Tag: Ernest Withers

Categories
Art Art Feature

“A Requiem for King”

Ernest Withers’ photographs illustrating Memphis in 1968. (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Last month, to honor the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the National Civil Rights Museum unveiled “Waddell, Withers, & Smith: A Requiem for King,” an exhibition highlighting three Memphis-based artists whose work responded to King’s assassination and the Civil Rights Movement: self-taught sculptor James Waddell Jr., photojournalist Ernest Withers, and multimedia artist Dolph Smith.

“It goes to show the levels of Dr. King and how many people he impacted,” NCRM associate curator Ryan Jones says of the exhibit. “He didn’t just impact people who were civil rights leaders and human rights activists; he impacted people who were artists. And so this goes to show what he meant as a man and that people here in this great community of Memphis have channeled and responded to something that has been a dark cloud over the city in the past 55 years. Dr. King impacted the hearts and minds of so many citizens.”

Each of the three artists were born and raised in Memphis, Jones says, and all served in the military, with their respective services being turning points in their artistic careers. Withers, a World War II veteran, learned his craft at the Army School of Photography. He would then go on to photograph some of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement, including King’s fateful visit to Memphis, the priceless images for which line the exhibition’s walls.

“We can’t tell the story of the modern Civil Rights Movement without the role of photography,” Jones says, and truly, Withers played one of the most significant roles in documenting that history, capturing approximately 1.8 million photographs before his death at 85 years old in 2007.

At the same time Withers was documenting King’s Memphis visit and the aftermath of his assassination, James Waddell (who happened to later be photographed by Withers) was serving in the Vietnam War and didn’t learn what had happened in Memphis until weeks later. For Waddell and his family, King’s death marked a period of pain and grief — “His relatives compared the assassination to a death in the family,” reads the exhibit’s wall text.

“[Sculpture] was his way of reacting to the tragedy that had happened,” Jones says. “He said that living in Memphis and being a native Memphian and not doing the work would be something he would never be able to get over.” So when he returned home, Waddell channeled this grief in the work now on display — an aluminum-cast bust of King and Mountaintop Vision, a bronze statue of King kneeling on a mountaintop with an open Bible. “It shows he’s humbling himself to God,” Waddell said of the sculpture in a 1986 interview in The Commercial Appeal with Anthony Hicks. 

James Waddell’s Mountaintop Vision (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Initially, as the 1986 article reveals, Waddell planned to create an eight-foot version of Mountaintop Vision as “the city’s first statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” “The time is right, because Memphis is beginning to voice an opinion that there is a need for a statue,” Waddell told The Commercial Appeal. “This will be a tool for understanding.”

Waddell, who has since passed, said he hoped “to see the finished piece placed at the proposed Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum, Clayborn Temple, or in Martin Luther King Jr. Riverside Park.” Though that eight-foot version never came to fruition, at long last, the smaller version of Waddell’s Mountaintop Vision can be seen not only in a public display for the first time, but also at the National Civil Rights Museum as he once had envisioned. 

Dolph Smith’s The Veil of the Temple Was Rent in Two (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Meanwhile, Dolph Smith, who had long since returned home from the Vietnam War, was in Memphis the night of King’s assassination. As Memphis was set ablaze that night, he and his family stood on the roof of their home, watching the smoke rise around them. He vowed to never forget that date — April 4, 1968. In his personal calendar for that day, he wrote, “If this has happened in Memphis, then now I know it can happen anywhere. It is so hard to believe a man’s basic instinct is to be good.”

In response to what he called “an unspeakable tragedy” and the public uprising that arose from it, Smith took to the canvas. For one piece on display at the museum, titled The Veil of the Temple Was Rent in Two, the artist ripped an American flag, placing photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in between its tears, as Jones says, “to show the extreme divisiveness that the assassination caused.”

In all, Jones hopes the exhibit will show the reach of King’s legacy extending beyond April 4, 1968, all the way to the present day. In one of the videos projected on the exhibition’s walls, Smith, now at 89 years old, speaks on the importance of witnessing artwork like the pieces on display. “If you make something and it just sits there, it’s unfinished,” Smith says. To him — a painter, bookmaker, and educator — in order for a work of art to be “finished,” it has to be shared, for the mission of the artist is not simply to create but to spark conversation, to encourage self-reflection, and in cases like that of Withers, Waddell, and Smith, to activate progress.

“Waddell, Withers, & Smith: A Requiem for King” is on display at the National Civil Rights Museum through August 28th.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Ernest Withers Documentary The Picture Taker to Open Indie Memphis Film Festival

Director Phil Bertelsen's documentary The Picture Taker reflects on the complicated legacy of Ernest Withers. (Photo courtesy Withers Family Trust)

The 25th edition of the Indie Memphis Film Festival will open at the Halloran Centre on October 19 with The Picture Taker, director Phil Bertelsen’s documentary about Memphis photographer Ernest Withers.

Withers was famous for his indelible images of Black life in Memphis and the 1968 Sanitation Workers’ Strike. After his death, his role as a paid informant for the FBI was revealed, leaving many to question his legacy in the Civil Rights movement. Bertelsen’s film wrestles with Withers’ complex life and legacy.

