Sneak Peek – Ernest C. Wither’s Collection
Sneak Peek – Ernest C. Wither’s Collection
The Historic First Baptist Church of Williamsburg
727 West Scotland Street, Williamsburg
Friday, June 19, 2026 – 8 am – 6 pm
Saturday, June 20, 2026 – 8 am – 6 pm
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon from the pulpit of the Historic First Baptist Church on June 26, 1962. Dr. King was photographed during the Civil Rights movement by Dr. Ernest C. Withers, a photojournalist in Memphis, Tennessee. In the 1950s, Withers helped spur the movement for equal rights with a self-published photo pamphlet on the Emmitt Till murder. Over the next two decades, Withers formed close personal relationships with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, and James Meredith. Withers’s pictures of key civil rights events from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the strike of Memphis sanitation workers are historic. Indeed, Withers was often the only photographer to record these scenes, many of which were not yet of interest to the mainstream press. Withers photographed more than the southern Civil Rights Movement. Whether Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and other Negro League baseball players, or those jazz and blues musicians who…More Info
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