Book review: Withers, E. (2005). Negro League Baseball: Photographs by Ernest C. Withers. 2005.

Withers, E. (2005). Negro League Baseball: Photographs by Ernest C. Withers. 1st ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

When Ernest C Withers returned to Memphis after service in WWII, he decided to set up his own commercial photography business.  He had started practicing while in high school, improved his skills in the military, and hoped as a civilian to serve his community taking photos of whatever might be needed.  He shot weddings, funerals, church and school functions, portraits, business openings – anything and everything to help his business grow and support his wife and eight children.  In this book’s introductory essay by Daniel Wolff, Withers notes he was no baseball fanatic.  If a better paying job was available, he wouldn’t be found at the ballpark.

But the ballpark was not without its financial rewards.  In the 1940s, baseball was perhaps the largest black owned business in the United States and Withers found a way to make himself useful to the Martin family, owners of the Memphis Red Sox, providing baseball images for publicity posters, calendars, and newspapers. When he wasn’t busy elsewhere, Withers was at Martin’s Stadium, where he was not only an image maker, but also a retailer of pictures of teams, players, and even spectators.

For the Martin family and the owners of Negro League baseball teams, Withers’ photos were vital proof of the capability of the African American community.  Images depicting contract signings in well-appointed offices, teams in pressed white uniforms, and players riding shiny team busses were evidence that African Americans could be as successful as their white counterparts.


As Wolff points out, the images here are in fact not about the glory days of the Negro Leagues, but their unravelling.  Only one year after Withers returned to Memphis to open his photography business, Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Negro Leagues fairly collapsed a year later in 1948, though several barnstorming teams and a Negro All-Star team continued into the 1950s.  Images of these teams close out this book, but by then Withers had moved on to more demanding work, including the Emmett Till trial, desegregation in Little Rock, and the Memphis sit-ins of the 1960s.

Camera technology did not yet permit for shooting players in action, except from far away, and so most of the images here are posed.  A number of images are redolent of baseball cards, players staged in action such as throwing or catching a ball, or sliding into a base.  Withers was not particularly careful about framing, with a number of these images featuring other ball players or spectators in the background.  As most of Wither’s work was done in Martin’s Stadium, the same background features can be found in picture to picture, the same advertisements, the same water tower in central right field.

Perhaps more interesting than images of players are those of spectators. The photos collected here suggest Withers knew where the money came from.  There are no pictures of urban poor, except as they can be seen in wide angle stadium shots.  Most of the spectator images are of Memphis’ middle and upper class, well-dressed and prepared to spectate as well as be part of the spectacle: men in hats and suits, boys in jackets, and women with handbags to match their dresses.  What’s missing here are portraits of the fans sitting on the ground in foul territory, or any sign of people working the stadium – beer vendors, ticket sellers, or the dusters and birdboys, jobs Withers did himself as a child, cleaning stadium seats of dirt and bird droppings. Even so, this is an important collection of images for students of the South, baseball, or African American culture.  I found a copy in my local library.  Perhaps there’s one at yours.  

2005 article from The Smithsonian:
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2005/04/25/art_451264.shtml#.WY4wpVEjFJ8