Bertelsen’s most recent project, the six-part series Who Killed Malcom X?, prompted a re-investigation of the Civil Rights leader’s 1965 assassination that exonerated two men who had been wrongly convicted of participating in the crime.

“We’re thrilled and honored to be chosen as the Indie Memphis opening night film!” says Bertelsen. “The Picture Taker couldn’t have been made without the many Memphians who sat before and behind our cameras — opening their homes and hearts and lending their stories and creativity to this production. We look forward to bringing this story back home to the city that was Ernest Withers’ muse. Thank you, Memphis!”

This year’s film festival will run from October 19-24, both in-person at various venues in the Bluff City and in the online virtual format that emerged during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The full lineup will be revealed at a preview party at Black Lodge on Tuesday, September 13th at 6:30 p.m. You can RSVP to the preview part and purchase passes to the festival at the Indie Memphis website.

Categories
Book Features Books

Preston Lauterbach’s Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers

CREDIT: Elise Lauterbach

Last week, as Ken Burns visited Memphis to unveil his upcoming series, Country Music, he said he considers himself not so much a historian as a storyteller. It’s a distinction salient to Preston Lauterbach’s new book, Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers (Norton). As was seen in reportage by Marc Perrusquia nearly a decade ago, and in his subsequent book on Withers from last year, the subtle differences between history, storytelling, and journalism make a dramatic impact on the final framing of a narrative.

Perrusquia’s work, for example, was centered on the writer’s own sleuthing, and his ultimate triumph in gaining access to the FBI’s file on Ernest Withers. The reporter’s success turned Withers’ life story into one big “gotcha” moment. Revelations that the renowned chronicler of the civil rights movement had made regular reports on that movement to the FBI’s Memphis field office were indeed earthshaking, but that narrative of betrayal so overshadowed any other perspective on Withers’ life that many Memphians who knew Withers resented Perrusquia’s detective work.

Lauterbach’s storytelling offers a refreshing widening of perspective. His more holistic focus on Withers’ life, in all its contradictions, makes that life emblematic of Memphis history itself. And it’s undeniable that the photographer, a lifelong Memphian, embodies the city’s distinct character, not least in his willingness to think outside the box and forge his own independent path.

Elise Lauterbach

Preston Lauterbach

Lauterbach’s previous volume on Memphis history, Beale Street Dynasty, was loosely organized around the life of African-American millionaire Robert Church, with the city itself a character in the tale. Because that book did not aspire to biography, even in its title, the wide-ranging digressions on other major players in the Beale Street saga made narrative sense.

The new work, then, is a sequel to that tale, bringing Beale Street into the late 20th century. Withers was a fixture there, setting up his studio “in the thick of the midnight world.” There, Withers gained easy access to clubs on the street, snapping photos of patrons and performers alike, then running across the street to develop and sell them that same night.

This, along with with Negro Baseball League players and everyday weddings and funerals, became Withers’ initial subject matter. And he is defined in this book primarily by the places he went and the things he did. As a biography, it makes little headway in unpacking the psychology of its subject, or his relation to his friends and family. The Ernest Withers of Bluff City is primarily a doer, with an instinct for finding significant events and the flash-frame moments that express them.

Lauterbach has a storyteller’s gift for setting a scene — and the threads leading to moments captured by Withers’ lens. A digression seemingly unrelated to Withers’ life or personal relationships will culminate in the moment immortalized by Withers with a single, well-chosen shot. And as the civil rights movement heats up, becoming more torn by its internal factions, the scene-setting comes to dominate the tale, as extended digressions on the lives of key civil rights figures cause Withers’ personal story to vanish at times.

One salutary effect of this is a more informed perspective on Withers’ relationship with the FBI. When Withers first begins reporting on civil rights groups’ activities, it’s clearly a natural extension of his reliance on federal authorities to keep him safe from more racially blinkered local police, as when FBI agents investigate his abuse at the hands of officers in Jackson, Mississippi.

As the movement develops, the ethics of Withers’ involvement become more blurred. If, on the one hand, his reporting on the Nation of Islam helps counter the FBI’s tendency to paint them as instigators of violence, he’s equally willing to buy into the Bureau’s anti-Communist rhetoric, brazenly misleading Northern activists to earn his informant’s wages. In light of Richard Wright’s disillusionment with doctrinaire Communists in Black Boy, it’s understandable, but Lauterbach never really digs into the historical complexities of the Left’s racial politics. For that, one must turn to other sources. The implication — that Withers was trying to insulate moderate activists he deemed legitimate from accusations of extremism — remains merely an implication. Teasing out such ethical and political niceties is precisely where the book’s storytelling falls short of historical analysis.

