Blog 6

Of my research of photographers, my favorite has always been Ernest Withers. I was introduced to him by Professor McCarthy here at Rhodes College. I told him of my love for photography, and my minor in Africana Studies, and immediately spit out his name.

Ernest Withers was a black photographer in Memphis. He was a journalist photographer, chronicling moments of the civil rights movement. He was able to come to success as a black photographer in Memphis, because he had the market on predominantly black areas. None of the white photojournalists wanted to go into the black area of town, so Ernest Withers was the one they would turn to. You could normally find him on Beale, shooting the black locals and musicians that flooded the street.

He captured the history of Beale Street, which by the 1940s was an epicenter for American music.  On Saturday nights he photographed musicians and their audiences.  His work documented the emergence of Rock and Roll, and Rhythm and Blues in the 1950s as they grew from traditional blues and gospel music. During the late 1940s he took publicity shots for the Memphis Red Sox. Without realizing it, Withers documented the last years of the Negro League.

It was the Till case, fairly early in his photography career, that set the tone for what was to come. He felt the world needed to know more about the facts of the case, so he self-published a book on the murder, the trial and its aftermath. Withers' photo of Till in the casket, his battered face left untouched by request of his mother, caught the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, who sought Withers out and invited the photographer to join him. Withers collected images of Dr. Martin Luther King during his time that help us take a glimpse into his world. There are photos from 1956 aboard the first desegregated bus in Montgomery, with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, at speeches, in marches and at the Lorraine Motel.

The man is the reason we can see what happened during the height of civil rights action. In Withers’ photography, there are many pictures of people beside King or watching the Memphis Red Sox play, and they are who I like to focus on. It gives you a little slice of what it must of been like to live in Memphis at this time. The daily routine, emotions felt and conversations had, are more intriguing to me. They are the reaction to civil rights, and after all, a picture is worth a thousand words.