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Prime Times Weekly feature of the Mail Tribune , Medford, Oregon Witness to history Ernest C. Withers By SONJA BARISIC The Associated Press NORFOLK, Va . -- Four words on his business card sum up his life's work: "Pictures Tell the Story." Ernest C. Withers, 77, has been telling stories with his camera for several decades. Stories of the civil rights struggle, of the Negro Baseball League, of the fabulous blues and rock 'n' roll scene in his hometown of Memphis, Tenn., and of everyday life. Stories he didn't just observe, but, as a black man, often participated in. Those stories in black and white now are on display in a museum retrospective of Withers' work. The 150-photo exhibit, "Pictures Tell the Story," originated at Norfolk's Chrysler Museum of Art, where it will remain through May 7. Then it will tour the country, including a stop in Memphis in 2001. Withers said he was pleased with the exhibit. "The satisfaction comes with the acceptance" of his work, Withers said in a telephone interview from Memphis, where he still maintains a studio on Beale Street. "It serves as a reflective measure of yesterday," Withers said. "Some people have said to me that they were moved. That gives me an inspiration that my living has not been in vain." Some of Withers' photographs -- such as that of striking Memphis sanitation workers, carrying signs reading "I AM A MAN" during a march in 1968 -- are enduring images of the black South in the 1950s and 1960s. Withers also took photographs of famous or soon-to-become famous people -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, B.B. King. He recorded famous events: the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.; black teen-agers being blocked from entering a high school in Little Rock, Ark. Yet Withers himself remains relatively unknown, said William J. Hennessey, director of the Chrysler museum. Withers sometimes sold undeveloped rolls of films to white photographers unable to get as close to the action as he did. As a result, many of his photographs were published under other photographers' bylines, Hennessey said. "There are a lot of Ernest Withers photos out there that no one knows are Ernest Withers'," Hennessey said. "The museum thought it was about time we do something to rectify that." Withers became interested in photography as a teen-ager and credits his stepmother, a seamstress, with developing his eye for detail. "She would send me to the dry goods store to match thread," Withers said. "I learned how to put things together in a small context." Playing quarterback in high school, on the other hand, taught him to see the whole picture, Withers said. Withers learned how to use a large-format camera and process film in a darkroom while in the Army during World War II. After the war, he set up a studio, shooting family portraits, weddings, funerals. He also hung around the baseball stadium, taking shots of Negro League Baseball players and selling prints to fans. The entertainment scene also provided him with photo subjects, from well-dressed couples in nightclubs to the performers themselves. He said he is particularly proud of a 1957 photo he took of Elvis Presley with his arm around B.B. King. In 1955, he covered the trial of the murder of Emmett Till, a black Chicago teen-ager who was killed for flirting with a white woman from Mississippi. Withers produced a pamphlet "photo story" of the case. From then on, Withers participated in the civil rights movement, while photographing it for black newspapers. The night before he shot the "I AM A MAN" photo, for instance, he helped make the workers' signs. "I participated in events, but not in a volatile sense," Withers said. "My mission was to get pictures of the event." Withers said he feels blessed that he was able to provide a comfortable home for his family, send all eight of his children to college and photograph some memorable moments. "When you have photographed the King -- the King Elvis, the King B.B., the King Martin Luther King -- they were just good moments to be endowed with," he said. On the Net: http://www.chrysler.org/ Prime Times Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA