More than just for sport

The voice is spry, the tone impatient, the message clear: At 82, photographer Ernest Withers wants you to know, he is very busy.

“I’m hung up on life,” he said by telephone from his Memphis studio. “As the old hymn goes, I was meant to work until my day is done.”

For nearly 60 years, Withers has spent his days and nights producing extraordinary images of the African American experience. Starting in the mid-1940s, he would pack up his bulky twin lens reflex camera and drive to Martin’s Stadium, home of the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. There, he shot baseball’s so-called invisible men: African American baseball players who, before Jackie Robinson broke the sport’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, plied their trade in the Negro Leagues.

Many of his photographs initially were published in the Tri-State Defender, the local black newspaper. “Ernest’s work gives you a unique insider’s view of the black community,” said photographic historian F. Jack Hurley, former chair of the University of Memphis history department. “The community was underrepresented in the media because the white newspapers didn’t bother with that.”

Withers puts it more bluntly: “White folks didn’t want to read about no black folks.”

Long overdue -- and just in time for spring training -- approximately 150 of Withers’ diamond photographs have been collected in a newly published book, “Negro League Baseball.” ( Most of these images haven’t been seen since their original publication, except for their inclusion in two documentaries: Ken Burns’ “Baseball” on PBS and John Haddock’s “Black Diamonds, Blues City.”

“His pictures are priceless,” said Don Motley, executive director of the Kansas City, Mo.-based Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. “At that time, you didn’t have many media following the Negro Leagues.”

The book brings to life, in luminous black and white, a long-forgotten brand of baseball. Here’s what is believed to be the last photo of legendary catcher Josh Gibson in uniform, and here’s one of the first of a teenage Willie Mays as he celebrates with Birmingham Black Baron teammates before becoming a star on the New York Giants. Here’s another familiar face: a young fireballer named Charley Pride, before he quit pitching to become a country music star.

Withers also captured intimate scenes outside the base paths. There’s King Tut, one of the best-known “clown jesters,” his arm around a sweetheart; a gaggle of waitresses from the Nudie Butts Cafe hoisting frosty beers; and pitching great Satchel Paige, with five of Withers’ children.

“He was one of the few photographers that paid attention to the audience,” said Ray Doswell, curator at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. “He took pictures of the people going to the game, as opposed to just the players. There’s very little photographic evidence of that part of Negro League baseball.”

Learning in the Army

Withers started taking photography seriously in high school, when he borrowed his sister’s Brownie to photograph heavyweight champ Joe Louis’ wife. While serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he learned darkroom and advanced photography skills.

After the war, he decided to skip the civil-service job that his father wanted him to take and concentrate on his craft. And, with the exception of a stint as one of Memphis’ first black policemen, he did just that.

In the early years, he used a bathtub to process photos and an oven to dry prints. His wife of 63 years, Dorothy, took care of the books. Inscribed on the glass window of his Beale Street studio was his business catch phrase: “Pictures Tell the Story.”

“I wasn’t a creative person,” he said, “but I was a professional.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, he gained national recognition after he risked his life -- and spent time in jail -- while documenting the sweeping drama of the civil rights movement, from the brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi to the integration of Little Rock High School to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

But like the work of another legendary black photojournalist, Pittsburgh’s Charles “Teenie” Harris, Withers’ career has always been defined by his eclecticism. He spent many evenings in the smoky clubs along Beale Street, shooting blues giants (a youthful B.B. King, playing guitar in a pair of shorts) and early rock ‘n’ rollers (a pompadoured Elvis Presley).

Withers was a baseball fan, but he shot the Red Sox for one reason: to make a living. The team’s owners, the Martin brothers, used his photographs for posters and programs. Besides selling to black publications, Withers earned money by peddling prints to spectators.

A good day brought in $150, serious money in those days. He and Dorothy needed every cent; they raised seven boys and one girl -- and sent them all to college.

Sport in transition

To Withers, whose still spry memory enables him to identify even the most obscure batboy, the photos evoke the epochal history of black baseball, passed on from one generation to the next. Buster Haywood isn’t just the manager of the Indianapolis Clowns; he’s the man who helped discover home-run king Hank Aaron and nurtured his rise to the major leagues.

Indeed, these images portray a sport in transition and a league in decline. Robinson’s historic signing marked the beginning of the end of the Negro Leagues, a vital black-owned and -operated institution. Some players managed to break through, but black managers and coaches -- even black umpires -- were unable to get similar jobs in the majors. Scores of related businesses, including the hotels and restaurants that served visiting ballplayers, also suffered.

“The Negro Leagues snuffed out after Jackie came in,” Withers said. “It just went down, down, down.”

When the Dodgers played the St. Louis Cardinals, Withers remembers, blacks traveled in droves to Sportsman’s Park to watch Robinson in person. “I thought I was in heaven,” he said. “It proved to the Southern white man that if the Negro could play baseball, he could do anything else.”

Withers’ appearance in St. Louis -- and his magnificent panoramic shot from the press box -- proved that black photojournalists could compete with the white press. Still, Withers endured reminders of his “place” in the Jim Crow-era South. In 1960, about the time that the Red Sox ceased operations, Withers went to Memphis’ other stadium, Russwood Park, to shoot a portrait of Cleveland Indians pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant.

He was told to use the colored entrance. Humiliated and furious, he remembers wishing the stadium would burn down. That very night, Russwood Park did burn down.

“I didn’t tell nobody what I’d been thinking,” he said.

Many of Withers’ early photographs, sold for a quick buck, went uncredited and are lost forever. Since 1992, when he signed with agent Tony Decaneas of Waltham, Mass.-based Panopticon Inc., Withers has found a new audience.

In the white-hot market for 20th century photographs, his images have become valued collectibles. Signed prints fetch as much as $2,000; a limited-edition portfolio of civil rights images sells for $10,000.

Two books have been published: “The Memphis Blues Again: Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs” (2001) and “Pictures Tell the Story: Ernest C. Withers Reflections in History” (2000).

According to Decaneas, a publisher will soon repackage Withers’ first book -- a self-published pamphlet of priceless photographs from the Emmett Till murder and trial. Another volume of civil rights photos is planned. After that, Decaneas said, they will step up efforts to locate an institution with the resources to manage and preserve Withers’ work.

Today, when he’s not on assignment, Withers can be found sifting through his collection at his Beale Street studio. As he talks to clients on the telephone, he greets a steady stream of visitors, ranging from local city councilmen to singer Isaac Hayes.

He’s not ready to slow down. “I’ve been working all day today and I worked all day yesterday,” he said. “Whatever assignment that comes, that’s what I’m about.”

David Davis is the curator of “Play by Play: A Century of Los Angeles Sports Photography, 1889-1989,” on display at the Los Angeles Public Library through March 27.