3 Withers’s connection to the activists is evidenced in several reports, including “Sally Batista, SM-C,” ME-157-646-294 (July 13, 1966). The report describes how the photographer-informant provided assistance after a car driven by activist Tim Hall had broken down. Withers allowed Hall and a companion to spend the night in his photography studio. Additionally, a female, Sally Batista of San Francisco, spent the night with Withers and his wife, Dorothy, and their children, the report says. Batista told Withers she worked in the SNCC office in San Francisco. Agent Lawrence contacted the FBI’s San Francisco office to search its indices and contact security sources to determine any possibly subversive connections.
4 For the account of Vicki Gabriner’s letter to Withers, who in turn gave it to the FBI, see FBI report, “Vicki Gabriner, SM-C,” ME-157-646-253 (February 7, 1966).
5 For Lawrence’s ninety-five-page memo, see Memphis FBI file, “West Tennessee Voters Project,” 157-646, serial 185 (September 10, 1965).
6 Ibid. Additional details about Lawrence’s interest in sexual activity within the group is found in a memo, “West Tennessee Voters’ Project,” ME 157-646-240 (November 19, 1965).
7 Details of Lawrence’s meeting with Withers are found in Memphis FBI file, “W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America”, ME 100-3991-56 (May 21, 1965).
8 “changing times”: Withers and Wolff, The Memphis Blues Again, 15.
9 FBI reports. donations to…Black Panthers: Informant report, “Black Arcade” file, 157-2112-96 (November 7, 1972). According to the report, Al Bell donated $1,000; Isaac Hayes, $1,000; and Al Green, $500. The money went to a Black Panther survival program to give groceries to the needy, Withers said. Communist Party: Informant report, Kathy Roop file, 100-4708-333 (April 19, 1971). Withers said a Stax executive gave $250 to the Young Workers Liberation League, an arm of the Communist Party. John Gary Williams: Memo, “Invaders” file, 157-1067-614 (November 22, 1968). Withers said Bell has been a strong supporter of Williams, a member of the militant Invaders and a member of the “Mad Lads” singing group. Black Arcade: Informant report, 157-2112-90 (September 6, 1972). “Hoover…a homosexual”: Memo, “MURKIN” file, 44-1987-sub-M-494 (April 7, 1969).
10 FBI version of photo: ME 157-646-1A-4. Public version: “Smith Leads Marchers in Tipton,” TSD, July 31, 1965, 1.
11 Jenkins: FBI reports, ME-157-646-185&86, 7 (September 10, 1965), and ME-157-646-240 (November 19, 1965). boycott: see George Sutton, “Fayette Schools May Be Closed,” CA, (August 3, 1965).
12 Author interview with Jerry Jenkins, June 29, 2015.
13 Bob Gabriner: FBI evidence slip, ME 157-646-1A-3 (August 5, 1965). Returning from a news assignment, Withers delivered twenty-seven photographic prints to Lawrence. Vicki, beaming: Ibid. ties to the Bradens: 157-646-185&86, pp. 42–43. Henry Balser: FBI evidence slip ME 157-646-1A-3. Deborah Rib: FBI evidence slips, 157-646-1A-2 (August 5, 1965) and 100-4141-1A-3 (August 23, 1965).
14 FBI memos. repulsive personality: 100-4141-1 (May 12, 1965). Malcolm X…Black Muslims: 157-646-185&86, 15. “well aware” of…“open inter-racial sex”: Ibid.
15 Sullivan’s attention: 157-646-180. couldn’t prosecute: Author interview with Athan Theoharis, October 23, 2016.
16 Author interview with Danny Beagle, December 29, 2015.
17 Theoharis interview.
18 July 27, 1965, letter from Dowd to Stokes, Tent City Collection, box 14 folder 33.
19 FBI report, 100-4141-1 (May 12, 1965).
20 Ibid.
21 first…since Reconstruction: “New Court Takes Seats Monday in October Session,” The Fayette Falcon (October 20, 1966). dutifully reported: FBI memo, 157-646-331 (August 24, 1966).
Chapter Eighteen
1 FBI report, “Mid-South Citizens Dissatisfied with United States Policies in Vietnam” file, ME 100-4285-42 (May 26, 1966).
2 Author interview with James Lawson, August 26, 2015.
3 outed the trio: Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., 190, 295–96. It’s believed the Smiths and Turner were recruited through Hoover’s “Liaison With Groups Sponsoring Integration” program.
