full schedule is available on our website booktv.org. >> this year book tv marks our 20th year - bringing you the country's top nonfiction authors and latest books. find us every weekend on c-span2 or online at booktv.org. .. .. discussion on civil rights activist. becoming an informant for the fbi. the mac i have one right there. welcome. we are here at the public library. welcome on behalf of the national public library.

we are excited that each of you came out this morning on this beautiful fall morning to join us for a conversation that we started about 35 minutes ago. we have to catch you up to where we are. i am joined by two esteemed journalists. one, adam parker and mark. both of these men are journalists and scholars in their own right. we will take some time sharing and some hidden narratives. one will chronicle the life of an iconic photographer that many of us have seen the images. he will debunk some of those myths. the others will reintroduce a hidden figure in history and give us an idea on why we think he should be on the platform with every other civil rights icon. i will start by introducing our journalist. they will tells a little bit

about who they are. we will have organic conversation, if that works for everyone here. >> good morning. i am adam parker. i don't know if i am in a steam journalist, but i ever share. about 12 years or so ago, i covered for the courier, i work for the newspaper of the orangeburg massacre. who has heard of the orangeburg massacre? of you. that is impressive. most people don't know about it. wait until you hear what happens i met doctor sellers. cleveland sellers. caught up in the orangeburg massacre. the only one who went to jail. paid a big price for it. he was skate coded.

i did it again the following year. i got to know him a little bit. i got to know this important episode in civil rights history. and then a friend of mine, jack bass, who was a reporter in the 60s and 70s for the charlotte observer and the new york times and others into covered the orangeburg massacre as it was happening, he suggested i write a profile. a good friend and advocate. at that point, knowing what i knew, i agreed happily. doctor sellers agreed happily. we got together and i wrote a big long profile. it ran on for subsequent some days. east chapter -- each chapter 10.

i pitched the idea of the book. i wrote this book. sellers is mostly known for the orangeburg massacre by those that know about the orangeburg massacre which is very few people. what happened in 1968 was the students on the campus of south carolina state college in orangeburg protested, segregated the bowling alley. sellers was there. his sncc days. a leader in the organization. by 1968, his leadership was waning. he was sick and tired of it. he was looking to change his life. he thought he would go back to school. he thought he would come back home. he lived in denmark.

about a half an hour away. he did not like the idea of the kids protesting the idea of the segregated tolling alley. that was so 1962. it is time to focus on bigger and better. we have bigger fish to fry. he was not too enthusiastic about it. the students protesting this bowling alley and becoming increasingly frustrated. this led on the air day to a very violent event on campus. the national guard had been cold in. the town was on lockdown. a group of students, a large group of students on campus, unarmed fired upon for buckshot. not birdshot. cleve sellers was there trying to rescue people who had been shot. he got shot in the armpit.

of course he was fingered as the outside agitator as the sncc activist who came into orangeburg to stir up trouble. basically home for him. he was nodded out writer at all. this was one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights movement. the biography needed to span his whole life. i wanted to put the massacre in context, if you well. it was part and parcel. not just of his life experience.

the civil rights experience in general. the orangeburg massacre always this isolated thing. it is part of the continuum of the fight. explain all the rest. the daily newspaper in memphis. the university of memphis. they just started there.

let me tell you little bit about my experience. a show of hands. about half. ernest withers was probably one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. most people had never heard of it. he took some of the seminal pictures moving forward. starting from the very dawn of the movement with the trial of the killers on through the memphis sanitation. the two men on trial. the two that came down from chicago. the mississippi delta.

abducted from his home in the middle of the night. authorities knew exactly who had done it. whether others were involved. the two main perpetrators, they were put on trial. they were acquitted. 1955 in mississippi. during the trial, ernest was put off to the side. the black press. they call that the negro press. white press front and center. they were off to the side. a card table. some of the big names of african-american journalists. ernest was there taking pictures for the chicago defender.

the judge had for bid any photography. the judge defied the order. who emmett was staying with. he was there the night that emmett was abducted tiered he was on the stand. the prosecutors asked him to identify the defendant. those rights stood up and pointed at them. identified him. taking this fabulous picture. if you google it, you can find it. ernest was always hustling a living. he had eight kids that he was raising. a big family. a studio photographer. a lot of times he would sell his film on the spot to other news

media. if you google this, i think, i believe one of these big corporations owning the rights. he did this sort of thing over and over and over again. he was a freelance news photographer. within striking distance. writing one of the first down there. it is a striking photo, too. the composition of it is just fantastic. everything is reversed around.

