- [Announcer] Art Beat is made possible in part by the Chesapeake Bay Wine Classic Foundation.

(camera shutter clicks) - All of us use cameras and take pictures, but when does a photograph become art?

In the next half an hour, we're going to introduce a man with a camera and the museum that's bringing him to Hampton Roads.

Stay with us as we explore the new exhibition at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Pictures Tell the Story: Ernest C. Withers.

Hi, I'm Jeff Lindquist, and this is "Art Beat."

(upbeat hip-hop music) Ernest Withers worked as a self-employed photographer in the American South.

He could be called the original photographer of the Civil Rights Movement.

He documented the movement in the '50s and '60s.

He also followed the baseball players of the Diamond League, photographing icons like Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays.

His home is Memphis, Tennessee, and his studio on Beale Street.

He was there for the blues, jazz and the early days of rock and roll.

Now, the Chrysler Museum of Art has opened the first retrospective exhibition of his photography.

The exhibition will travel to other cities when it leaves here, but Hampton Roads is the first community to get a look at these incredible photographs.

Brooks Johnson is at the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Brooks, when does a photograph become art?

- Well, I like to say that in photography, the nature of the medium is such that just about everyone will make a great photograph at some time or another, but the trick is to keep on making those great photographs.

But seriously, there are many reasons why we can consider a photograph art.

It can be simply because of the way the photograph is framed and presented to the viewer, showing something new about the world, something we didn't know before.

It can be a beautiful print, just a beautiful object that's rendered in such a way that we appreciate the beauty of this scene that the artist has presented to us.

In the case of Ernest Withers, we're interested in his photographs primarily because of their content, what he's shown us about our world, particularly the world of America in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Ernest's photographs are important because of what he tells us about ourselves and about our world.

He's captured something that others were able to look at and to understand what was going on.

Obviously, much of his photography deals with the Civil Rights Movement, that's really the heart of what we have here, and the photographs that Ernest made were published in newspapers and magazines all over the country.

The president saw them, the Congress saw them, so they were able to see what was happening so they could see actually what things looked like.

Ernest described the world to them so that they could see what the world of the African American was like in the segregated society.

So these photographs are important, really, for their social content, and to me, that's one of the really magical things about photography is that something can be a beautiful image, but there's another underlying quality that, in many ways, is more important, because photography here has been used to cause social change.

One good example of Ernest's work that you can see here is Reverend Ralph Abernathy with Rosa Parks, and, of course, Rosa Parks was the woman who made history when she refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery during the bus boycott.

So that's what set off the bus boycott, there was a Supreme Court decision that said, yes, Blacks can sit in the front of the bus, you cannot enact a law that says they cannot.

So this photograph is actually somewhat later.

This is actually after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. at an SCLC conference in Memphis, and with her is Ralph Abernathy, and here's another important point that I think is made in these photographs.

Martin Luther King is a tremendously important person in the civil rights cause, but as Ernest will tell you, there were many people involved in the movement, and Ralph Abernathy was another major figure in the movement, and someone, to my mind, who hasn't received his due.

Another point to make when you're thinking about the work of Ernest Withers is to reach back in art history, and you look at the paintings, say, in the Renaissance period in Italy, when painters were making these great biblical paintings to interpret the scenes of the Bible to essentially the illiterate masses.

You know, they were done to impart a message, and now, centuries later, we look back at these things and we think they're great works of art.

Well, in a way, Ernest is doing the same thing.

He's capturing these events and moments, and he's doing it to explain what's happening to a larger audience, and with time, you know, we start to look at various components of these pictures, and with time, these pictures come to be regarded as art.

The great paintings were sponsored by someone.

The Popes commissioned many of those great paintings of the Renaissance, and in the same fashion, we've been able to do this exhibition because of our great patron, and that's the Metropolitan Life Foundation.

Like many people, they really didn't know who Ernest was, but once we showed them all this information, they were overwhelmed and just came through in a major way for us in supporting this show and making it all possible.