Of course, Withers’ true intentions will always be mysterious. Having passed away in 2007, he’s never been able to answer accusations of “spying” directly. But Lauterbach’s tale, with its greater sensitivity to the contradictions inherent in surviving racism, goes a long way toward a fuller, more human vision of a life lived in the fray.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

The Scramble for Position

CREDIT: JB

**The Shelby County Republicans’ Master Meal (this year re-christened as “Reagan Day Master Meal) went off as usual at the Great Hall of 

David Lillard at GOP Master Meal

Germantown on Thursday night, but this year, the event, which featured state treasurer David Lillard as keynoter, was characterized by an unusual omission. Despite the presence, at the front of the mammoth hall, near the dais, of two life-sized cutouts, one of the Great Communicator and another of the current president, the event featured no mention — that’s zero mention — of Donald J. Trump, the POTUS. Well, there was one mention, technically, when Lee Mills, chairman of the Republican Party of Shelby County, informed the several hundred arriving celebrants they could, if they chose, be photographed with either of the two cutouts, After that, nada — not from Lillard not from two prior speakers, state Senator Brian Kelsey or state Representative Mark White.

Considering that the Master Meal is an annual party event rivaling the RPSC’s annual Lincoln Day banquet, usually held in February, that was downright unusual. Keynoter Lillard did brag of the fiscal achievements of “state government” (which is to say the Treasurer’s office, assisted by the GOP-dominated legislature) but did no boasting whatsoever of Trump, nor, for that matter, of Republican Governor Bill Haslam.

Outgoing County Mayor Mark Luttrell came in for some praise and was granted a curtain call for a farewell speech, but most of the rhetoric of the affair went toward praising the pedigrees and boosting the chances of the many local Republican office-holders and GOP candidates for reelection against challenges from what Kelsey acknowledged was a newly invigorated Democratic Party. Mayhap an omen in all this? Or merely an oversight?

Chris Thomas

As usual, Shelby County Republicans turned out in force for their annual Master Meal at Germantown’s Great Hall.

**The Tennessee Nurses Association, local members of which gathered in Memphis at Coletta’s Restaurant in Bartlett earlier Friday evening to hear updates from Crystal Walker of the UT College of Nursing and TNA executive director Tina Gerardi, has been trying hard to have sit-downs with each of the six major candidates for governor, hoping, among other things, to get endorsements for state-authorized Independent Practice for nurse practitioners. The TNA remains hopeful, despite being stiffed by the GOP’s Randy Boyd, Diane Black, and Beth Harwell, who have failed so far to arrange a rendezvous with TNA officials. The two Democratic candidates, Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh, have each indicated support for Independent Practice authority, however, and hopes were high at the Friday dinner for a positive encounter on Saturday with Republican candidate Bill Lee, who had responded eagerly to an invitation to meet with TNA members during his planned “Super Saturday” event on Saturday at his Shelby County headquarters on Poplar Avenue. Meanwhile, all the candidates have received copies of a TNA questionnaire, the results from which will at some point be publicized by the nurses’ organization.

Another guest of honor at the Tennessee Nurses Association bash on Thursday night was Sara Kyle, the District 30 state senator who, along with her Senate colleague Lee Harris (now a candidate for Shelby County Mayor), is on what can only be called a crusade to cast out yet another Shelby County senator, Reginald Tate of District 33, in favor of Democratic challenger Katrina Robinson. Tate’s sins are those of incessant collaboration with the Republican powers-that-be in Nashville, the fact of using important committee memberships — Education, Health & Welfare, Finance, Ways & Means, Judiciary — not for the aims and purposes of his constituents or party-mates but to advance Republican goals often regarded as antithetical to his District 33 base. In an effort to propitiate the ire of his fellow Democrats, Tate resigned his long-term affiliation with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Koch-brothers-funded source of arch-Republican legislation, but allowed himself to be captured, on-mic, at a recent TV appearance as calling himself a “black Republican” and denouncing Democrats as “full of shit.”

Worst of all, Tate made no effort to oppose the legislative action to withdraw a previous $250,000 grant to Memphis for its 2019 bicentennial celebration as punishment for the city’s taking down Confederate statues in time for this year’s April 4th commemoration of Martin Luther King events, just as he had made no effort to oppose the Norris-Todd bill of 2011 that resulted in the sundering of a merged city/county school system and the creation of breakaway school districts in each of Shelby County’s suburban municipalities.
Jim McCarter

State Senator Sara Kyle with TNA members

  Ironically, Tate had scheduled his headquarters opening at 3556 Mendenhall for Saturday afternoon, at the same time that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee was having a “Super Saturday” bash at his headquarters at 5576 Poplar.

Though the word “Democrat” does not appear on the senator’s signage at his new headquarters, neither does the word “Republican.” Tate did, in fact, have some identifiable Democrats at the opening, and, when he was asked about the public disaffection from him of fellow Senate Democrats Kyle and Lee Harris, he handed out a flyer listing various benefits to Shelby County which he said were results of his Senate tenure, and he suggested that the coolness to his candidacy of various Democrats owed more to their envy of his achievements (alternatively, of his legislative committee assignments) than to any partisan apostasy on his part.

JB

Reginald Tate (2nd from right) with friends atSaturday headquarters opening. Flanking are County Commissioner Willie Brooks and Young Democrat Alvin Crook, with former City Clerk Thomas Long nearby.

**As for the aforementioned gubernatorial candidate Lee, he had several members of the TNA at his “Super Saturday” affair (which was to have included some door-to-door campaigning in nearby locations, that had to be postponed, pending a break in some sudden rain showers).

