“I was so naï ve,” said Dr. Smith speaking of a neighbor east of him, Herman Seaborn, the son of a church member and close friend turned out to be a FBI informant also. “I thought he was cheating on his wife so I went down the street to his apartment to save his marriage. I went in and saw more electronic equipment than I’d ever seen before. Herman had been taking pictures of me and so was a neighbor at the other end of my street. I recognized what the equipment was and told him, ‘look man, if they got you trying to follow me, it’s going to be hard even with two of you doing still watches on me. All I’ve got to do is sneak out the back, jump the fence, and go down the path, but look-a-here. I’m willing to cooperate with you to the point that if you give me a ride to where I’m going, I will let you know when I got to be there. So that worked out pretty good for us both!” Being watched by FBI informants and City of Memphis policemen began to just be a way of life for Dr. Smith. “If you are going to be a policeman, let’s recognized what your job is,” said Dr. Smith. “You are a member of an occupying army in our community. You are not there for our (the people’s) protection. You are there to protect them (the white’s) and their property from us. Ernest (Withers) was one of the first black policemen. He started out as a photographer covering murders and violent scenes. He was a police photographer and then he went to the academy and became a regular officer. “We had a conversation down at the studio when it was on Trigg and Mississippi. The Police Community Relations building was put there to spy on the Invaders. Another Manassas graduate, Ed Reddit was the guy in charge of the Police Community Relations operation. Ed was younger and had graduated from Lane College. He was college educated. None of the other black policemen had that much education, they were just some guys the white folks could trust and some guys who could fight – well, some of them couldn’t fight but they were dirty enough to be there to tell the white folks who to fight. Ed was the policeman that was generally assigned to accompany Dr. King when he was in town, but they removed him from the detail the day Dr. King was assassinated. In fact, Ed’s wife died that same day. Continued on Page 25 22
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