Tom Whitehead is the kind of person that you think of when you think of a Louisiana legend.

I think Tom was a great professor.

I think he was a great person who really, really enjoyed his job.

Mr. Whitehead has spent the vast majority of his life promoting Clementine Hunter's artwork, educating others about her artwork.

On December 29th, 1946, Tom was born the only child of Grace and Artie Whitehead.

He was raised on a cattle farm in the small community of Pride, Louisiana.

He still goes back to Pride, even though pride is hardly there these days.

He still goes back there and has lots of friends.

Friends from elementary school remain friends of his.

Tom graduated from Northwestern's State University with a degree in political science and a minor in communications.

During the height of the sixties, protests.

Tom headed to Boston University to obtain a master's degree in public relations and communications.

Tom's experiences in Boston forever shaped his life.

But Louisiana was still home.

In 1969, Tom returned to begin what would be a 30 year tenure as a professor of journalism at Northwestern State in Natchitoches.

He poured himself into his students.

Some students would come to the university not knowing which direction in life they wanted to take.

He spent a lot of time with them.

Some of them went on to become important in business and so forth, many just to have a good job and a good life as a result of meeting Tommy.

He was just a guy who literally sowed seeds into his students, especially if he saw something in you.

I think that Tommy had a big thumbprint on what I did post Northwestern.

The most important relationship Tom formed, however, would be with Clementine Hunter, the folk artist who lived and worked picking cotton on Melrose Plantation in the Caine River Valley.

The best thing that I remember about Tommy was him giving me the opportunity to go and meet Clementine Hunter and take her paint.

Clementine Hunter produced thousands of paintings that documented black Southern life in the early 20th century, and for almost 60 years, Tom documented Clementine Hunter's Life, coauthoring several books, including her biography and co-producing several documentaries about her.

Tommy brought his innate sense of passion for history and for preservation to anything that he encountered from the very first foundation visit Encounters with Clementine.

So he was from then, naturally from the very beginning, documenting, collecting things.

And as a journalist, as a professor of journalism, he was paying careful attention to the integrity of facts.

Tom's weekly visits with Clementine Hunter became some of the most defining moments in his life, and it helped to bring her work into the spotlight.

Tom also played an important role in protecting her work from forgeries.

My first encounter with Mr. Whitehead was when I started a fraud investigation involving art forgeries made in the likeness of original works by the Louisiana folk artist Clementine Hunter.

Mr. Tom Whitehead was invaluable as far as educating me as to the history of Clementine Hunter, the artist, her art techniques, how she painted the materials that she used, and why her artwork was so collectible and important not just to Louisiana but to the entire world.

One of the things that you did that was very important for her art was that he that he helped to establish a standard for authenticity.

A clear sense of authenticity enabled individual collectors and museums to purchase work and to display work with confidence.

Tom Whitehead's advocacy for Clementine Hunter has protected and shaped her legacy, creating his own legacy that will last for generations.

As Clementine Hunter's individual works begin to be acknowledged in a deeper way.

Tommy Whitehead will always be cited for his lifetime successful efforts and bringing Clementine Hunter's work into the limelight.

The education he provided me, the inspiration I would never be in the position that I am today.

Had it not been for Tom Whitehead, period.

Thomas Whitehead, Louisiana Legend 2022.

So very glad to be in your home here.

Natchitoches is really a pleasure for us myself personally and Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

To be here to have a deeper conversation about your life and your contributions to Louisiana.

So first, I'll start with the first question that we have for you today, which is tell us about your childhood.

I was an only child.

I lived on a farm in the country at my address for Zachary, but I lived in a community called Pride.

And my graduating class at Pratt High School.

What?

There were 32 students in our class.

It was small class.

And it was.

It was a small community.

But I had no neighbors.

I lived on a farm.

So it was it was kind of isolated in a way.

The only community I really had was either going to church some or else at the school.

So growing up in the community of pride, the small community of pride, what did that do for you in terms of your trajectory in life?

With only a small class, I got to know individuals.

I got to see, you know, idiosyncrasies.

I had enough understanding.

I could see bright kids.

I could see kids that were athletes.

