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Special Exhibtion:

Pictures Tell the Story: Ernest C. Withers

This exhibition & a monograph by the same title
are supported by a generous grant from the

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Photographing Struggle, Building Bridges

Ernest Withers' photographs of the Civil Rights Movement have an immediacy and directness that stems in part from the normal-focus lens that he used. Withers was also active in the movement, so his nearness was as much ideological as it was physical. Whether he was documenting the quiet dignity of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy on one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, or the violence that marred the Sanitation Workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee, Withers was right there in the middle of the action.

In December of 1956, Ernest Withers traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to photograph an important moment in the struggle for civil rights. For more than a year, black citizens of Montgomery had been boycotting the city's buses to protest a bus system that not only forced blacks to the back of the bus, but made them give up their seats to white people if there were no more seats available. In 1955, a 43-year-old black seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in protest against Montgomery's harsh segregation laws. Her arrest was the catalyst that the black community needed to organize a protest against these harsh laws. The bus boycott led directly to the founding "of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which became the most influential voice advocating nonviolent confrontation with white racism, and to the rise to prominence of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr." The bus boycott case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where Alabama's state and local laws requiring segregation on public transportation were struck down on November 13, 1956. December 21, 1956 would be the first day for desegregated buses in Montgomery. Ernest Withers was there that day and rode one of the first buses as he waited for Martin Luther King Jr. to arrive. When Dr. King boarded the bus along with the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Withers was there to document the emotional event.

Classroom Activites:

Imagine that you are a photojournalist in 1956 and you have traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to write a story about the city's newly desegregated buses. This is the photograph that you will use to illustrate your report. Based on this photograph, try to answer the following questions:

1. Who will you interview for the story?
2. What questions will you ask?
3. What will your headline be?

Now consider the following questions as you prepare your story:

4. What do you think is happening in this photograph?
5. Are there victims, heroes, or bystanders in the photo? How can you tell?
6. What historical events led to this moment?
7. What might happen next, and how could it change the course of history?
8. Do you think that you can be objective in your report?

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