a man.

0:29.0

And when striking black sanitation workers took to the streets in Memphis, it was Ernest who got the picture.

0:35.0

Every time I go to a movement activity, he'd be there.

0:38.0

Every time we had a church rally or something, he'd be there.

0:41.0

Ernest was one of the only people in the crowd with the camera.

0:44.0

His photos didn't just capture history, they helped create it.

0:48.0

Without a picture, we had no movement.

0:50.0

My brother refers to my father's being the Google of his dime.

0:53.0

He was a lot of fun. Everybody knew him and everybody liked him.

0:57.0

But what else was Ernest doing with all of those photos that he was taking?

1:02.0

And what if all of that trust was misplaced?

1:05.0

All the while that Ernie Withers was taking these photos, he was doubling as an FBI informant.

1:12.0

I never thought that anybody would sell their own community out.

1:16.0

And Ernest of all people, Ernest, spying on the movement that he had helped for power.

1:21.0

But why?

1:22.0

They had the power to wipe him out to erase him.

1:25.0

So Ernest made a fool out of law enforcement and fed his children.

...

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