I could see the diversity in a small group of different types of characters.

And people kind of learn to like that.

I came here, I graduated in three years with Northwestern with a degree in political science and a minor in communications, and then I decided to get a master's degree at Boston University.

I got a degree in communications.

BE You and I was there at a great time.

I was there in the late sixties when all the war protest and all that craziness.

They closed the school down for protest and everything.

And I lived in a perfect part of Boston.

I lived directly behind Fenway Ballpark.

I lived out of the city.

If anybody watches baseball, you'll see the Citgo sign.

I lived at the base of the Citgo sign, and every night of my life in Boston, the colors changed on the black out of my window that colors of the switched Citgo sign.

So that's my memory of Boston that every night seeing the Citgo sign color and I go to ballgames at Fenway, I always look at the Citgo sign.

So let's talk about your relationship with Clementine Hunter and how important that was to your life.

Clementine Hunter story starts at a very interesting I would beginning to the story.

I was at Northwestern and I had a job in the TV studio as a student worker, and I helped.

At that time, Oral Williams was teaching developmental English on TV.

She had been to Columbia College in New York to learn how to teach developed and were doing testing on Could you teach developmental English on closed circuit TV?

And she back then, we didn't had like electronic graphics, We had student strips, which you put words and verbs and stuff.

And I was probably the only kid in the studio who could follow her lecture and put the right side up when she said, put the sign up.

So we became friends with our four student worker.

And one afternoon she said, I've got to run out to Melrose to see Francois McNeil.

Would you like to ride with me?

And I said, Yes, we're not over afternoon.

And I did.

And we sat.

She stopped by Clementina.

Clementine was in the yard painting a picture.

She was painting a picture.

I bought my first painting that day and then would go over to Francois place.

I met Francois Mineo in Melrose.

Those two that afternoon really had a lot to do with shaping my life, meeting those two people, Francois and Clementine.

So, Tom, how did you discover her work?

I know this all started with a chance ride out to to Melrose, but how did you really get into discovering her work and really promoting?

Well, of course, I tell you that I went out in the outer with a teacher, and we visit her and the women across the road to meet Francois.

Many are at Melrose, and those two people are really the Francois is the one that really discovered Clementine.

And he was a writer at a column, and he promoted Clementine in writing.

And there were other people.

Carolyn Ramsay from New Orleans photographed her and Lyle Sachs and wrote about her.

So there's a lot of people writing about Clementine.

The stories were there, and Clementine actually was the character that was the real person in those stories.

So she was a real person that would've been documented by prominent Louisiana writers at that time.

And so even getting into her art, what really motivated you to capture those pieces and see it for what it was, even though that was there, they were writing about her, but the art side of what she was doing.

I saw her work really in two categories.

One was she was documenting a way of life on a rural southern plantation that disappeared when mechanization came to agriculture in the 19 late forties fifties.

The jobs for people working on the plantation disappeared, and that's when the community changed.

Used to be all the people picking cotton machines pick the cotton, all of the other jobs in the plantation went away.

The great scenes of her painting wash day scene, well, everybody had washing machines and that went away, so there was a lot of activity.

She documented for that insider's perspective.

Absolutely.

So any any key lessons you've taken from your relationship with her and the art?

I learned a lot about creativity that she you know, she had no education, but she had in her a mental awareness, a cuteness that made her captured these pictures and many of these pictures, if you know some of the details that I worry because some of the characters and pictures in these paintings, we know who they are, but the next generations not because we heard Clementine tell us the story of who the people were and why they were in the picture and all of this.

So that has gone away.

But her paintings still document a way of life from that insider's perspective that disappeared.

It absolutely disappeared.

So, Tom, you advocated for her as a black woman during a time of tremendous racism.

What was that like to do that as obviously as a white gentleman?

Well, actually, with the arts, I think it was more accepting because they didn't look at her as a, you know, a fine artist, but they saw her as documenting this lifestyle.

And people, the purchasers of the art were people that had seen this in their life or been a part of it.

So she she met documentation.

She documented a lifestyle that disappeared, that the lifestyle would disappear.

But even you promoting that work and advocating for her in museums and areas where her work, where she couldn't go, but her work would be will be.