Neither his questionnaire nor those of his gubernatorial opponents have as yet been received and tabulated by the TNA, but candidate Lee made a point of acknowledging his support for one of the key wish-list items wanted by the nurses’ association, legislation enabling independent practicing authority for nurse practitioners. One of his auditors on Saturday was TNA stalwart Connie McCarter, who pronounced herself pleased.
Another candidate for governor, U.S. Representative Diane Black, has invited members of the association to meet with her during the course of a CPAC event at FedExForum on Monday.

JB

Gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee with friends at Lee’s ‘Super Saturday’ event.

**Even as most local political attention is fixed on the races to be decided in the state and federal primaries and county general election August 2nd, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland made a major move to ready his reelection campaign for the city election of 2019. Strickland, who has been steadily been holding campaign fund-raisers, scheduled his most recent one for Tuesday of this week at the Beale Street Museum and Studio of the late Ernest Withers, the late revered photographic chronicler of the Civil Rights Revolution.

The crowded affair, at a minimum of $150 a head, drew a Who’s Who of influential black businessman and civil eminences, and suggested good tidings in 2019 for Strickland, whose 20915 upset victory over then Mayor A C Wharton, involved the draining away of significant African-American votes from Wharton. In his remarks to the group, Strickland did not fail to note that he had put himself on the line in the successful effort to buck state resistance in the removal of Confederate memorials downtown, that he had geometrically increased the amount of city contracts with black-owned businesses, and that he had addressed black voters’ concerns in numerous other ways.

It remains uncertain who Strickland’s opponents will be in 2919, though a former mayor, Willie Herenton, has proclaimed a wish to run, and Mike Williams, head of the Memphis Police Union, a fourth-place finisher in 2015, has already basically declared. Both are African-American. Strickland’s aim is clearly to stay a step ahead, and holding on to his impressive share of the black base is a key part of his strategy. JB

No, Elvis and BB, as famously pictured by Ernest Withers, are not quite life-size, but even if they were, they’d have had to defer, size-wise, to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who held a successful fund-raiser in the Withers Museum and Studio on Thursday night.

Categories
News News Blog

MLK50: Withers Archive Yields Striking Account of King’s First March on Main

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

The Withers Family Trust, which manages half a century’s worth of documents, prints, and negatives produced by renowned photographer Ernest Withers, was abuzz with excitement last week over an artifact that most historians would consider buried treasure.

The trust’s archives, containing an estimated 1.8 million negatives and prints, largely uncatalogued, are still in the throes of an exhaustive reorganization led by program manager Carol McCarley.

The many hundreds of boxes still hold plenty of surprises for the archive’s staff, as when, last Wednesday, an unassuming stenographic notebook was found.

“It was just odd, yesterday being the 28th, and we uncovered this,” McCarley said the following day, holding up the notebook. “It was around 11:45 in the morning. I picked it up and flipped it open and it said, ‘On Thurs. March 28, at approx. 11:45am, the march on city hall…’ I kept reading and reading. And I thought, ‘Wow, that’d be exactly 50 years ago today. Oh my goodness!’”

“It gave me shivers,” added Rosalind Withers, CEO at the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery.
Justin Fox Burks

While nearly all the materials in the archives were created in the course of Withers’ photographic work, there was some doubt as to whether he had written the eyewitness reports. In the notebook’s end pages, there are lists of photos, identifying the subjects, and notes concerning photos sent to the St. Louis Sentinel, at a charge of $10 per image (the equivalent of over $70 today).

Presumably these are Withers’ own notes. But the front of the notebook, detailing events as they transpired half a century ago, appears to be the work of another.

“We did question the handwriting,” said McCarley. Added Rosalind, “Yeah, it didn’t look like dad’s. It’s not dad. (The author) mentions dad in the writing.”

In fact, the bulk of the notebook appears to be a professional reporter’s hurriedly edited eyewitness notes from the Sanitation Workers’ Strike that unfolded on that day.

Judging from the attention paid to the racial antagonism of the police officers, and certain comments from the officers, the reporter was likely a member of the African-American press.

The following excerpt speaks for itself as a time capsule from that historic day:

“The Martin King March

On Thurs. March 28, at approx. 11:45am, the march on city hall by striking city sanitation workers left Clayborn Temple at Ponotoc and Hernando. A confrontation with the mayor of Memphis, Henry Loeb, was the goal of the Marchers. In from Atlanta Georgia, to lead the march was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
[pullquote-7] The procession, which was never orderly and not quite really organized, had gone 4½ blocks when chaos and disorder erupted.

At 3:24, five squad cars regular and unmarked left Beale & Hernando at high rate of speed and proceeded south on Hernando. At this time I was queried by a policeman who wanted to know if the writing of biased news was my reason for being present.

The hurried arrival and departure of police cars continued frequently throughout the day.
Justin Fox Burks

Field Command Post was set up at this location from which police dispatched and to various areas of the city.

