May 07, 2020 - Sale 2534

Sale 2534 - Lot 277

Price Realized: $ 5,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
(KING, MARTIN LUTHER.) [Withers, Ernest; photographer.] I Am A Man, Sanitation Workers Strike. Silver print, 8 x 10 inches; minimal wear, inked stamp on verso. Memphis, TN, 28 March 1968

Additional Details

This iconic photograph is widely credited to the important African-American civil rights photographer Ernest Withers (1922-2007). This period print bears an inked stamp from the day of the event, 28 March 1968--but it is not the stamp of Ernest Withers. It reads "Chief Photographer Mark Stansbury Mar 28 1968." Mark Stansbury had served as an assistant and protégé to Withers in the mid-1960s, before graduating from Tennessee's Lane College in 1966. He was working as the public relations director at the college in 1968 when this photograph was taken. This print is cropped slightly tighter than the more commonly seen later prints by Withers, eliminating a woman who was standing to the left, and several men standing on a sidewalk to the right, for a more symmetrical composition.