When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. finally was allowed to sit at the front of a bus, noted civil rights photographer Ernest C. Withers was there to record the moment for history.

After boycotting buses in Montgomery, Ala., for almost a year to protest the city’s segregation laws, King and his followers took their place at the head of a bus in November 1956 to mark the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the nation’s “separate but equal” laws. Withers went along for the ride, calling it one of many times he happened to be “in the right place at the right time” during a photography career that has spanned 60 years.

At Monday’s Crain lecture, Withers, 80, held a full house spellbound at the McCormick Tribune Center Forum as he presented images of King, the trial of the men accused of murdering Emmitt Till and the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., among others.

“I don’t (take pictures) to dig up the dirt. I don’t show yesterday’s images with an effort to show the hate,” said Withers, one of the nation’s most prominent photographers of the Civil Rights Movement.

Withers called his pictures of King “the most effective” he ever shot. He followed King’s struggle for equality until the very end and was trailing him in Memphis the day he died.

“Three hours after King died, I managed to work my way into the morgue,” he said. “I didn’t take pictures, because, in my ethical judgement, I didn’t think it was right.”

The pictures Withers took of the funeral procession and King in his coffin are nationally recognized. University Chaplain Timothy Stevens said Withers’ work helps his audience better comprehend the significance of the era.

“I think the main value of those pictures is that they put you in touch with historical moments that are lost to us,” Stevens said. “You feel like you were there; there is a presence to them.”

Withers also told the crowd about his “strongest photograph,” which he took at a trial of the accused murderers of Till, a black youth lynched in 1955. The picture is of Till’s uncle, standing and pointing at the men accused of killing his nephew.

After developing the picture, Withers sent the image to many newspapers. Though many used it without crediting him, he doesn’t complain.

“I don’t dwell on the past,” he said. “I didn’t scale a plan to be an icon of a photographer. Even knowing Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, I still live as my own person. My father told me, ‘You got to be what you is, not what you ain’t, because if you ain’t what you is, you is what you ain’t.'”