(CIVIL RIGHTS--MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.) WITHERS, ERNEST. Three Photos, Memphis, April, 1968. Three gelatin silver prints, 8x10; 5x8, and 5x6-3/4 inches. The first captioned Dr. Martin Luther King--Memphis, 'I have been to the Mountaintop and I've seen the promised land.' Withers Studio." The second and third with Withers's stamps or pencil notations on reverse. Memphis, 1968
Ernest Withers (1927-2002) was the preeminent chronicler/photographer of the civil rights movement. He was the only photographer to cover the trial of those accused of killing Emmett Till, a black teenager who was said to have been beaten to death for whistling at a white woman. He also photographed the funeral of Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist who was killed in 1963, and the nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Mr. Withers had the largest catalog of any individual photographer covering the civil rights movement in the South.
