Bluff City
The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers
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Bluff City
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Narrated by:
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Sean Patrick Hopkins
About this listen
The little-known story of an iconic photographer, whose work captured - and influenced - a critical moment in American history.
Who was Ernest Withers? Most Americans may not know the name, but they do know his photographs. Withers took some of the most legendary images of the 1950s and ’60s: Martin Luther King, Jr., riding a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Emmett Till’s uncle pointing an accusatory finger across the courtroom at one of his nephew’s killers; scores of African-American protestors, carrying a forest of signs reading "I am a man." But while he enjoyed unparalleled access to the inner workings of the civil rights movement, Withers was working as an informant for the FBI.
In this gripping narrative history, Preston Lauterbach examines the complicated political and economic forces that informed Withers’s seeming betrayal of the people he photographed. Withers traversed disparate worlds, from Black Power meetings to raucous Memphis nightclubs where Elvis brushed shoulders with B.B. King. He had a gift for capturing both dramatic historic moments and intimate emotional ones, and it may have been this attention to nuance that made Withers both a brilliant photographer and an essential asset to the FBI. Written with similar nuance, Bluff City culminates with a riveting account of the 1968 riot that ended in violence just a few days before Dr. King’s death.
Brimming with new information, Bluff City grapples with the legacy of a man whose actions - and artistry - make him an enigmatic and fascinating American figure.
©2019 Preston Lauterbach (P)2019 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Excellent historical perspective of an activist.
- By Chris on 04-14-15
By: Randy Shilts
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Dallas 1963
- By: Bill Minutaglio, Steven L. Davis
- Narrated by: Bill Minutaglio, Tony Messano, Steven L. Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered.
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4 out of 5 stars
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American lunacy, listenable as it gets
- By Philo on 10-14-17
By: Bill Minutaglio, and others
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Eyes on the Prize
- America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965
- By: Juan Williams, Julian Bond - introduction
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story5 out of 5 stars 39
From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose Johns and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that something had to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is a must in every household.
- By victor mercer on 07-12-19
By: Juan Williams, and others
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Parting the Waters
- America in the King Years 1954-63
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards
- Length: 45 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story5 out of 5 stars 170
Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Judith Princz on 05-15-19
By: Taylor Branch
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The Defender
- How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America; from the Age of the Pullman Porters to the Age of Obama
- By: Ethan Michaeli
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 22 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded the Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses", becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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There's an unexpected genius here
- By Porter on 01-19-19
By: Ethan Michaeli
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Pillar of Fire
- America in the King Years, 1963-65
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrated by: Joe Morton, C.C.H. Pounder
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story5 out of 5 stars 77
In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage. Beginning with the Nation of Islam and conflict over racial separatism, Pillar of Fire takes the listener to Mississippi and Alabama: Birmingham, the murder of Medgar Evers, the "March on Washington," the Civil Rights Act, and more.
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1 out of 5 stars
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the audio does not match with the book
- By Katie on 10-09-14
By: Taylor Branch
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The Savage City
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
In the early 1960s, uncertainty and menace gripped New York, crystallizing in a poisonous divide between a deeply corrupt, cynical, and racist police force, and an African American community buffeted by economic distress, brutality, and narcotics. On August 28, 1963 - the day Martin Luther King Jr. declared "I have a dream" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial - two young white women were murdered in their Manhattan apartment. Dubbed the Career Girls Murders case, the crime sent ripples of fear throughout the city, as police scrambled fruitlessly for months to find the killer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I Highly Recommend This Book!
- By R on 05-15-13
By: T. J. English
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Hellhound on His Trail
- The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
- By: Hampton Sides
- Narrated by: Hampton Sides
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 818
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 818
On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man - whose real name was James Earl Ray -drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace's racist presidential campaign. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History Comes Alive
- By L. Lyter on 06-29-10
By: Hampton Sides
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Gangsters vs. Nazis
- How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America
- By: Michael Benson
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst. Gangland-style.
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4 out of 5 stars
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What, you couldn’t find one culturally Jewish narrator?
- By Deborah Bancroft on 12-29-22
By: Michael Benson
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Witness to the Revolution
- Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul
- By: Clara Bingham
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 18 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed 9,000 protests and 84 acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching 50,000, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society.
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4 out of 5 stars
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great perspective on an era
- By james on 04-02-18
By: Clara Bingham
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Waging a Good War
- A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story5 out of 5 stars 51
Thomas E. Ricks offers an utterly new perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but through recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I was born and raised in Alabama. Jim Crow Era.
- By Moses Pitts on 10-06-22
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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City of Scoundrels
- The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
- By: Gary Krist
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World". But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city’s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great History of a Great City
- By Cookie on 08-30-12
By: Gary Krist
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Days of Rage
- America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 586
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 515
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 514
From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing treatment of tough history
- By Steven on 05-13-15
By: Bryan Burrough
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Freedom Summer
- The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy
- By: Bruce Watson
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 190
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 128
In the summer of 1964, with the civil rights movement stalled, seven hundred college students descended on Mississippi to register black voters, teach in Freedom Schools, and live in sharecroppers' shacks. But by the time their first night in the state had ended, three volunteers were dead, black churches had burned, and America had a new definition of freedom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Long Hot Summer
- By Roy on 08-01-10
By: Bruce Watson
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Once in a Great City
- A Detroit Story
- By: David Maraniss
- Narrated by: David Maraniss
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 187
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 158
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 154
It's 1963, and Detroit is on top of the world. The city's leaders are among the most visionary in America. It was the American auto makers' best year; the revolution in music and politics was underway. Walter Reuther's UAW had helped lift the middle class. Once in a Great City shows that the shadows of collapse were evident even then. Yet so much of what Detroit gave America lasts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great read
- By Jordanel on 01-02-16
By: David Maraniss
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The Blood of Emmett Till
- By: Timothy B. Tyson
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 511
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 442
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 440
Mississippi, 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by a white mob after making flirtatious remarks to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Till's attackers were never convicted, but his lynching became one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history. It launched protests across the country, helped the NAACP gain thousands of members, and inspired famous activists like Rosa Parks to stand up and fight for equal rights for the first time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tough read. Rest in Peace Emmit. We are so sorry!
- By Melanie B on 09-16-18
By: Timothy B. Tyson
What listeners say about Bluff City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Toni Bowes
- 12-24-21
Fascinating Civil Rights History
Since I was a teenager at this time, much of this history was vague to me at best. Certainly never heard of Ernest Withers. Now his museum in Memphis is on my bucketlist.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tosha Downey
- 05-05-19
great story very weak delivery
The story is so very compelling, but the reader makes it hard to enjoy. I cringed EVERY time he said COGIC.
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