Conversely, Ernest did this incredible thing in 1955, and that's the publication of this booklet dealing with the Emmett Till murder.

In brief, the story of Emmett Till was a young African American boy from Chicago, was in Mississippi, and he flirted with a white woman and then was killed for his actions.

His body, when it was found, was displayed and photographed and created quite a scene within the African American community.

Ernest photographed sites related to the death of Emmett Till, in particular "Sumner, 'A Good Place to Raise a Boy,'" where this took place.

Then Ernest photographed the actual trial of the Emmett Till murderers, again a remarkable thing, because he was allowed into the courtroom to make these pictures.

Then Ernest did this really incredible thing.

He compiled this in a pamphlet, which he then printed and sold for a dollar a piece all over the country.

He advertised them primarily in the African American newspapers, and people would send in a dollar and he'd send 'em out a booklet.

There's another parallel in the history of photography, and that's a photographer named Alexander Gardner, who, at the conclusion of the Civil War, published "Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War," and this was a book, a two-volume book, which showed all the major battles of the Civil War, at least in the Eastern Theater of the war, so Ernest is operating again within the same vein of compiling information, presenting his opinion on what this all means, and then circulating it out to a larger public.

So it's photography being used for informational purposes, photography to educate and influence people, and, in this case, to help to change minds for the good.

Here, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Ernest did another remarkable thing.

That is, he went out and photographed all the sites that were associated with the assassination and the last people to see King before he was assassinated.

In the 19th century, Alexander Gardner, after the death of Abraham Lincoln, photographed all the places associated with the death of Lincoln, the last people to see him and so forth, and Ernest had no way of knowing this, he just went out and did it because it was important to document the sites.

So he has these sites from the little flop house where Ray was located when he shot the rifle to the Lorraine Motel where he killed King, and you can see the Lorraine Motel through the window.

Ernest went on to photograph the last people who saw King, the last people who saw Ray.

It was just an amazing thing, I think.

And again, just like Alexander Gardner, Gardner photographed Abraham Lincoln more than any other photographer in the 19th century, and I don't know that Ernest photographed Martin Luther King more than any other photographer, but he certainly photographed him every time he made a public appearance in Memphis, and he photographed him not only at the public appearances, but also informally at other kinds of gatherings.

As with these civil rights photographs, Ernest was right at the center of the Memphis music scene, and Memphis in the 1950s and '60s was quite a magical place.

A number of different musical styles came together to form a new genre of music that became huge, something known as rock and roll, but what happened was you had these gospel traditions merging with this jug band tradition.

I mean, this jug band was something very simple, I mean, just a little jug band, and this kind of music merged together along with this more traditional, sort of conservative string band kind of music, and like here, see, they took that music, they took that bass, they turned it upside down, and they turned it into something all new, something magical.

So we had this emergence of the rhythm and blues and soul and rock and roll, so all these things came together in Memphis at this time.

The other thing that's interesting about this music scene in Memphis is that, in a way, the music business was ahead of the rest of the country in terms of integration, because you did have Blacks and whites coming together to form these musical traditions, and in Ernest's photographs, you can see many examples where it's well documented with, obviously, Elvis and B.B.

together, and you see other white performers dealing with Black audiences and vice versa, so the music industry really was way ahead of the country in that.

- Brooks, thanks for sharing such great information.

In just a minute, we'll meet Ernest Withers and spend a little time with him at the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Stay with us.

(upbeat hip-hop music) (lively uplifting music) (lively uplifting music continues) (upbeat hip-hop music) (gritty rock and roll music) - You look in the viewfinder of a camera, and you decide what in that little small area do you come up with.

See, in photography, you shoot from a visual view finder.

You don't see what two eyes will see, and you don't see with one whole eye, so your term focus meant that you are in gear on the part of the image that you want to keep for a keepsake, for a purpose, and so my interest in photographing anybody is what you see, what you get.

(mellow music) It is my hope that what you see in the exhibit will be a bit of information and not a bit of agitation.