4 Author interview with Maxine Smith, June 18, 2009.
5 Thurgood Marshall cooperated: See Neil A. Lewis, “Files Say Justice Marshall Aided F.B.I. in 50’s,” The New York Times, December 4, 1996. Also, David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, 132–34, 160–63. The Beitos suggest Marshall’s motives included animus toward rights leader T.R.M. Howard, a rival. Roy Wilkins cooperated: David J. Garrow, “FBI Political Harassment and FBI Historiography: Analyzing Informants and Measuring the Effects,” The Public Historian, fall 1988, 12–13. O’Reilly writes in Racial Matters that the NAACP’s cooperation in the 1950s stemmed largely from McCarthyism. The organization created loyalty oaths and purged itself to keep the McCarthyites at bay (see 104), he writes.
6 do-gooders and dupes: Garrow, “FBI Political Harassment,” 11. Memphis libraries: G. Wayne Dowdy, Crusades For Freedom: Memphis and the Political Transformation of the American South, 61–63. Memphis State: Despite holding a master’s degree from prestigious Middlebury College, Maxine Smith was denied entrance to a graduate program at Memphis State. Her attempt paved the way for the school’s first black students, the “Memphis State Eight,” in 1959.
7 Vasco Smith’s value to the FBI is seen in a February 23, 1968, memo to HQ, ME-157-1092-16 (NW). The report cites two sources, Withers and Vasco Smith, who essentially say the same thing: the sanitation strike was suffering from a “power struggle” between the conservative NAACP and the more militant Unity League, each trying to “outdo the other” to become the spokesman for the black workers.
8 FBI memo, “NAACP” file, ME-100-662-809 (July 12, 1963). See also Lawrence’s memo, 100-4105-7 (January 18, 1965). An informer told Lawrence “the most difficult phase of the local Negro desegregation movement to control in Memphis is the youth,” who are “primarily led and counselled” by Lawson, “a close associate of the more militant section of Negro movement and is a consultant for Rev. Martin Luther King’s SCLC and of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.”
9 FBI memos. “advocate of non-violence”: “Racial Situation in Tennessee” file, 100-3595-978 (July 17, 1962). back and forth: “Communist Influence in the National Baptist Convention USA” file, 100-3824-8&9 (May 15, 1963). Lawrence quotes Withers as saying that “many thinking Negroes” believed King had ulterior motives; that he and his followers were leveraging the tension in that city to raise the preacher’s clout within the National Baptist Convention, USA. sympathy marches: 100-662-809.
10 Author interview.
11 satyagraha: James Lawson oral history, University of Memphis Special Collections (UMSC), Sanitation Strike Collection (SSC), box 22 folder 131, Series IV, 2–3.
12 Author interview with Lawson, January 17, 2013.
13 Ibid.
14 workshops: UMSC, SSC, box 22 folder 128, tape V, 9–14. traveling to: UMSC, SSC, box 22 folder 134, tape II, series VI, 3.
15 See Branch, Parting the Waters, 272–75, and Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 84–87. Also, Lawson interview with International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, “Lunch Counter Sit-Ins in Nashville,” June 23, 2009.
16 Ibid.
17 “Nonviolent army”: Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 168–69. Wilkins fired off: Branch, Parting the Waters, 297–99.
18 For details on Lawson’s arrest see Branch, Parting the Waters, 482–85. Also, Lawson interview and UMSC, SSC, box 22 folder 134; and “Jailed Freedom Rider is BW Grad,” Cleveland Press, May 25, 1961.
19 FBI memo, in Memphis file “Racial Situation in Tennessee,” 100-3595-978 (July 17, 1962).
20 FBI memos. been in Birmingham: 100-3824-8&9. secured a letter: ME 100-3595-Sub B-35. New York couple: “NAACP” file, 100-662-840 (April 8, 1964). Withers said he received a letter from New York journalist Jimmy Hicks informing him that wealthy real estate investor Louis Smadbeck and his wife, Justine, a writer f
or the Amsterdam News, would be visiting. Withers introduced the couple to Lawson and NAACP leader Jesse Turner. Lawson told the couple, he’d been “conducting classes in nonviolent demonstration tactics each week end at his church,” Lawrence wrote after speaking with Withers. meetings at Lawson’s church: “Communist Influence in Racial Matters” file, 100-4070-8 (December 7, 1964). A secret source—a member of Lawson’s church—told Lawrence he didn’t believe Braden had come to the meeting. Withers, too, said he wasn’t at the meeting but learned Braden apparently wasn’t with Vivian.
21 FBI memo, 157-646-277 (June 9, 1966).
22 Lawrence testimony, HSCA, Vol. VI, 541.
23 FBI memo, “Desegregation of Employment and Public Service Facilities” file, ME-157-284-329 (October 22, 1965).
24 Author interview, August 26, 2015.
25 For an explanation of confidential sources, see Report to the House Committee on the Judiciary By the Comptroller General of the United States: FBI Domestic Intelligence Operations—Their Purpose and Scope: Issues That Need to be Resolved (February 24, 1976), 105.
