Best Kind of History

I never have to go far to honor Dr. King on MLK Day.

After my walk down to Brown's Island this morning, I knew it was a nice day so I dressed lightly for the walk over to 2 Street, making it all the more surprising when I walked outside and found my front stoop and walkway covered in ice-melt pellets.

So apparently my landlord had come by and put them down in the 61-degree weather anticipating tomorrow's snow showers.

I crunched over them and strolled over to the Maggie Walker House, where I joined a roomful of people eager to hear Nell Draper-Winston, the sister of photographer Louis Draper, talk about "Recovering the Work and Life of Louis Draper."

Mind you, I'd already seen the Louis Draper retrospective at Candela Gallery and the "Signs of Protest" exhibit containing some of Draper's photographs at the VMFA, but here was a real, live person who'd known the talented man who'd left Richmond to forge a name for himself and yet is still unknown here.

Nell was a tiny woman with a clear-cut way of speaking and a quick smile as she talked about growing up in Henrico County with an emphasis on family values and meals where everyone shared their day's activities.

She said her Dad was an avid photographer, documenting the neighbors and the area, but he couldn't manage to interest Louis in taking pictures.

What he did do, though, was give Louis a camera when he left for Virginia State University and that began a lifelong passion for him.

He left Richmond for New York, living in the Bowery, at the YMCA and eventually in a brownstone owned by Langston Hughes, who became a mentor to the young Louis.

Although primarily known as a street photographer, her brother shot images of lots of famous people, like Michael Jackson and Jackie Kennedy-Onassis and photographed for "Life" and "Popular Photography" but Nell said his main joy came from shooting everyday people living their everyday lives.

She finished her talk old-school style, pulling out 11 x 14 photographs her brother had taken and passing them around.

I've been to a lot of photography lectures but it's a singular pleasure to see and hold the actual photo rather than just see it projected on a screen.

There was one of Malcolm X, but Nell said it was done as a study of shadow and light rather than as a portrait. There was another of Miles Davis playing. Several were from Draper's trip to Senegal.

Another study of light and shadow, with the word "Santos" scrawled on the wall, was the one Nell said Louis placed  a copy of in both their parents' caskets.

The gentleman next to me and I lingered over a striking photo of John Coltrane with his sax at the piano.

It was after we looked at the photographs that we learned that Nell had also met Dr. King and been part of the group that picketed Thalhimer's in a show of peaceful resistance.

She'd been going to VUU where they brought in a different minster every year for the Week of Prayer.

The year it was Dr. King, she'd collected her autograph book and patiently waited in the crowd among RPI students, "And they were all this tall and you may have noticed, I'm short."

She was ready to give up on ever getting to the man she described as "the most eloquent speaker I ever heard" when Dr. King told the towering group to hold on because "this young lady has been waiting a long time."

He gave her his autograph and, as she put it, "You couldn't talk to me for the rest of the day."

Yes, on Martin Luther King Day, I am fortunate to meet and hear from someone who actually heard Dr. King talk.

And still has the autograph book to prove it.