[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 158 (Thursday, October 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H11756]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE LIFE OF ERNEST WITHERS

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, Memphis, Tennessee and the 
Nation lost a great photographer and a great public personage in Ernest 
Withers. Ernest Withers died at the age of 85. He was a gentleman who 
was at the right time at the right place with the camera that took the 
picture that showed the civil rights movement, showed the history of 
Memphis, Tennessee and its progress from segregation to integration to 
a city that's one of America's great cities today.
  Mr. Withers was one of the first African Americans hired as a police 
officer in the city of Memphis in 1949. He left that profession and 
went into photography. And whenever there was an event, Mr. Withers was 
there. He took a picture of B.B. King and Elvis together on Beale 
Street. The King and the King together on Beale, back in about 1956, 
when B.B. was thin enough that you wouldn't recognize him, and Elvis 
was thin too.
  He had pictures of Dr. King and the civil rights movement. He covered 
Oxford, Mississippi; he covered Medgar Evers. He covered all of the 
major civil rights events that came throughout the mid-South.
  He was published in People Magazine and the New York Times, and Ebony 
and Jet, and was honored by the Memphis College of Art with an honorary 
degree in 1992, and by the Missouri School of Journalism for his great 
work in photography.
  He'll be missed in Memphis, and his collection needs to be maintained 
and made available to all citizens for remembrance of what went on 
during the civil rights era. He'll be missed by all of us. He'll be 
remembered in history books and museums.

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