26 Withers et al., Pictures Tell The Story, 82.
27 FBI memos. “inferiority complex”: 100-662-809 (July 12, 1963). “firmly entrenched”: 157-284-168 (November 18, 1964).
28 sit-ins: Memphis Public Library Special Collections, Maxine Smith Collection, NAACP executive board minutes, box 3 folder 3: April 5, 1960, meeting. According to the minutes, board member W. C. Patton “suggested that someone talk with the students who have taken part in the Sit-ins, and advise them that one time at the Library was sufficient for a suit, and another visit is not necessary.” The NAACP was more firmly behind sit-in demonstrations in 1961 at downtown restaurants and lunch counters. (See Dowdy, Crusades For Freedom, 80.) school segregation: Dowdy, Crusades, 81–82.
29 FBI memo, ME-100-662-815 (August 20, 1963).
30 Ibid., ME-157-646-261 (April 13, 1966).
31 Ibid., 100-662-1029&1030 (July 1, 1966), 4.
32 For details of the Vietnam trip see Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 263–64 and 841. Also, Mary Hershberger, Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War, 16–21.
33 ME-157-284-329.
34 FBI memo, ME-157-646-261 (April 13, 1966).
Chapter Nineteen
1 FBI memo, “National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam” file, 100-4135-38 (November 17, 1965).
2 “God’s hands”: “Joking and Laughing Stops When Troop Plane Arrives in Vietnam,” TSD, March 30, 1968, 1. rejoiced: “Welcome Home,” TSD, March 8, 1969, 1.
3 constable: “Ernest Withers Offers For Constable Post,” TSD, June 25, 1966, 1. Running ads: TSD, July 15, 1966, 11. Tri-State Defender: “Three Good Men Better Than One,” TSD, August 6, 1966. Press-Scimitar endorsement: “Ernest C. Withers,” MPS, July 29, 1966, 6. Lincoln League and…Unity League: “Withers and Backers,” TSD, June 30, 1966.
4 “Ernest C. Withers,” MPS, July 29, 1966, 6.
5 K. W. Cook, “Pryor, Halle, Orgill Lead Court Vote,” CA, August 5, 1966, 1. Three seats were up for grabs in the 2nd District. The article noted Turner was among the top three vote-getters.
6 FBI memo, Logos file, 100-4284-117 (June 2, 1966).
7 FBI memo, Memphis to HQ, “Demonstrations protesting U.S. Policy in Vietnam” file, 100-4491-14&15 (June 22, 1967). More details on Withers’s reporting on Morrison are found in 100-4285-77&83.
8 Details on Bass’s parade permit and the FBI funneling the information to Memphis State are found in FBI memo, 100-4285-1 (March 8, 1966).
9 “boom!—he was fired”: Author interview with Joella Morrison, April 12, 2016. letter of dismissal: June 10, 1967, dismissal letter from William B. Brewer, acting chairman of Department of Modern Languages, in Morrison’s Memphis State personnel file. The school’s conservative administration, already perturbed by Morrison’s quirky habits and alleged womanizing, perceived him and Bass as radicals too close to elements like Logos, which had caused Memphis State so much negative publicity the year before. In short, they were troublemakers. The professors’ contracts weren’t renewed for the 1967–1968 school year, and both left—Bass for Tulane and Morrison for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
10 bomber pilot: Sarah Lawrance, “Lt. Potts, Back From Italy, Tells How Sea Saved Him,” MPS, March 9, 1944. “fast”: “Fast For Peace Begins In City,” MPS, February 8, 1967. An example of the various files Lawrence kept related to Potts is found in an FBI memo, Memphis file on “Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam,” 100-4452-1 (March 13, 1967). The copy list at the bottom shows the report was copied to files on Potts (file No. 100-2750), his wife, Haleen (100-2753), the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Memphis (100-4361), and the Spring Mobilization Committee (105-1053), among others. In the FBI’s file system, 100 is the classification for domestic security or subversive matters; 105 involved a range of foreign intelligence, alien communist, and internal security matters.
11 FBI report, 100-4285-77 (April 19, 1967), 6. Also serial 84, 4.
12 coffee: FBI memo, 100-4285-83, p. 2. Handy Park: FBI memo, May 5, 1967, 100-4285-84&85. WDIA debate: 100-4452-1, p. 12. Potts’s son, Clifton, told the author in a July 26, 2017, interview he didn’t know why his parents left Memphis but said the couple had been harassed by the FBI in Tennessee and California.
13 Author interview with Joella Morrison, April 12, 2016.
14 See serials 42 and 43 dated August 15, 1969, in the Memphis office file, “Draft Resistance Union of Memphis,” 100-4630.
15 Paul G. Chevigny, “Politics and Law in the Control of Local Surveillance,” Cornell Law Review, April 1984, 736–37.
16 Summary released September 14, 1978, by the American Civil Liberties Union on the settlement of its lawsuit to disband MPD’s Domestic Intelligence Unit.
