Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers

The little-known story of an iconic photographer, whose work captured—and influenced—a critical moment in American history.

Ernest Withers took some of the most legendary images of the 1950s and ’60s: Martin Luther King, Jr., riding a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Emmett Till’s uncle pointing an accusatory finger across the courtroom at his nephew’s killer; scores of African-American protestors carrying a forest of signs reading “i am a man.” But at the same time, Withers was ...