John Shearer: Ruby Falls Exhibit By Stefanie Haire Uncovers Forgotten Local Black Photographer

Horace Brazelton spent a good part of his working life capturing black Chattanoogans in his photography work in the segregated South of the early and mid-20^th century.

In contrast, the life of this pioneering and multi-faceted man had not been captured or documented much by recent generations of Chattanoogans.

That has changed, however, with some recent research done by Chattanoogan Stefanie Haire that has evolved into an exhibit of Mr. Brazelton’s work currently on display at Ruby Falls through Sept. 15. Ms. Haire, a historic preservation planner with the Southeast Tennessee Development District and the curator for the exhibit, said her interest in Mr. Brazelton began due to her sentimentality as much as interest in history.

She was looking at a photo on Picnooga, a non-profit historical database and resource of which she now serves as president, and she saw a mother with her son. “I’m a single mom and that stuck with me,” she said. The photograph was taken by Horace Brazelton, a black Chattanooga photographer of old, of his adopted daughter and her son.

About the same time, she was beginning a PhD program at Middle Tennessee State University, and her adviser, Dr. Carroll Van West, who is also the Tennessee state historian, encouraged her to think of a dissertation topic early in her studies. That resulted in focusing on Mr. Brazelton.

“He said, ‘There’s something there,’ ” Ms. Haire remembered Dr. West saying of her proposed topic.

That began hours of exhaustive research into Mr. Brazelton through such source materials as old newspapers and city directories, and other records she could find. She also learned of photos he had taken being on file in about 15 repositories around the country, from the Bessie Smith Cultural Center to archives in Michigan and Alabama.

The Ruby Falls exhibit features photos primarily from the Picnooga collection, Ms. Haire said, since it offered a good representation and was easily accessible. The exhibit is located along the walls of a hallway leading to the elevator to the caverns as well as in another nearby area outside the café.

To many who remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Biblically inspired call to let justice roll down like water, a civil rights-related exhibit highlighting a black man’s achievement a few feet above the underground falls might seem an appropriate place.

The exhibit tells both the good and the bad for black Chattanoogans during the photographer’s time. Featuring panels of historical information and scans of Brazelton photos, the writing tells of such difficult challenges for black people during the era of segregation as lynchings, including the fact that five people were lynched in Chattanooga from the 1870s through 1906. Mr. Brazelton’s photos, on the other hand, perhaps shed a more human and light-hearted look at black people pausing while simply trying to enjoy life amid those challenges.

The exhibit also includes a text of a talk he made to a 1917 National Negro Business League gathering at Umbrella Rock, also on Lookout Mountain by Point Park, and one can learn biographical information about Mr. Brazelton from it.

Lara Caughman, the corporate communications manager for Ruby Falls, said the exhibit has been well received. “We’ve watched the exhibit spark many discussions and emotional connections to the history and portraits presented,” she said. “There are many layers to Horace Brazelton’s life and legacy. The weight, humanity, and long-held hope within those layers are palpable throughout the exhibit.”

Ruby Falls PR specialist Jaclyn Lewis added that well over 120,000 people had bought tickets to Ruby Falls since the exhibit opened in early June, with many of the visitors taking time to stop and check out part or all the exhibit.

The exhibit is free and open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Tickets to tour the Ruby Falls caverns are not required.

Ms. Haire, who said the exhibit might later be displayed at additional places, said the partnership with Ruby Falls developed from her work with the Development District helping to preserve the Pleasant Garden Cemetery, a historic black resting place near Shepherd Hills and Missionary Ridge. Ruby Falls has also been supportive of the cemetery’s preservations needs, and while meeting with them about a program related to the cemetery, Ms. Haire mentioned about her research into Mr. Brazelton.

He is buried there along with 1906 Chattanooga lynching victim Ed Johnson and some of the Scottsboro Boys, who were wrongly accused of sexual assault in the 1930s.

“It caught their attention right away and I have been working with them since January on the exhibit,” she said.

People say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that and more might be needed to even summarize the varied life of Mr. Brazelton. Besides opening what is believed to be the first black-owned portrait studio in Chattanooga, he was also involved in a realty company for blacks wanting to own their own homes, led voter registration drives, and was involved in leadership at Leonard Street Presbyterian Church with his also-pioneering wife, Hettie. The Westside area church was flattened during the urban renewal project that began in the late 1950s.

Ms. Haire – a Soddy Daisy High and UTC graduate who also did museum work for the National Park Service – said he did all this, despite having two strikes against him. He was only one generation removed from slavery, and his father died when he was just 2.

But his father, Anderson Brazelton, had set quite an example for his son and Horace’s five siblings by escaping from slavery and later fighting for the Union Army around Chattanooga and elsewhere as a member of the First Regiment of the U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery unit. A sergeant, he led the Pioneer Corps, and Ms. Haire said his son called his realty business Pioneer Realty.

Horace Brazelton was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee, near Knoxville and raised along with the other siblings by his widowed mother, Leanna Fain Brazelton, Ms. Haire said. He came to Chattanooga in the late 1890s, apparently after an incident with a white brakeman on a train he boarded near his home, she added. He was taught the art of photography by a professor who was German.

Ms. Haire, an admitted history and archaeology enthusiast as a child who later studied anthropology and archaeology under Dr. Nick Honerkamp at UTC, said the research has helped her pay tribute to a forgotten part of Chattanooga’s past.

“I have a huge reverence for those who came before us, and that alone has been the biggest motivation for me,” she said, adding that she would like to write a book about Mr. Brazelton after finishing her dissertation. “I’m inspired every day to uncover the marginalized stories.”

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jcshearer2@comcast.net