almost like a norman rockwell painting. the moment it is caught, everyone is oblivious to the revolutionary moment. businessman underway. it is a wonderful picture. he did this time and time again. he covered the integration and 62. the crisis in 1967. the assassination in 1963. doctor king's assassination in 1968. ernest, you know, famous within certain circles. in his own right. toward the end of his life. he began doing books. he never realized any real money out of this. he was quite well known within

the moment. the first original civil rights photographer. also the eyes and ears of the movement because of all the wonderful pictures. my book and my long project, looking into this life, revealing this other side. ernest had secretly been working for the fbi for years. pictures and oral intelligence and getting paid for it. it all started -- it is interesting we have a lot of journalists writing history now. >> somebody's gotta do it. >> somebody's gotta do it. a lot of these stories sitting there. you've got to roll up your sleeves. i was in newspaper investigation

it started, it went and starts and stops over long time. i first heard about ernest working for the fbi way back in 1987. james earl ray hit the convicted assassin of king. a lot of stories being flooded around. telling me the story of ernest withers. he had work as an informant. he knew everybody. he was valuable to them. they wanted to know a-the who was who. all of these movements. it was the peace movements.

the civil rights movement. the cold war and the fbi. the government at-large was freaked out. the threat to communism and soviet union. they thought they were looking -- everybody was under supervision. he had been a police officer in memphis as well. he knew everybody. he could give them identification photos. give them home addresses. names of relatives. where they worked. who they associated with. on and on and on. this evolved over a long period of time. it was not until ernest died in 2007. really starting to get into it.

a freedom of information act request. that is a long story in and of it self the fbi thought is four years on this. we wound up suing them. even though there is a law, it allows the government to literally lie about informants. they can tell you this person is not an informant. we were able to reveal this. we had a sympathetic judge. we had good lawyers. all of these documents. you can find them online now, too. >> thinking about where we placed both of these men in the context of these larger narratives. this shifting paradigm. what we built it to be. referring to this time.

where we have placed both of these. talk to us just a little bit, if you you don't mind, about this whole idea. >> right. >> he became this shadow in the back until he became a target. talk to us about that idea. we know the connection to both of these men. the change of leadership. national connection here. talk to us about outside agitator. you referred to mr. withers as being an inside name. talk to us about the outside vmax nick itself was a little bit behind the scenes. nick was his grassroots organization that very early on decided to launch voter registration campaigns in mississippi.

going down there and started recruiting other people and students volunteered and so on. it sort of culminated in 1964 with the mississippi freedom summer. nick itself operated somewhat quietly and behind the scenes. within snack, the administration , nobody really, it was very decentralized in a way, for the most part. there was a chairman that is usually the talking head. john lewis was chairman for a while. they were sort of the faith of the organization. getting involved in 1963. the democratic convention which was really a watershed moment.

a turning point in the movement and the democratic party and in black history in america. a merging as a leader. still nobody really knew who he was. elected program manager. he was like the number three guy in the organization. he literally stood behind. look at the pictures inside the book. you will see that. he's always in the second row or the third row. there he is right behind. he is always there. a little bit in the background. he wanted to be in the background. he was kind of a bureaucrat in a way. until he wasn't. until he resisted the draft. and went to jail and got headlines in the newspapers for being one of the early draft resisters during the vietnam war

he would get arrested all the time. very interesting. they were so ahead of the curve. they were protesting in the early 50s. we didn't know about it till the 80s when reagan -- way ahead. they were protesting neocolonialism and palestine. supporting the palestinian. losing a lot of support as a result of that. they were issuing white papers left and right. they were just kind of quasi- intellectual act to this grassroots roll up your sleeves commit for the long time. they did not often times garner headlines. not in the same way as sclc. there is that.

the orangeburg massacre came along and that really put cleve in the headlines. but, not really. the orangeburg massacre was kind of suppressed. misreported by the associated press a little bit. and then other things started to overshadow it. these were black students on the black college campus. who cares. can state came along and that completely captured everybody's imagination. in the meantime, orangeburg was worse. sort of fell into the margins of history for too long. still remained there. bring these figures out from the shadows. talking about the heroes and the

sheer rose of the movement. the civil rights movement never would've happened at all if it was not for all of these other people doing the work which is not to take anything away from martin luther king who was incredible. but, it is very important to start recognizing some of these other people. that is what is happening now. this current generation of scholars and journalists into the dorian are starting to shine a light into the crevices and into the corners onto the secondary figures to/out the movement. still quite a lot of work to be done before we fully appreciate the civil rights movement and its impact. a previous paradigm.

