Dr. Martin Luther King is Confronted; from the portfolio, I Am A Man

Image Not Available

Dr. Martin Luther King is Confronted; from the portfolio, I Am A Man

Artist Ernest C. Withers (American, 1922 - 2007)

Publisher Panopticon Press, Tony Decaneas, Waltham, MA

Datephotographs: 1956-1968; portfolio: 1994

Dimensionssheet: 19 13/16 x 15 15/16 in. (50.3 x 40.5 cm)
image: 18 13/16 x 14 7/8 in. (47.8 x 37.8 cm)
Sheet, according to WAC form: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

MediumGelatin silver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineMrs. George W. Stevens Fund

Object number

2003.46F

Not on View

DescriptionPortfolio with letterpress text and ten gelatin silver prints.

Label TextThe first NAACP fieldworker in Mississippi, Medgar Evers was shot in the back on June 12, 1963, in front of his home in Jackson. Black and white leaders from around the nation, including Martin Luther King, Jr., attended his funeral. Ernest Withers here captures the charged atmosphere. A World War II veteran, Evers was buried at Arlington Cemetery. The accused killer, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, stood trial twice in the 1960s, but the all-white juries could not reach a verdict. In a third trial in 1994, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.Published Referencescf.: Pictures Tell a Story (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2000) cf.: Let Us March On! Selected Civil Rights photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955-1968 (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1992)Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, People Get Ready: 50 Years of Civil Rights, June 27-September 21, 2014.