(RNN) - Dr. Martin Luther King stared out the window of a packed bus as the Rev. Ralph Abernathy sat beside him looking straight into the camera.
The year was 1956, and the two black men were aboard one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, AL. The black and white photo is one of many iconic civil rights moments captured by Ernest Withers.
Withers was there with his camera when of hundreds of sanitation workers assembled in front of the Clayborn Temple in Memphis, TN in 1968, while holding "I am a man" placards. King is not visible in the photo, taken at what would be his last march.
Withers, an African American known as "the original civil rights photographer,“ had front line access to the movement. He captured many important moments through the 1950s and '60s, including the trial of Emmett Till's alleged killer, J. W. Milam, in Mississippi and King's assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
Withers also was a paid FBI informant.
The Memphis Commercial Appeal broke the story in 2010, years after the death of Withers in 2007.
Marc Perrusquia, a reporter at the newspaper and author of, "A Spy In Canaan," which chronicles Withers, said the photographer supplied information to FBI agents in the '60s.
Withers would forward biographical information, scheduling details, photographs and other notes to FBI agents who worked out of Memphis. His unique FBI number was ME 338-R.
Wither’s motivation is not known, but some speculate the father of eight children needed to support them. He was a former police officer, which may indicate loyalty to law enforcement.
The FBI tracked King’s every move. The agency, led by J. Edgar Hoover, was trying to see if the reverend was under the influence of the communists.
Hoover's disdain for King went as far as wiretaps, which revealed King's messy personal life and a number of affairs. The agency tracked King and his associates by bugging their offices and homes.
An FBI report declassified in 2017 claimed King participated in an "orgy" with prostitutes, while another alleged he told a joke about John F. Kennedy's assassination. Professor Clayborne Carson, the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, said the unverified claims were part of the smear campaign Hoover engaged in against King.
The FBI also delivered an anonymous letter to King which said, "The American public ... will know you for what you are - an evil, abnormal beast," and "Satan could not do more."
The full scope of the the law enforcement agency's surveillance of civil rights activists has never been publicly revealed.
Copyright 2018 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
