Pictures Tell the Story

The Eye of Memphis: Photographer Ernest Withers captured unflinching portraits of Southern black life during the civil rights era.

By: Amy Brummer

Ernest Withers captured the civil rights movement in Memphis, Tenn., from the inside. Above, "Daddy, I Want To Be Free Too," is part of a retrospective exhibit of work by the photographer. At right, Helen Ann Smith at Harlem House in Memphis, 1950s.

   The imagined utopia of post-World War II America is replete with freshly coiffed women and smartly dressed gentleman driving automobiles with shiny chrome trim or drinking Coca-Cola at spiffy lunch counters. But behind this polished façade of prosperity and progress, dark realities tainted our cities and small towns.
   While our country recovered from a hard-won battle to liberate Europe from the Nazis, our nation was still segregating blacks and whites on home soil.
   One of the most powerful tools in combating the institutionalized racism of that era was awareness, and no other medium brought to light these issues as powerfully as moving and still photography. The dissemination of images through the national media captured the undeniable and mounting injustice.
   Through May 4, the Philadelphia Art Alliance is exhibiting the photographs of Ernest Withers, a photographer who produced some of the most well-known and powerful images of the 20th century. A lifelong Memphis resident, the young boy with an interest in photography grew up to become a prolific photojournalist. His professional legacy provides a comprehensive overview of Southern black life during the civil rights era.
   At the exhibit opening, Mr. Withers, born in 1922, reflected on the people and places that became his life’s work. "My sister bought her boyfriend a camera and he didn’t care for it," Mr. Withers says. "Being an ambitious young man, I decided to practice. I carried the camera to school not expecting Margaret Trotter Louis (wife of Joe Louis) to be there. But she was a guest in the exercise, and I went up to her and started taking pictures. They laughed me out of the auditorium. They just couldn’t believe how this very, very honorary woman would come to the school, and here he is running up to take a picture. But from that day forward they seemed to regard me as a photographer."
   Following high school, Mr. Withers enrolled in the Army, where he trained as a photographer for the Army Corps of Engineers. This taught him the darkroom skills necessary to expand his interest to a professional level. After completing his military assignment, he sought further training in Chicago but returned home upon realizing there was little else he could learn in school.

Above, from top: Martin Luther King Jr. (left) and Ralph Abernathy on one of the first desegregated buses, Montgomery, Ala., 1956; a "Tent City" family, Fayette County, Tenn., 1960, evicted from their home for voting. At left, Ma Rainey II, Lillie Mae Glover, late 1960s.

   He also had practical needs to consider. He needed to support a wife and two children.
   "I had to concentrate on my need to be a father," he says, "and I passed the civil service exam to be a letter carrier. As a result of having been trained to pass the civil service examination, I decided to pursue photography in Memphis. My father thought I was the craziest boy in the world to be a photographer and take pictures with a camera and not carry the mail everyday and get paid every month or every two weeks or whatever. But somehow, my ambition to be a photographer was greater than the visionary job concept he had."
   He took jobs with local newspapers and opened a portrait studio for neighborhood families. During the 1950s he began to chronicle the Negro League baseball games of the Memphis Red Sox. He also found work in Memphis nightclubs, taking pictures of patrons and entertainers, getting his work published when he could.
   The two local black newspapers, Memphis World and the Tri-State Defender began regularly buying his photos, which led him on a journey through the culture, society and politics of black life in Memphis, capturing all of its richness and turmoil. His breakthrough in documenting the power of a burgeoning civil rights movement came in 1955 with his coverage of the Emmett Till trial, which investigated the slaying of 14-year-old boy who was visiting his uncle in rural Mississippi. Responding to a dare, Emmett flirted with a white woman. As a result, two white men came to his uncle’s house that night demanding to see him. His mutilated body was found a few days later.

   The trial sparked national attention, and Mr. Withers accepted the low rate of pay from his newspaper for the chance to be on this job. But he still had a growing family at home, and when the chance to make some extra money presented itself, he accepted the opportunity.
   "I was at the Emmett Till trial just beginning to try and use a 35 mm camera to try to have more exposure," Mr. Withers recalls. "And when I saw Uncle Mose Wright make a specific move and point to the man or men that went to Uncle Mose Wright’s house to get Emmett Till, and he pointed at them when the prosecutor asked him to point at them. I got up and took his picture.
   "When I took his picture, these men from Black Star (photo agency) walked up and said, ‘I want that roll of film.’ He knew the significance of that roll somewhat more vitally than I did. He bought it, and I’ve seen it in a number of places, but knowing that I was the only one who shot it. But I’ve never created any argument about it because when he gave me $30 that was basically worth what I had done."
   Because he was part of the black community in Memphis, Mr. Withers was often privy to events or people overlooked by the white media, although they often proved newsworthy after the fact. As a result, many of his images were sold without being credited.

Above, from top: Isaac Hayes, inside the office of Stax Records, Memphis, 1970s; Lionel Hampton, Memphis, mid-1950s. At right, Neil Robinson of the Memphis Red Sox, Martin’s Stadium, Memphis, late 1940s.

   At the end of the Till trial, in the face of overwhelming evidence, the defendants were still found not guilty. To give voice to this injustice, Mr. Withers put together a book, Complete Photo Story of Till Murder Case, which illustrated the trial through images and words. He was not just photographing the civil rights movement, he was a part of it.
   Mr. Withers’ pictures are powerful because, as an insider, he saw the events from a point of view shared with his subjects. He knew these people — from baseball players to entertainers, politicians to preachers. What comes across are not images of glamorized otherness, or pity or despair, but joy, determination, uneasiness and heartfelt loss.
   His images exhibit remarkable strength and artistry. Even amid the excitement of an Ike and Tina Turner concert or the chaos of the Sanitation Worker’s Strike, his eye is unwavering and steady.
   He also had an instinct for what was newsworthy, but approached it with a forthrightness that imbues the images with an unsentimental honesty.
   "I had gone to Montgomery because there had been the Rosa Parks movement," he says. "We were making historic moments of the first bus ride because the Supreme Court decision was to be delivered in Montgomery. I was just going to do the work for that time, and Martin King just happened to be the most personified person and being the most interesting, revealing, acceptable and desirous image to see. Naturally we would photograph him the most."
   Although the historical impact of his work is staggering in retrospect, Mr. Withers notes he had no intention of transcending the importance of the moment. His first consideration was to produce a newsworthy image, to tell the story, and let history determine its value.
   "In those days," he says, "whatever you shot was what you had. Today, if you were using a digital camera and you shot a picture and you decide you don’t want it, you might have erased out one of the greatest moments of yesterday. You know if you just decided this ain’t it. But you don’t know. I never dreamed that 50, 60, 30, 20 years from then, that the imagery would be celebrated, highly credible images of remembrances of the past, but it was what reflected history.
   "I can reflect history because I recorded it. But I wasn’t recording history to look ahead, to look back. I was just building a staff from which you rise. From the raw earth to the skies, I am just taking pictures as I was going on but not looking into the future. It was just part of being a part of the collective time."
Pictures Tell the Story: Ernest C. Withers is on view at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th St., Philadelphia, through May 4. $5 donation. Hours: Tues-Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.



The Art Alliance will sponsor a Civil Rights Symposium, April 11, 8-6:30 p.m. at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Pre-registration and on-site registration available. Registration costs $25, $15 in advance. For information, contact the Art Philadelphia Art Alliance: (215) 545-4302. On the Web: www.philartalliance.org