we have also done this by making the only two or three generations grew up knowing. mark, i want to talk about how was he able to literally infiltrate and still do his job as a photographer. we cannot question his integrity or ethics. the national chapter is fascinating. jim lawson. still turn over those same and files. what happened after these iconic leaders realize what was going on. >> ernest was able to do this because of who he was.

everybody knew him within the movement. he was always part of the group. he just knew them all. the domestic intelligence recognizing the value very early on. 1961. the nation of islam open a mosque there. very eye-opening. religion in music that propelled them. how ernest was able to do it and

do it without some ethical twinge. basically, well, the financial part. he was paid. scores of different kinds of context. they consider various levels of performers. a small rate of direct informants paid for his photographs. paid for his oral intelligence. he had a big family. he had eight children. a big motivation for them. ideology as well. ernest was older than many of the people. he was a world war ii veteran that fought in pacific peter. a patriotic individual. more when it came to the peace unit. the demonstrations against the vietnam war, he did not go for those things at all. coming out against the war. we look at the vietnam war.

in its day, most americans, americans, most african americans supported the war. the movement fighting to become more militant in the early 60s. a lot of the direct action. more conservative older people in the movement who were very lucky to get into that sort of thing. i think it is a good case study. i think, i am turning new ground there is a lot of fertile ground in there for others to come in and look at. the leadership, a lot of good champions for civil rights in this leadership. nonetheless, more conservative combination mindset. they had a mutual interest with the fbi. the white that is quote as a whole.

they didn't want the unrest that happens. they wanted a more steady gradual course. that's what they wanted to take. ernest really was not that different. naacp guy. the memphis movement was ran. >> did he even see, did he think of it as a conflict of interest? >> i don't inc. so. particularly the more militant part was a younger group of people. he was good friends with james lawson. he did not agree with what lawson was doing. you know the story of jim lawson kind of the father of the freedom writer movement. national sit in movement. trying to integrate public accommodations here.

the seminal movement. the epicenter here in nashville. doing direct. he spent time in india. he was kicked out of vanderbilt. he finished community school and came back down south. settled in memphis. the naacp leadership there. always trying to keep them at arms length. ernest had made a comment about them at one point. in a history book that he did.

he thought that jim lawson was egocentric. out for himself and stirring up a lot of agitating. he kicked back a lot of information over the years. when i went through all of these reports. forty-eight different incidents. a lot of this stuff is pretty amazing. how broad the intelligence operation was. the congressional committee in the 1970s was the broad scope of these domestic intelligence investigations. the fbi's report. it was like a vacuum cleaner. all these pieces of information. kicking back things like the fbi

agents. a sermon the other day in the church. details about his family. his involvement. trying to train young men and ways to dodge the draft. either legally or extra- legally lawson did not agree with the vietnam war. he did not agree with war in general. going to prison in the early 50s. he did not register for the draft. i think it was an ideological difference there. a point about what adam was saying about him breaking new ground in getting into these movements. kind of the broad arc of domestic intelligence operations at the fe i was running in this

country in the 60s and 70s, we've we've known that for years. investigative communities. the church committee was a big one. we don't know -- this is the thing. people are going back and trying to dig in. who were these informers. the fbi has protected these identities. i talked about this earlier. their ability to lie about informants. something called the foia exclusions. people generally know about foia exemptions. getting an fbi report. certain information and consideration of violation and national security. the exclusions of the fbi allow them to take whole batches of information. particularly about informants.

they do not have to dive old the identity. they protect them even after they are dead. if they would review the identity of the informant, they believe it would inhibit their ability to recruit new informants. they make a promise to protect their identity forever. it makes it very difficult a lot of time to figure out who would. what were their resources and what were their methods. this is a new ground of discovery that i am on and i know some others are as well. >> can i just chime in? it's interesting because there is a little bit of overlap between the two books. i want to make a couple of quick observations. one is, i would argue that the fbi was, in general, concerned about communism and all of these

movements. all of these dissident movements when it came to the black freedom movement, it was more than just that. clearly, a racist element to it. there was an effort to do more than just disrupt. there was an effort to destroy, actually. there were assassinations committed. it was really ugly. the sncc people, by the mid 60s, as they emerge from atlantic city and the convention there having been betrayed by the democratic party and rejected the democratic party in the status quo which then sort of morphed into black power, the fbi free out.