America is a collection of races.

The strongest three is the white race, the Black race, and the Indian red race, and then on and on and on, but it's all a part of knowing what the past is in order to live in the future.

In individual business, my wife and I developed pictures in our little $14-a-month house that we rented on Sunday night, where we would get the pictures developed and get 'em ready for Monday to sell.

We'd get 150, 200 pictures ready and she had counted that money; I'd go away Monday and come back with $35.

Boy, she was disappointed, but it was a matter of not how many pictures you had to sell, but how many you did turn into money.

There came a need for a photographer for the Tri-State Defender the Memphis World, and a continuance of other Black publications, even Jet Magazine.

(gentle music) I was the youngest in the group, and since I was the youngest in the group, I was the foolish one, and they would just push me in the middle of some of the worst things, and there was a man upstairs that kind of kept, saved me from a lot of good whippings that I could've gotten in Mississippi and in Alabama and in Arkansas and Tennessee.

My father told me that my great, great, great grandfather, Silas Withers, went off with Grant, with General Grant into Mississippi to take Vicksburg, came back to his landowner in Holly Springs and was taken off to be lynched, but my father never grew and never raised of his four boys and two girls a level of hate by race.

(gentle groovy music) The other day, a young lady, she went and got the lady that was her mother's maid and wanted her to see the picture.

They lived near the old park zoo, and it was Thursday, or the day that Black people went to the zoo, Tuesday or Thursday.

She said, "I want to go to the zoo."

She said, "Child, I have told you that you can't go to the zoo today.

If you go to the zoo today, I'll have to paint you black."

And so she went up in her mother's bathroom and got some Jet-oil shoe polish and painted herself black and went down and said, "Can I go to the zoo now?"

(laughs) I have a respect for every picture that I have taken that impresses.

People have been so ingratiated in this exhibit of the picture of the shoe shine man in Handy's Park.

Well, as long as I've had it, it has never been chosen for an exhibit, and it says, "White folk welcome," and it fits well, and it sets a theme.

Say, when I was making that car over there, I didn't have any idea that, 30 years from that day, that I'd be still looking at that car with that sign on it, but somehow, "Don't buy gas where you can't use the restroom," was the theme of that day, and so you photograph the art of the story, the part of the story that you either can't write up and you can't take up, so what you do is, they say a picture's more than a thousand words.

and that's absolutely a fact.

(mellow groovy music) So that's what I would do, photograph moments.

I look on the Emmett Till trial there, it said Sumner, Mississippi, a nice place to raise a boy.

I don't know whether I saw the nice place to raise a boy or whether I saw the Coca-Cola sign, but when I get back and develop that film and it said nice place to raise a boy, I got a pretty good subject.

And Life Magazine was some of the early photographers that started using 35-millimeter where they shot a hundred pictures, where the average photographer in my age, using the kind of camera I shoot, I shot the whole day and didn't shoot with 20 shots with a 4x5 camera.

Now I shoot a 35-millimeter camera, and I shoot more pictures.

There are so many multiple favorites in my package as an exhibitor, and of course, I would think the no whites at the zoo, the Martin Luther King first bus ride, the I Am a Man picture, and a compliment is, this kind of bubble over in your heart that you have done the right thing, and that's photographed the right thing, or that your basic service is not in vain.

My favorite picture is pictures of my family.

My boy is back there with Satchel Paige.

I got a lot of pictures of my wife and family when my children were small.

When it comes to favorite pictures, it's those pictures that touch my heart the best.

(upbeat hip-hop music) (lively uplifting music) (lively uplifting music continues) (upbeat hip-hop music) - The Chrysler Museum of Art is hosting several events to correspond with the Ernest Withers exhibition.

John Welch is the Director of Education at the Chrysler Museum of Art.

John, glad to have you here.

Tell us what's coming up.

- Glad to be here, Jeff.

We have a lot of programming built around the Withers exhibition.

On Sunday, April 16th, we are having program that centers on the baseball aspect of Withers' photography.