At 12:35, Larry Payne 16 year old student at Mitchell High School was shot and killed by three white policemen, allegedly after turning on them with knife. Police charged Payne had looted a retail store nearly three blocks away.
[pullquote-2] As violence and disorder continued throughout the day in isolated locations, National Guard Units led by local police units patrolled practically all areas of the city. Earlier, a contingency of Memphis policemen had battled students at predominantly Negro Hamilton High School. Officers there were greeted by a deluge of flying rocks, bricks, bottles, sticks, and almost any projectile that could be thrown.

Meanwhile in Nashville, the capitol city, Gov. Buford Ellington hurriedly dispatched some 4,000 National Guardsmen into the city with an additional 8,000 placed on standby. The March itself, led by Dr. King was proceeded by about 300 youths who actually started the window breaking, that grew into violent and riot proportions. Crews of Memphis Fire Department were kept equally busy.

At the height of disorder on Main Street, Dr. King was hurriedly whisked away to an undisclosed destination presumably for further strategy planning. Elements of the Black Power movement were not known to have had an active participation in riot. City officials believe started trouble because they were angered by the turn-around in the march.
[pullquote-1] A negro copy clerk for the Commercial Appeal (one of two dailies that has supported the Mayor) was told to move on by a policeman. The youth said: “I am with the press.” The policeman sprayed him with Mace.

The white press was allowed to move freely without interference. Negro press members were hampered and their movements restricted every block they advanced. Veteran Negro newsman and press photographer Ernest C. Withers was stopped at every corner and had to get clearance from a white police inspector before he was allowed to move.

One policeman hit a small boy – about 8 or 9 years old with a baton on the back and leg as the boy walked past the policeman. One policeman asked this observer if it were my intention to write biased news for the Negro press.
[pullquote-4] “Our cause is love Our cause is just Our cause is right We did the only thing we could, protest indignity” – Rev. C. M. Lee

Starks: “Weapons in hands of police were not riot control weapons but kill weapons”

Harold Whalum [&] Tillie Whalum of 1775 Glenview: Union Protective [Insurance]: Whalum was attempting to help Jim Lawson reverse March. Mr. Whalum was joined by Jesse Turner in restoring order on Main St. When they reached Beale Street. Mr. Whalum tried to restrain a group of youngsters from engaging. Entered NAACP building at 234 Hernando.

One officer entered building and shouted obscenities at a group of women. When Mr. Whalum protested he was attacked and was sprayed Mace, when he protested further. The officer’s partner leveled his shotgun at Mr. Whalum and screamed: “You black mother—— open your mouth once more.” At this point Mr. Whalum was restrained by Dr. Vasco Smith.
[pullquote-5] Mr. Whalum is also 1st Vice Chairman of Urban League Board, member of Traffic Advisory Committee and March of Dimes and President of Union Protective Insurance, Citizen’s Association, Chamber of Commerce, Welcoming Committee.

Morris Webb of 378 F Danny Thomas at Big M.

Police disbursed a group of loud youths at the Big M. Officers approached group and said “Let’s get out of here”. Someone in the crowd remarked, “We don’t have to go any damn where”. The officer in charge then told his partners “Let’s get these niggers out of here”. They then attacked the group and sprayed them with Mace.

Morris Webb and Kenny Cox were parked in Cox’s car and were not a part of group. They were then thrown into “paddy wagon”, taken to John Gaston Hospital where they were treated.

At hospital: he was at first not permitted to wash blood off. Webb was separated from Cox, and did not of Cox’s fate [sic]. He has not seen Cox since. Webb was taken to jail and charged with breach of peace. But at 9:30 p.m. Turnkey Ben Price told Webb that police had not placed charges against him. People with attorneys were heard first. The next morning before Judge Bernie Weinman dismissed disposition of breach of peace. 527-6918

Morris Webb stated that:

A man standing at Vance & Fourth witnessed 10 or 12 boys captured by police, it appeared obvious the boys were about to be beaten when a truck of National Guardsmen approached, the truck’s commander had his unit surround the policemen and proceeded to tell them the boys had been apprehended and no rough treatment was necessary. If they were going to arrest them, they should be arrested and not beaten up.”
[pullquote-6]

Categories
News The Fly-By

Ernest Withers Home to Become Museum

CREDIT: Rome Withers

Salmon croquettes, creamed corn, and eggs. Pork chops, fried chicken, and fish. Rice, gravy, and biscuits. That’s how Rosalind Withers, the daughter of Dorothy and Ernest Withers, remembers Saturday mornings in their home.

“My mother had a staple of doing a Saturday morning breakfast,” Rosalind said. “These were breakfasts my parents would share with any prominent figures who were in town — Martin King, Stokely Carmichael. If something was going on in Memphis on Saturday, chances are my father may not have been there because he was at home with us. That was our quality time with him.”

Rome Withers

Ernest Withers’ home at 480 W. Brooks

The Memphis City Council voted last week to re-zone the Withers home as a single-lot historic district. The rambler fashioned house, located at 480 W. Brooks in the Walker Estates neighborhood, was built 63 years ago and will become a museum to preserve the photographer’s legacy. It’s the only still-intact structure exclusively associated with Withers, says Nancy Jane Baker, the manager of the Memphis Landmarks Commission.