it was not just let's try to disrupt this dissident movement, they freak out. the sncc people knew that there were informants among them by 66, 67, 68. they knew, they knew that sitting in their small, sometimes small meetings, somebody was speeding information to the fbi. there was a small network of informants. black-and-white. many african americans. working with the fbi at the time. it would be fascinating to further research that and uncover who they were and how they function and what they did. a lot of people very suspicious. cleve knew. the fbi file is about 3 inches.

they must be, i don't know. forget it. basically the fbi file was in large part a consequence of the fbi tracking stokely. anyway. another point i wanted to make was the size of the movement. it was actually kind of small when you think about it. we were talking about the older generation. and how they were relatively more conservative. they were little more timid. anxious about this direct action phase of the civil rights movement. they were very comfortable with that. cleve's own father and mother did not want them to do this stuff. his father wrote this letter. come home and not dead, please. there was a generational divide

there. very significant. it points to the fact, i think, the leaders of the direct action phase of the civil rights movement, 1960s, fundamentally were very courageous. they understood that they were literally putting their lives at risk. not just their lives, but other people's lives. we talked about this in the book talked about going to mississippi in 1964. after the three civil rights workers were murdered. i am responsible. not just for trying to get people to vote, but if i get people to sign up to vote, their house will be firebombed. that is on me. he is like 19 years old. the burden and the courage that was required to be on the front line was so significant. when you add it all up, some of

the other groups, there were a few hundred. several hundred, let's say, leaders of the civil rights movement. that is it. all of america. there were volunteers. a lot of white volunteers that went down to mississippi. a lot of liberals. including some of the white groups on college campuses and so on. the black freedom movement, there were not that many people. i think it's important to remember that. the ncaa cp was definitely useful and valued to a degree i the direction action leaders. but, they were were very suspicious. they sorta played the game from within. they wanted to win in court. they had an amazing track record. they deserve huge credit for bringing us to that point in history where direct action could actually happen.

and be effective. they continue to play a role. even cleve sellers i think reluctant to engage the ncaa cp lawyer. he wanted this more radical guy from atlanta to help him out. within the system and the new way which was to fight. it sort of put an end to it. they are not placing 1960 or weathers or sellers in a vacuum

or separating this idea of a movement. we are looking at what is going on globally. looking at what is going on throughout the organization where we tried to encourage saying stop the black messiah. we are looking at ongoing narrative. i want to give the audience a couple of minutes to engage with us. if they don't have any questions , i have about five more. i think i will be polite and give them an opportunity to ask questions if that's okay with you. there is a microphone over here, if you would be so kind. please step to the microphone. let us know if you are addressed eating the question to either, both the mac i wanted to ask you, did mr. weathers, with all the information do any damage to

the movement. the other thing i wanted to ask is kidnapping is a federal crime. did the fbi ever look at the crime involved in the abduction of the young boy in mississippi? >> they have. it was decades later. there were different phases. i think there was some open investigation right now. this whole domestic intelligence what damage do they do to the movement. they did a lot of damage in many ways. one is adam's touching on this. different organizations knew they had informants.

they just did not know who they were. there was this chilling effect. the whole right to dissent and protest. address your agreements. that is how our democracy, that is a the give-and-take. they think they will be ties. then they drop out. they will not participate. they are disrupting government itself. there was lots of damages to individuals in these operations. i actually have the slides here. let show really quickly. thank you for the question. a good segue. >> i think that mike should be on low. >> if i push this button -- it works. okay.

>> fred hampton was a black panther leader in chicago. he was killed in a police raid when they fired scores of rounds he was shot in his bed. evidence that he was even murdered by the police. the f vi help the local chicago police with that. they had it informant gets out the apartment. this is 1973. he informed him. what you see here are are a series of pictures for the f vi. this was a black panther house. looking at this series of shot.

first you have the broad panoramic view of the house. shot out in the distance. yet the close-up of the front porch. then you go around and then there's the black door. the fbi is not keeping the scrapbook. showing them the way you get in and out of this house. there are some black answers who talked about an attempted police raid around that time. it was forwarded, all the details nail down there. another fred hampton type of situation. what damage did it do? the fbi was really freaked out about black power.