This program will bring together Norfolk locals such as Joseph Rose of Ivor and Samuel Allen of Norfolk, African American gentlemen who were very much involved with the Negro baseball leagues and who will be there to reminisce about their experiences during the '50s and '60s.

There will be a lot of people from the area who are lovers of baseball who will bring their memorabilia from that period.

The program will be built around both having some baseball history on the one hand, and also exploring what the Negro leagues were like.

- I was curious as to, what with kind of the advancements in the Major Leagues, did that affect the African American baseball players here in Hampton Roads, do you think?

- Well, certainly it had a pretty profound effect on the Negro baseball leagues.

They were no more.

Once Jackie Robinson went to the Major Leagues, it wasn't very long thereafter that the old baseball leagues, the old Negro baseball leagues, just simply ceased to exist, they were no longer economically viable, and so that was certainly one, a major change that came out of the period.

I think from another standpoint, probably it was the loss of a sense of community, because, of course, the old Negro baseball leagues were greatly supported by the African American community, and it was a wonderful experience to go to one of those games.

- [Jeff] What's coming up next?

May 7th.

- May 7th is a program called Southern Culture, Southern Roots, and it is being put on by the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia Beach and the Hampton University Art Museum, and the idea behind the program really originated around the fact that all three institutions were doing photography exhibitions that in some way related to Southern culture or emanated from Southern culture, and so we are planning to have the photographers, Ernest Withers- - Uh-huh.

- William Christenberry, and also we're gonna have a Gullah storyteller named Ron Daise, we're going to have a Southern chef, someone who specializes in Southern cuisine- - Great.

- And we probably will have also an individual who is very heavy into Southern music, and they will both talk and perform and do question and answers during this panel.

- [Jeff] Now, speaking of food- - Mm-hmm.

- [Jeff] Your next event has something to do with food, does it not?

- Yes.

Yes.

We are doing gospel brunches throughout the run of the Ernest Withers exhibition.

We have one scheduled for Sunday, March 19th and also one for Sunday, April 30th, and these are going to be really, really fun events.

They have a spiritual element in the sense that we're gonna have several gospel choirs at each event.

We're also doing Southern cuisine, so we're having a caterer bring in good old fried chicken and collard greens and cornbread and Southern fare like that.

The performers for the March 19th program are Kelly Wright, who is a soloist, and we're also having the Voices of Unity from the First Baptist Bute Street choir, and on April 30th, we're having Peggy Britt and the Kairos Worshipers, and the Tidewater Adventist Academy Children's Choir.

- Great.

Now you have one other event coming up, too, right?

Along with the program.

- Well, what we also have is a film series, and of course, the gospel brunches go on from 1:00 to 4:00 on those Sundays with community testimonials built in.

Individuals from the community will come and reminisce about their personal experiences here in Hampton Roads during the 1950s and '60s.

- And the film series will show right after that, or on what days?

- [John] The film series will show on March 12th and April 16th and April 30th.

- [Jeff] Fantastic.

- And the films that'll be showing at 3:00 PM on those Sundays are "All Day and All Night," which is a documentary that centers on Beale Street, and also "Black Diamond, Blue City," which really features the baseball aspect of Withers' photography, and also one called "The Bottom of the Fifth Inning," which is sort of the equivalent of the World Series in the Negro baseball leagues.

- Fantastic.

- Yeah.

- Fantastic.

Pictures Tell the Story: Ernest C. Withers will run at the Chrysler Museum of Art through May 7th.

Be certain not to miss it.

Whether your interest is the history of music, baseball, or the Civil Rights Movement, this is one show you don't want passing you by.

However, our time has passed, so it's goodbye for now.

Join us next week when the Virginia Symphony takes us behind the scenes of their annual special event, Of Heroes and Human Rights.

(upbeat hip-hop music) - [Announcer] Art Beat is made possible in part by the Chesapeake Bay Wine Classic Foundation.

(static hissing) (bright music)