What was that like?

Well, I was not here then, but when they had the first exhibit of her paintings at Northwestern here in Natchitoches, she couldn't go in the daytime because they weren't allowed black people.

So they had to take her up there on a weekend or week night or something to take her up there to see her paintings hanging because of segregation.

That's dramatic story.

That is a dramatic story.

And I would think for her, did she share that, what that felt like for her?

I don't know.

She was not very articulate about something like that.

It was on a Sunday afternoon that took her to the Henchy gallery up on the campus at Northwestern and showed her she just they say I was, of course, not there.

Then it was in 1952, I think that she just looked at it, almost stunned that there were people look in her paintings, these were her paintings.

And everybody were looking at was looking at them.

That's dramatic to me, to think that artists didn't understand that people she wasn't aware of what they meant to people.

That's something that go through life.

And even now we're looking back on her work and how celebrated it is and for her not to really appreciate it or have that same level of of concern for it.

So you worked with the FBI to actually protect her work from forgery.

Why was that important to her legacy, especially for you?

Well, especially important to me because a group of us that were friends and stuff, Clementine collectors realized what was happening.

There were forged clementines being sold in galleries all over Louisiana and actually in New Orleans.

But we couldn't figure out, you know, to prosecute on a forgery case.

You got to know who painted the pictures or something about them and us saying their fake doesn't mean they're fake in many people's eyes.

So I finally had a friend of mine that was in the US Attorney's office in Shreveport.

I called him.

I said, Alex, we have some art forgery cases and it's very good and we have lots of documentation, but nobody will take.

We've been the sheriff.

We went to sheriff in East Baton Rouge, all these places.

Nobody would take the case.

And we think the reason why they didn't know what to do and Alex told me, I have a young FBI agent in Alexandria, Louisiana, Randy Dean, and you give me some time.

I got a case going on.

Give me about a month.

I might call you and come down and visit with you.

In that month, I produced a loosely binder about the eighth batch, three inches thick of all the paperwork and pictures and everything.

And they came sat in my dining room table and Alex took it back to scrape Alex Van Hook took it back to Shreveport, and about a month later he called to say, We're going to take the case.

And that opened up a whole new world of art integrity, not just to Clemente, but the whole underserved, primitive, self-starter artist they'd never prosecuted.

Nobody wanted to fool with it, so that the landmark ness of that case is the fact that we protecting art, not the fine arts, but people that, you know, folk art and people that a little smaller communities that are not in part of the mainstream of art.

So how was how difficult is it to actually detect the forgery in Clemens team's work or maybe even the folk art in general?

Well, you have to have somebody knows the artist, and I couldn't do that with, well, the folk artists, but I can do Clementine.

But there are certain techniques I hesitate to tell some of it, but I know I tell you, I'll tell you one thing.

Just an easy example of it is that Clementine always took a pencil and marked or she drew the board.

She called it Mark in the board.

The people that cotton or whatever, she marked it with the pencil and the forgers didn't do that.

They just painted the picture.

And if you look always you should look at you look at pencil marks.

And those pencil marks are an indication that Clementine painted them.

Now, sometime they're hidden by paint.

But if you look everywhere on the board, you'll see some pencil mark Right.

Right.

I'm glad you're able to help preserve her legacy.

And clearly that's important to you that her legacy be protected in this way.

What more can you do to ensure her legacy?

Well, you need to have a body, academic body of work on her.

You know, you have to have scholarship, other art.

And we have other people are writing about it now.

And now the New York Gallery, Sotheby's.

And they'll sell paintings of hers.

But also we watch very carefully, even small.

We have Google Alerts on the on her work and we see a painting.

We saw one recently in somewhere in New Mexico and Arizona.

And it was a fake one.

And we have the ability to call the FBI and they will go look at the painting and of this fight.

They'll take will take it down.

Wow.

We have the authority to do that.

Right.

We have brought it.

And this is not just Clementine.

It's the whole world.

Art world is benefiting from this because we have brought law enforcement into protecting self-taught art and folk art.

It's a major accomplishment, not for me, but for the whole community that we've done this.

Sure.

Sure.