“Mr. Withers’ body of work speaks to the generations of the struggle and accomplishments of the civil rights movement as well as documenting the daily lives of Southern African Americans,” Baker says. “In 50 to 100 years, this property has the ability to explain history like Williamsburg does for us today.”

Withers, also one of Memphis’ first black police officers, worked as a photographer for most of his life until he died in 2007 following complications from a stroke. His images capture historical moments such as the Emmett Till trial, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 2010, a potential blemish landed on Withers’ record when The Commercial Appeal discovered the photographer worked as a paid informant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The photographer’s prolific body of work outweighed any tarnish to his name. Rev. Harold Middlebrook, who grew up with Withers, told The Commercial Appeal he didn’t resent his friend. Middlebrook said Withers was a “pretty smart fellow” for being able to make the FBI pay him to tell the story of the civil rights movement.

Rosalind, who opened the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery in 2011 at the site of her father’s former studio, said it could take two years or more until the museum opens.

Andrew Rome Withers, 60, is the seventh son of eight Withers’ children and currently lives in the home. Andrew says he stood next to his father as he snapped the famous “I Am a Man” photo. All of Withers’ sons became photographers, according to Andrew, and he still shoots today. The home not only represents how his parents influenced their children, but how they affected the community and how his father captured history in real time for the rest of the world.

“It is very much in the fabric of Memphis — the significance of it,” Andrew says.

Categories
News The Fly-By

New Tennessee State Museum Will Feature Memphis Exhibit

A new $160 million Tennessee State Museum will open in 2018 at Nashville’s Bicentennial Mall. The 137,000-square-foot facility will house artifacts from across the state, and each city will get its own chronological exhibit.

The museum broke ground earlier this month, and now its staff is on a statewide tour to inform residents of Tennessee towns and cities of the museum’s progress. The tour stopped in Memphis earlier this week

The Flyer spoke with the museum’s community officer Mary Skinner and Chief Curator Dan E. Pomeroy about the hurdles of the expansive project and what sort of representation Memphis will have. — Joshua Cannon

Flyer: When outsiders think of Memphis, they often think of Elvis and barbecue. How will the museum break that cliché in what’s represented about the city?

Mary Skinner: The State Museum traces the roots of its large collection back to 1818 and has been collecting artifacts pertinent to the telling of Tennessee’s history for almost 200 years.

We literally have hundreds of objects (furniture, art, textiles, musical items) from Memphis in our collection, including a 1919 American LaFrance Type 45 triple-combination fire engine, an 1860s Rococo Revival mirror from the Hunt Phelan House, a collection of Ernest Withers’ civil rights photographs, a document signed by Abraham Lincoln concerning Civil War government in Memphis, and paintings by Carroll Cloar. The list goes on and on.

How is the museum determining what to fit and what to leave out?

MS: It is impossible for any museum with a collection as large as ours to put everything on exhibit for public view at one time. That is why the new museum will have separate galleries that will allow visitors to explore specific periods and themes more deeply — including our Civil War history, music, art and cultural issues of the day. These exhibits will be easier to change and update as we continue to acquire new artifacts.

How do you tell a state’s long and varied story through artifacts?

Dan Pomeroy: In order to be prepared to tell this full story, the State Museum has been aggressively and selectively adding to its collection of objects and artifacts for the last four decades.

This collection contains artifacts relating to notable personalities, such as presidents and governors, but also includes items designed to tell the story of other aspects of Tennessee, such as Native Americans, urban centers, business, manufacturing, labor, immigration, African Americans, art, crafts, music, children, home life, rural communities, women, sports, and common soldiers. These and other stories obviously intersect and are interwoven, which is part of the challenge to museum interpretation.

What do you think visitors will take away about Tennessee?

DP: The ultimate goal is to create as complete a story as possible for the people of Tennessee and for our state’s visitors. Tennessee’s story is a critical and significant part of America and the world, and, taken as a whole, it should be a source of pride and empowerment to Tennesseans everywhere. This may be particularly important for the tens of thousands of school children who will visit the State Museum.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Now open downtown: Dorothy Mae’s Cafe and Nacho’s.

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

To enter Dorothy Mae’s Café, housed in the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery on Beale Street, is to reminisce about a time in Memphis when figures like Elvis Presley and Rufus Thomas dominated local culture. Photos by the late Earnest Withers fill the walls, and the space also includes a studio lounge, where patrons are free to grab the microphone and sing or recite poetry.

Justin Fox Burks

Fran Mosley

The cafe, named after Withers’ wife, is run by Rosalind Withers and Fran Mosley. The evolving menu was created by Mosley, who found a permanent home for her catering company Haute Monde (French for high society).

The eclectic menu features salads and soups as well as a line of savory cupcakes, which Mosley lifted from the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars. Some of the cupcake offerings include chicken and waffles as well as meatloaf and mashed potatoes. A trio is $9.

Justin Fox Burks

Dorothy Mae’s meatloaf cupcake

“Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and sweet peas, that’s a classic Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house,” Mosley says. “And you may have a little cornbread muffin on the side. We took those old, homemade Southern recipes and put them in cupcakes.”

