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Ernest C. Withers, American, 1922 – 2007, I Am A Man, Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis, March 28, 1968. Gelatin silver print, printed from original negative in 1999, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art purchase with funds provided by Ernest and Dorothy Withers, Panopticon Gallery, Inc., Waltham, MA, Landon and Carol Butler, The Deupree Family Foundation, and The Turley Foundation 2005.3.33 © Withers Family Trust
n his final years, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had death on his mind.
While watching news coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he turned to his wife, Coretta, and
A MINUTE-BY-MINUTE ACCOUNT OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING’S LAST HOURS IN MEMPHIS. by michael finger
told her, “This is what is going to happen to me.” All his adult life, this practitioner of nonviolence had been threatened, assaulted, and surrounded by people — most of them white, some of them black — who considered him their enemy. The FBI routinely released memos documenting his activities, with the heading “Martin Luther King — Communist.” Andrew Young, one of the leaders of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference, observed that King had questioned “fundamental patterns of American life” and had therefore “become the enemy” to many Americans.
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