And they were doing this work for the the trained artists that had already been going.

Right.

Not necessarily the folk art levels.

Yes.

AT Tom, you're a prolific collector of clementines.

Were do you have a favorite piece as we sit in this gallery of yours at your home?

We have pieces all around us and I'm so enjoying this.

Going to be hard to leave, but what's your favorite piece?

Well, I have several pieces that are favorite.

Some she painted for me specifically.

But then there are some that I've acquired by gifts people have given to me.

The Williams family or the Britten family gave me.

And the one that I think is probably my favorite is Uncle Israel eight Jane They were the two last of the enslaved people at Melrose.

Lovely little Ben died in 1825 and it's a picture of him and it's a painting of the of them outside their cottage.

And it's so many cult not only artistic but cultural.

I don't have I remember I lived in the country.

There were chicken coops where they had these, you know, they shoot the chickens under them at night and they'd take them out in the days and issue and back to the box.

Wouldn't get him.

Well this is got the chicken coops in and that has completely disappeared from this.

Her documentation of that and it's it's just important think that Clementine knew and it's layperson right and so that's pretty she was a grown woman she painted them yes yeah yeah they were were from life I mean they they didn't pose for them, but he knew them in person.

How many or I guess there other artists has done that, but still.

Wow, that's amazing.

That is and all of her pieces and I loved how you said earlier that she knew all the persons in her painting.

Yes.

She had could tell you who they were, who she was actually drawing and we talked about how she would oftentimes make the men smaller than the one very frequently.

The smallest one was always the preacher.

Oh, really?

She had to look she out in a painting.

There's involved a church scene.

The preacher is always the smallest character.

She at least it was respect for the minister.

That's interesting.

That's really interesting.

There's always a small this person was a preacher, so what do you want to tell the next generation of artists and art historians and art enthusiasts about Clementine and her work?

I think that A No, I think they need to understand that Clementine painted from memory and from actually participating in it actual experiences that very few insiders have ever documented on canvas.

These people didn't have access to paint earlier or her age group that did, and she painted from memory.

She knew these people.

She knew people that had been enslaved.

And this is all part of the story that Clementine actually had.

Insiders.

She knew the people she actually painted, people she knew that had been slaves and the community of the church.

And I don't know about every place, but here there are two communities in Cane River.

There's at the three, there's Anglo White, there's the Creole community and there's the black community.

And there are some intermixing down all through there.

It's a complicated story, but the idea that these people coexisted and the baptize whenever there's a baptism on the river that, you know, that's a Baptist one, the Catholics didn't do it.

So, you know, you have to figure out what's doing what is right.

Yes.

And it's a cultural milieu at Melrose.

Think about that.

There were three communities simply culturally identifiable.

When there were segregated schools, there were three separate schools out there.

The white school was public, the black school was public.

And then there was a Creole school that was Catholic.

It was a community of diversity.

And, you know, you have to think that diversity makes a difference.

Makes a difference.

And then Clementine captured all of this, and we want the young artists coming along to understand how important it is, I guess, to use your art to capture what's going on around you.

At the time, she didn't have access to cameras.

She couldn't write stories, but her paintings told.

For that insider's perspective, what the subjects her life was like, That's unusual.

Every aspect of her life.

That's what's so amazing about her work as well.

She covered everything.

And, you know, she tells me she one of her favorite scenes to paint was picking cotton.

That would be the horrible thing in my life, she said, was a favorite time of her life.

It's hard work.

They would all go down the road that sang songs and it put their babies up in a bramble up on a tree, and then they go back down and come back down and check on the babies and go back down the row and pick again.

You know, it's just it's just a lifestyle that no longer exist.

Oh, clearly, clearly.

So, Tom, you've you've accomplished so much in your life.

Where do you get this energy from and what do you view?

Well, I think interesting people, that's a good answer.

I had a lot of experiences at Northwestern when I worked here.

I was chairman of the lecture series for 25 years.

I had some of the great people in America come here and speak, brought them to act.

When I retired, they quit the lecture series.

But the idea was that, you know, we had Margaret Mead, we had Buckminster Fuller, Bill Russell visited here, and he came he flew into Shreveport at six in the morning.