The Beale Street Cupcake features a barbecue pork butt slow-cooked for 16 hours by Mosley’s husband and paired with a honey butter croissant baked in a cupcake pan.

Other staples include a watermelon, arugula, and feta salad with a homemade honey-lemon balsamic vinaigrette ($10.95). Fru-Fru Fransway is a Caribbean cake soaked in pineapple juice and topped with strawberries, pineapple, kiwi, grapes, and blueberries ($5.50).

Mosley serves apple crunch pie ($6) warm, topped with butter pecan ice cream and drizzled with caramel. When she explains it, it sounds like something too explicit for network television.

“We want to bring something new and fresh to Beale Street. Our target is really professional people or people over 30 or 35,” Mosley says.

“We’re trying to bring the creative arts back to Beale Street. We also want to preserve the history and make sure that we protect those images that were captured during the time between the ’50s and ’70s.”

333 Beale (523-2344)

Stop by Nacho’s downtown for lunch expecting a mariachi band to be playing while you hammer down some enchiladas and you’ll be disappointed.

Derived from Kwik Chek, the Korean and Mediterranean deli in Midtown, this fast casual stand-alone fuses several cultures into one menu.

Beto Villareal and Hernando Diaz imported popular dishes like Bi Bim Bop (a signature Korean rice dish) and the Korean Omelet Plate (infused with fried rice).

“A lot of people have thought of us being just a regular Mexican restaurant. There’s a lot of Mexican restaurants here, and everybody expects the same thing,” Villarreal says. “Their enchiladas, their sombreros, their fiesta-themed margaritas. We just want to bring something different.”

Nacho’s does, however, serve a strong selection of nachos.

Nacho Average Nachos (pulled pork, grilled chicken, steak, grilled onions, lettuce, tomato, sour cream) is the headliner of a stable that includes BBQ Nachos (Villareal cooks the pork for up to 22 hours to soften it) and Grilled Nachos.The pair also pay homage to the Chinese restaurant that used to occupy the space with their Sweet & Sour Nachos, which include pineapple and sweet & sour sauce.

Nacho’s also serves wraps, sandwiches, and salads, many of which are carbon copies of those offered at Kwik Chek.

The Ninja ($6.99) features turkey, roast beef, swiss cheese, onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, mayonnaise, cayenne, Teriyaki sauce, lettuce, and sprouts.

The breakfast menu features a make-your-own-sandwich with choices for bread, meat, and cheese. One unusual item is the Sweet Kabob, which consists of French toast, strawberries, banana, and pineapple on a skewer sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Villareal and Diaz hope to offer a convenient and efficient lunch experience for Memphians working downtown. The restaurant currently serves breakfast from 7 to

10 a.m. and remains open until 5 p.m., but they are considering extending the hours.

150 Jefferson (522-4455)

Categories
News

Previewing the Withers Documentary

More than 100 people came to the National Civil Rights Museum Thursday night to see a preview of the Ernest Withers documentary that will air on CNN on Sunday, February 20th.

John Branston says the film, from what he saw, pulls no punches. Read more at his City Beat blog.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: Looking Back

CREDIT: jb

  • Remembering
    Ernest Withers

    One of the great serendipities I’ve experienced as a
    journalist was the decision by former Memphis Magazine
    editor Tim Sampson back in 1993, on the 25th anniversary of
    the death in Memphis of Dr. Martin Luther King, to use as the centerpiece
    of an anniversary issue an archival piece of mine, along with pictures by the
    great photographer Ernest Withers.

    Uncannily often, Withers’ photographs directly illustrated
    specific scenes of my narrative, which had been written originally on the day
    after the assassination and concerned the events of that traumatic day. It was a
    little like being partnered with Michelangelo, and I was more than grateful.

    The publication of that issue led to an invitation from
    Beale Street impresario John Elkington for Withers and me to collaborate
    on a book having to do with the history of Beale Street, and the two of us
    subsequently spent a good deal of time going through the treasure trove that was
    Withers’ photographic inventory.

    For various reasons, most of them having to do with
    funding, the book as envisioned never came to pass (though years later Elkington
    published a similar volume), but the experience led to an enduring friendship.

    One day, when I was having car trouble, Ernest gave me a
    ride home, from downtown to Parkway Village, the still predominantly white area
    where I was living at the time, just beginning a demographic changeover. At the
    time it appeared as though it might become a success of bi-racial living, and we
    talked for some time about that prospect.

    That very evening, Ernest was a panelist on the old WKNO
    show, Informed Sources, and, instead of focusing on the subject at hand,
    whatever it was, chose to discourse at length on the sociology of Parkway
    Village. Watching at home, I was delighted – though the host and other
    panelists, intent on discussing another subject, one of those pro-forma
    public-affairs things, may not have been.

    They should have been. This was the man, remember, who
    documented the glory and the grief of our city and our land as both passed from
    one age into another, which was required to be its diametrical opposite, no
    less. Ernest saw what was happening in Parkway Village as a possible trope for
    that, and whatever he had to say about it needed to be listened to.

    Sadly, of course, the neighborhood in question was not able
    to maintain the blissfully integrated status that Ernest Withers, an eternally
    hopeful one despite his ever-realistic eye, imagined for it.

