Withers, Ernest C., 1922-2007

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Photojournalist Ernest C. Withers was born on August 7, 1922, in Memphis, Tennessee. Withers got his start as a military photographer while serving in the South Pacific during World War II. Upon returning to a segregated Memphis after the war, Withers chose photography as his profession.

In the 1950s, Withers helped spur the movement for equal rights with a self-published photo pamphlet on the Emmitt Till murder. Over the next two decades, Withers formed close personal relationships with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, and James Meredith. Withers's pictures of key civil rights events from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the strike of Memphis sanitation workers are historic. Indeed, Withers was often the only photographer to record these scenes, many of which were not yet of interest to the mainstream press.

Withers photographed more than the southern Civil Rights Movement. Whether Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and other Negro League baseball players, or those jazz and blues musicians who frequented Memphis' Beale Street, Withers photographed the famous and not-so famous. Withers's collection includes pictures of early performances of Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.

In his more than sixty-year career, Withers accumulated a collection of an estimated five million photographs; his works appeared in The New York Times, Jet, Ebony, Newsweek, and Life and were featured in touring exhibits and shows around the country. For his life's work, Withers was elected to the Black Press Hall of Fame and received an honorary doctorate from the Massachusetts College of Art.

Withers and his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Curry, raised eight children.

Ernest C. Withers passed away on Monday, October 15, 2007 at the age of eighty-five.

From The HistoryMakers™ biography: https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/A2003.147

Archival Resources
Role Title Holding Repository
referencedIn Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South Records, 1940-1997 and undated, (bulk 1993-1997) David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
referencedIn Withers, Ernest C. : [miscellaneous ephemeral material]. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library
creatorOf Withers, Ernest C., 1922-2007. Artist file : miscellaneous uncataloged material. Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
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creatorOf The HistoryMakers Video Oral History with Ernest Withers The HistoryMakers
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associatedWith Behind the Veil Project Oral History Project corporateBody
Place Name Admin Code Country
Memphis (Tenn.)
Memphis (Tenn.)
Subject
Occupation
Photojournalist
Activity

Person

Birth 1922-08-07

Death 2007-10-15

Birth 19220807

Death 20071015

Americans

English

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