Jazz Stroll Down Beale Street, Cottonmakers' Jubilee

Ernest Withers is well known for his iconic images of the civil rights movement, among them Emmett Till’s funeral, the sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis in 1968, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. He brought the same compositional skills and keen eye for telling detail to his photographs of African American life in Memphis.

A native Memphian, Withers’ earliest shots documented events at Manassas High School, where he was a student. It was not until he entered the army during World War II, however, that he received formal training. When it was determined that his regiment did not need a photographer, Withers set up a darkroom so that during his off-hours he could take pictures for soldiers to send home to their families. Upon his return, he set up a series of studios around Memphis and has been making photographs ever since. His subjects are many: nightclubs, debutantes, funerals, weddings, Sunday school classes, insurance work, Negro Baseball League players and teams, and musicians such as B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, and Isaac Hayes.

This joyous image of the Cotton Makers’ Jubilee (today known as the Memphis Kemet Jubilee) documents an important social event. As African-Americans could only appear in the all-white Cotton Carnival parade pulling floats, the Jubilee was started as a separate event in 1936.1 Over the years, it expanded to include a series of programs including a ball, three parades, and the Spirit of Cotton contest, a pageant for African American college women from southern states. Jazz Stroll Down Beale Street, Cotton Makers’ Jubilee celebrates the vibrant performance of these young women strutting down Beale Street, the heart of the African American district in Memphis, while eager crowds line the street to watch the parade. In their light outfits, the strollers are dramatically set off against the nighttime setting. Their skirts—decorated with musical notes—swirl around them creating a pattern across the print. The highlighted street line emphasizes the dynamic diagonal composition. A microcosm of its time, the photograph captures the fashions, music, and culture of Withers’ community.