I picked him up, came back to my house.

He said, We didn't speak till 10:00.

He said, Can I take a nap?

I said, I don't care.

He piled up at my king size bed and took a nap, or about our half got up, took a shower, went to speak, and then we went to lunch and other I tell you how many meat pass he ate.

He is people like that.

Very tall man.

Yeah, big man here, a lot of place for meat pies.

But you know, we had Margaret Mead was fascinating.

Speaker Yes, we opportunity to work with a lecture series and only one person missed, but Betty Friedan threw a boots at me.

But other than that, it was a great experience to say something to her.

Well, she was, you know, I gave her a cocktail and she calmed down.

I gave her a strong drink and she calmed down to the restaurant.

The probably the most to amazing speakers, Maya Angelou and Coretta Scott King.

I would imagine we had we had so many we had to have at the Coliseum because it was so big.

And they put all the laboring school kids and they sat on the floor that all these little kids sitting on pallets or something.

And she spoke and not a whisper in the building.

And she did the poem about and it was just I've had experiences like that.

So.

TIME Were you the one actually deciding who the speakers was?

Well, I had a committee that the committee basically deferred to me.

The committee basically deferred to, and then making the context, we went to an agent.

Wow.

And certain people, the agent was Los Angeles.

And sometimes, you know what?

That person that was always a sign of death to me as agent didn't want to try to get somebody that was a bad side.

But we went to a great period of lecture series and when I retired, it went away.

Wow.

When you think back over your life and work time, what are the what are you most proud of?

You've done a lot.

I've done a lot.

And I had haven't mentioned in this discussion.

I've traveled a lot.

I've been to all seven continents and I've really made trips and I don't get I never been on a group tour.

I always go independent travel, so.

Michael Duffy Maybe, but I mean I'll travel, will I go independent and go places and do things and you know, it's seeing other people is very I don't want to go on a trip with all Americans on a boat or something like that.

So that's what I want to do.

I want to do I have experiences.

Life is experiences, life experiences, experiencing life, using some of it through travel, people interacting with interesting people and.

Clemente And of course, that's kind of the premiere stop is full of all that out there, the Cane River.

So it's a it's a life well-lived and it's a life that enjoyed.

I think I understood what creativity was and interesting people, and that made it very enriching experience.

So in all of these enriching experiences and life in general, is there anything you do differently?

No, probably not.

I probably do more to do more, more, more.

But with all the things you've done.

Yeah, I like more of it.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You got plenty more to go.

I thank you.

I hope so.

And find some more things to to get yourself involved in.

Thank you.

That was good.

I love it.

So, one last thing.

What does the next chapter look like for you?

Well, I've written a book or two that Clementine involved with projects on that, but I enjoy life.

I wish I didn't have some health issues.

I haven't travel, but I want to get back to traveling.

You know, I got lots of frequent flier miles I need to use.

Okay.

Okay.

That's it.

So, you know, it's just that you want it.

You want it.

Life is experiences and I like experiences.

Yeah.

What about any other artists?

Any new artists, emerging artists you're seeing out there that you have your eye on?

I don't feel comfortable in that doing that because I don't know the people I know so much about Clementine, that insider's relationship that I think I'd have trouble with other artist.

I mean, I like art and stuff, but the idea of working with people like Clementine and get involved, I didn't know the artists.

I knew the artists and tell the stories.

And your favorite piece on Clementine, you talked about wanting that to be in the public domain.

Yeah, I've got other paintings of mine that go out in the public domain too.

I've already given some.

I'm giving more.

Okay.

They need to be shared with the public.

We love it.

Thank you.

We love it, Tom.

We've enjoyed this time.

It's your home, we've been told.

Enjoyed your hospitality.

I certainly want to get the recipe to those brownies.

Okay, Got that before we leave.

And so thank you so much again, as our 2022 Louisiana legend, you'll always be a legend.

And in the legacy of Clementine Hunter that you are keeping alive will go on for years and years and years.

I like to hear that.

Thank you.

Yes, absolutely.

For a copy of this program, call one 800 9737246 or go online to WW w dot lp dawg.