17 Ibid.
18 See Chan Kendrick, Mike Honey and the American Civil Liberties Union of West Tennessee v. Mayor Wyeth Chandler and Police Chief W.O. Crumby, Capt. P. T. Ryan and Deputy Chief George N. Hutchison, U.S. District Court for Western Tennessee (September 20, 1976). Among allegations, ACLU attorneys Bruce S. Kramer, Jack D. Novik, and Melvin L. Wulf contended MPD had trampled on the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech and to peaceably assemble, and the Fourth Amendment, protecting against unwarranted search and seizure. Critically, the lawyers argued that MPD’s actions had a “chilling effect” on the exercise of these cherished American rights: in essence, the city’s spy apparatus, which had targeted supposed un-American activity, was itself un-American. “By instilling fear” through the collection of personal information that served no lawful purpose or legitimate criminal investigation, MPD had “cast a pall upon constitutionally protected political activity,” deterring individuals’ “rights to express their political beliefs, to dissent from government policies, to advocate unpopular or controversial ideas, to exercise their freedom of association and the freedom of the press,” the lawyers argued.
19 Details on Arkin’s link to Lawrence and his sharing information with the FBI are from Arkin’s August 11, 1977, deposition in Kendrick et al. v. Chandler et al., 365, 489–98. Reference to the bowling squad is from author interviews with Arkin, September 12, 1997, and longtime FBI secretary Betty Norworth, September 2010.
20 MPD personnel file of Byron Gene Townsend. Arkin deposition, 418–20. Undated 2010 author interview with Townsend’s brother, Danny Townsend.
21 Weiler, “Police Order Burning of File on Vietnam War Protestor,” CA, Sept. 8, 1976.
22 “Counterintelligence Program-New Left,” Memphis file, 100-449698, serials 1–13. See also James Kirkpatrick Davis, Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement, 8.
23 Author interview with John T. Fisher, August 2010. According to the Church Committee, COINTELPRO had three purposes: protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining existing social and political order (see Church Committee, book III, 5–7).
24 “interview pr
ogram”: “Counterintelligence Program-Black Nationalist-Hate Groups,” 100-448006, memos (April 22 and May 22, 1968). “every mailbox”: Davis, Assault on the Left, 8.
25 Withers’s photos are found in FBI file, “Laura Calvert Ingram,” 100-4593, serials 1A-2 and 1A-5. Some details on Ingram’s interactions with Black Power activists are found in Louis Clifford Taylor file, memo, 100-4575-17 (January 16., 1968).
26 Author interview with Laura Ingram, February 27, 2016.
27 See 100-449698-2.
Chapter Twenty
1 FBI file on Kathy Roop Hunninen, ME-100-4708. Per the Withers settlement, the government released ten photos the photographer shot of Hunninen. Reports reference another forty-two photos.
2 FBI memos. support for…Angela Davis: 100-4481-216 (March 1, 1971). meeting with…Anne Braden: 100-4708-1A3. A photo Withers shot shows Roop sitting with Braden. executive at Stax: 100-4708-333 (April 19, 1971). organize workers: 100-4708-559 (July 12, 1972). attending a memorial: FBI memo, Students For a Democratic Society file, 100-4000-1540 (January 27, 1970). hosting activists: 100-4708-623 (October 5, 1973).
3 FBI memo, Rev. Richard M. Moon file, 100-4481-173 (December 12, 1969). Withers and a second informant both told the agent that SSOC executive secretary Michael Welch had given them the number as his home phone.
4 Author interview with Athan Theoharis, August 27, 2016. Though the issue at hand is not a wiretapping issue per se, the FBI’s history of phone tapping is instructive. Before the 1978 passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created secret courts to oversee “national security” wiretaps and electronic surveillance, the FBI operated in a murky and at times illegal arena when it came to surveilling suspected subversives. Theoharis writes in Spying on Americans (98–113) that despite a 1934 law outlawing wiring tapping, President Roosevelt in 1940 authorized selective tapping of aliens in national security cases. Attorney General Tom Clark extended that order in 1946 to American citizens, a decision that extended wiretapping to an ever-broadening range of people suspected of subversive activity. Lawrence contended in retirement that “warrantless searches and entries for audial and visual checks were legal in national security cases” between 1940 and 1972, though he conceded “the law is confusing and ambiguous.” (Lawrence personnel file, May 23, 1977, letter to Ed Williams, editorial page editor, The Charlotte Observer, 2.) Lawrence wrote the opinion piece in defense of retired FBI agent John Kearney, who was indicted for warrantless mail openings while investigating the radical Weather Underground. Charges against Kearney were later dismissed.
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