    As various eulogists have noted, last week and this,
    Withers not only chronicled the civil rights era but the local African-American
    sportscape and the teeming music scene emanating from, an influenced by black
    Memphians.

    He was also, as we noted editorially last week, a family
    man, and it had to be enormously difficult for him that, in the course of a
    single calendar year while he was in his 70s (he was 85 at the time of his
    death), he buried three of his own children.

    Among my souvenirs is a photograph I arranged to have taken
    of Ernest Withers with my youngest son Justin and my daughter-in-law
    Ellen    , both residents of Atlanta, on an occasion when they were visiting
    Memphis a few years back. Happy as they were with the memento, the younger
    Bakers expressed something of a reservation.

    What they’d really wanted, explained Ellen, a museum
    curator who was even then, in fact, planning for a forthcoming Withers exhibit
    in Atlanta, was a picture of the two of them taken by the master.

    Silly of me not to have realized that. To be in a picture
    by Ernest Withers was to become part of history – a favor he bestowed on legions
    of struggling ordinary folk as well on the high and mighty of our time.

  • Remembering Kenneth Whalum Sr.

    There was a time, before Mayor Willie Herenton became the
    acknowledged alternative within the black community to the Ford family’s
    dominance, that councilman Kenneth Whalum was a recognized third force to reckon
    with.

    jb

    The Rudy Williams Band led Ernest Withers’ funeral procession down Beale on Saturday.

    Rev. Whalum was both the influential pastor of Olivet
    Baptist Church in the sprawling mid-city community of Orange Mound and the
    former personnel director of the U.S. Postal Service, locally. In effect, he had a foot planted
    firmly in each of the two spheres that make up the Memphis political community.

    That fact made him a natural for the city council during
    the period of the late ’80s and early ’90s when the era of white dominance was
    passing and that of African-American control was dawning.

    During the 1991 council election, Whalum, along with Myron
    Lowery, achieved milestones as important in their way as was Herenton’s mayoral
    victory, taking out long-serving at-large white incumbents Oscar Edmunds and
    Andy Alissandratos, respectively.

    Whalum was uniquely able to serve both as a sounding board
    for black aspirations and a bridge between races and factions on the council. He
    was a moderate by nature, though sometimes his preacherly passions got the best
    of him and he sounded otherwise. Something like that happened during a couple of
    incendiary sermons he preached during the interregnum between the pivotal
    mayor’s race of 1991 and Herenton’s taking the oath in January 1992 as Memphis’
    first elected black mayor.

    Word of that got to me, and I was able to acquire a
    recording of one of the incriminating sermons. I had no choice but to report on
    it, and – what to say? – it made a bit of a sensation at the time, no doubt
    limiting Whalum’s immediate political horizons somewhat.

    It certainly limited the contacts I would have, again in
    the short term, with a political figure that I had previously had a good
    confidential relationship with. Whalum’s sense of essential even-handedness
    eventually prevailed, however, and we ultimately got back on an even keel.

    To my mind, in any case, Whalum’s outspokenness never
    obscured his essential fair-mindedness, and his occasional prickliness was more
    than offset by his genuine – and sometimes robust – good humor.

    There are many ways of judging someone’s impact on society,
    and one might certainly be the prominence of one’s offspring. In Rev. Whalum’s
    case they included the highly-regarded jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum and the
    councilman-minister’s namesake son Kenneth Whalum Jr., a school board member and
    an innovative pastor himself — so innovative in his wide-open 21st-century
    style as to cause a generational schism involving Olivet church members. That
    would result in two distinct churches, one led by the senior Whalum, one by
    Whalum Jr.

    Kenneth Whalum Sr. had been something of a forgotten man in
    local politics since leaving the council at the end of 1995 (he would also run
    losing races for both city and county mayor). But he got his hand back in
    briefly during last year’s 9th District congressional race, making a
    point of endorsing Democratic nominee Steve Cohen, who ultimately prevailed.

    Appropriately, Rep. Cohen took the lead, along with Senator
    Lamar Alexander, on behalf of a congressional resolution re-designating the
    South 3rd Street Post Office in honor of Whalum, closing a cycle of
    sorts and forever attaching the name of Kenneth T. Whalum Sr. to one of the
    city’s landmarks.

  • Political Notes:

    Kenneth Whalum Sr.

    –Congressman Cohen was the target recently of what many local Memphians report on
    as a “push” poll taken by random telephone calls to residents of the 9th
    District. Purportedly the poll contained numerous statements casting Cohen in a
    negative light before asking recipients who they might prefer in a 2008 race
    between him and repeat challenger Nikki Tinker.

    (At least one person called recalled that the name of
    Cohen’s congressional predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., now head of the
    Democratic Leadership Council, figured in a triad of potential candidates being
    asked about.)

    –Early voting is now underway in the four city council
    runoffs that will be determined on November 8th.

    Those involve Stephanie Gatewood vs. Bill
    Morrison     in District 1; Brian Stephens vs. Bill Boyd in
    District 2; Harold Collins vs. Ike Griffith in District 3; and
    Edmund Ford Jr    . and James O. Catchings in District 6.