Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
Journalism major Malcolm Carpenter arrived at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and News Leader photo lab in 1959 and spotted a jaded, old-school photographer who had shot front-page pictures for years. “What is your secret of getting good photos?” he asked.
The old-timer looked over his glasses. “Easy. F/16 and be there.” Several months later, Carpenter, a student at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University), found himself in the right place at the right time. He set his Leica on f-stop 16 and shot groundbreaking photos — many published here for the first time — that changed forever the nature of the Richmond civil rights movement.
On Feb. 23, 1960, several African-Americans were picketing the Thalhimers department store at Sixth and Broad streets in a continuation of a sit-in that started the day before at the whites-only lunch counter. That day, 34 Virginia Union University students were arrested for trespassing when they refused to move. As the black demonstrators peacefully carried signs proclaiming “Khrushchev can eat here, we can’t” and “Can’t eat, don’t buy,” Ruth E. Tinsley, wife of Dr. Jesse M. Tinsley (a dentist and president of the Richmond chapter of the NAACP), police officer D. L. Nuckols leading “Captain,” a trained attack dog in the newly formed K-9 unit, and Carpenter all converged in front of Thalhimers. “I was given a heads-up from one of my friends at the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the demonstration and headed downtown to see what I might photograph,” recalls Carpenter, now 76, who served in the Army and lives near Heidelberg, Germany, where he continues to do photography.
Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
Ruth Tinsley, 58, was going into Thalhimers to pay a bill and meet a friend. However, after a protester handed her a flyer urging against doing business at the store, she decided not to go inside and just wait for her friend out front.
Officer Nuckols arrived on patrol at 10 a.m. with strict instructions to keep people in front of the store moving, in accordance with section 24-17 of the Richmond City Code. He even told a young boy selling Richmond News Leader newspapers that he had to move. Later, however, the boy was allowed to stay at the request of his supervisor.
Code section 24-17 was a relic dating back to 1909, originally written to address labor union strikes, that stipulated that in a picket area, there was no loitering or gathering of more than three at a time. Demonstrators were ordered to march single file, and not in pairs.
At 3:55 p.m., Nuckols saw Tinsley leaning against a store window. He approached and told her she had to move, according to court records.
“Why do I have to move?” she asked.
Nuckols said, “Do you mind, please, to keep moving on?”
“How about those people there?” she asked, pointing to two men nearby.
“I haven’t gotten to them yet,” Nuckols answered. The two men walked away.
“Are you going to tell me the reason why I have to move?” Tinsley asked.
“Move,” Nuckols said a third time, without answering her question. Ruth Tinsley held her ground.
Carpenter arrived directly behind Nuckols and Tinsley, just as the officer placed her under arrest.
Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
“When I arrived, there were probably 30 or 40 photographers, TV film crews and reporters all over the area,” Carpenter says. “There was even a photographer from Life magazine and one from Ebony.” None of them, however, captured the remarkable sequence of Tinsley’s arrest.
“[Nuckols] gripped her arm and began to move her toward the corner to cross Broad Street,” Carpenter recalls. “I moved around to their left as they reached the corner. They were joined by [a] second officer, and they began to cross the street. I then swung fully around in front of them and began to photograph them crossing the street.”
Halfway across, Tinsley suddenly slumped, forcing the officers to struggle to keep her moving. Nuckols later testified in court that when he, the other officer and Tinsley reached the sidewalk, he asked her, “Are you all right?”
According to Nuckols’ testimony, Tinsley replied, “I do not want to walk.”
Tinsley testified that the police dog got under her feet as she stepped off the sidewalk, causing her to lose her balance. “I suffer at times with spasms in my back,” she said. “One of these spasms struck me, and I couldn’t get myself together.”
Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
Carpenter continued to photograph Tinsley as she was carried down the sidewalk to the police station at Sixth and Marshall streets. There, she was charged with loitering and not obeying police orders. “As the action ended,” Carpenter recalls, “the photographer from Life magazine came up and I offered to give him my film, but he said no thanks.”
Carpenter says he took the one best-known picture (third photo from top) to United Press International (UPI). The ecstatic chief stopped the photo transmitting machine to send it to the UPI head office. “I was told that my photo was a ‘bell ringer,’ ” Carpenter recalls, “giving it priority over all others.” A few days later, Life magazine, after initially turning him down, asked for the famous picture, and it ran in the June 3, 1960, edition. The picture was also picked up by dozens of newspapers worldwide.
Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
Tinsley told her attorney, renowned civil rights lawyer Martin A. Martin, that she couldn’t understand why she had been arrested, because she had stood on that very corner “hundreds of times” with no incident. Also, she felt discriminated against because she was ordered to move, but the newsboy was allowed to stay.
Regardless, she was found guilty of loitering and fined $10 and costs. Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, but it was then upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court.
The published photograph had a ripple effect for months. Activist, educator and author Edward H. Peeples recollects that he hosted a party at his third-floor apartment for his black and white civil rights activist friends, across from the whites-only Commonwealth Club just after the picture appeared in Life magazine in 1960. “We were thrilled,” he says, “because we said this [picture] will make a real difference!”
Carpenter says he was, and still is, in awe of Tinsley and how she stood her ground. “She was a brave woman. I don’t know if I could have done what she did. Ms. Tinsley was a Rosa Parks — she knew that she was doing the right thing.”
More photos from Malcolm Carpenter
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
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Photo by Malcolm O. Carpenter, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographic Division