they were highly motivated to do it. ideological reasons. the black panther movement had a certain mark to the philosophy tied to it. they figured it was a connection to moscow and what now. others were highly motivated to stop this. mccarthy -like investigations. highly motivated to just completely eviscerate the main black power group there. homegrown group called the invaders. they not only wanted to go after them, but the sympathizers and associates, too. this lady here actually lives here in nashville.

she was a field representative for the civil rights initiative in memphis in 1968. ernest and other informants were kicking back information. telling the fbi to sympathetic to the black power movement. her main associate, ernest and others had seen them at parties with black power advocate. they kept making these connections. the fbi tried to fire these two individuals. i've interviewed them and they are in my book. at one point, ernest was at a march where he saw, this is actually a piece from that report. that is his code number. added during the october 5 sympathy march, also known as

bobby doctor of the u.s. civil rights commission was with audrey. a volunteer. writing in the report married as his doctor. yet they were holding hands. ernest had a picture of this, photos holding. pernicious by m e3 38. ask yourself why would they want this picture? i've interviewed bobby. i never had an affair with her. i was married. whether they actually acted on this or not is unclear. they wanted to use to contain these activists.

there were lots of other examples of this. they tried to damage a number of people. he was convinced that he had a target on his back. he thought and others thought that one of the three students who was killed sort of resembled sellers. sellers was the target. there is no evidence for this. he was convinced of this. mind you, this is is early 1968. by now, black power is in its mature phase, more or less. the fbi is eager to quash it. there was actually good reason

to fear for one's life. after orangeburg, he thought his life was in danger. his parents thought his life was in danger. he fled his home state of south carolina. giving up the idea of enrolling in south carolina state. he went into greensboro north carolina. this impacted his life profoundly. he ended up in a good place it turned out. doing a lot of productive things in greensboro. that wasn't his choice. he was far from his family. his parents fell ill. he scrambled to get back 20 years later. as his parents were dying. having missed something.

that otherwise may have transpired. >> thank you. do we have questions? >> the family of mr. weathers is pretty protective. were you able to use some of those photographs were they not too thrilled about it. >> from the beginning when i revealed it there was astonishment and denial. early on by his circle of supporters. they kind of morphed over the

years in two different things. i don't know where they stand right now. there was no cooperation. i do not use any of his images. even any of the stuff that's in the fbi files. i think that there are questions about copyright issues. even though, as a matter of fact, a good good legal advisor told me there is no public records wash. even though these are public records, you can find the stuff on my now, probably he still owns the rights to these. the images are not in the book. but, -- you can google them. you can find them. you can study them. you just probably cannot publish them in a book for profit. not sure where the legality about all of that is.

>> time for one final question. what good things that he go on to do? he got himself on the political read this time. the anti-communism rally. organizing this railing. shooting up for people. it was this horrible episode in greensboro. it ultimately, i think, in the

'90s, resulted in the truth and reconciliation process that serves as a model or should serve as a model for the orangeburg massacre which has never been fully investigated by the state of south carolina which remains a festering wound. cleve was working for the city at the time and he helped organize about a year after the violence or sometime after the violence a rally and the authorities were terrified that the rally would go south and be violent. he helped put it together and convince everybody. he was involved in that.

greensboro, a black power anti-colonialism worldly effort to further the cause of black power and black identity. he then went on to pursue a career in academia. he taught as a lecturer at cornell. at harvard he taught in a few places. then he came back to south carolina. he did a stint at chapel hill. then when he came back to south carolina he eventually got a job with the university of south carolina and ran the program for 10 years there. it really old started and build it up into what it is today. then he went back to denmark. too perfect. too ridiculous. it's like a cliché.

he really went full circle and ended up back in denmark as president where he attended high school. he went all the way back home and all the way back to the same school where he was a high school student. now he is a college president. there he is today living today in denmark. >> if you want to know more about what he did, he's got a pretty famous son and daughter, if you want to know more about both of these gentlemen and how one infiltrated the movement, one also stayed in the shadows. please join me in thanking both of the guests and authors. [applause] join us on the plaza. they will be signing books. a free event and any support and

donation can be made possible out on the plaza. if you have not had a chance to visit the civil-rights room, go upstairs on the second floor. thank you so much for coming out. >> thank you. >> you are watching book tv on c-span two. top nonfiction books and authors book tv. for serious readers. next up from the southern festival of books in nashville. an examination of the state of american politics. >> good to go? you guys ready? welcome to saturday morning. my name is joe ebert. i'm a political reporter.