WHAT: Opening reception for "Alexander Rivera: Pioneer Photojournalist for Black America." Exhibit continues through April 23.

WHEN: Today, 2 to 4 p.m.

WHERE: N.C. Central University Art Museum, located on Lawson Street across from the Farrison-Newton Communications Building

ADMISSION: Free. For information, call 530-6211.

By Cliff Bellamy

cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744

DURHAM -- In a 1996 interview for The Herald-Sun, reporter and photojournalist Alex Rivera reflected on a lifetime covering the civil rights movement and other historical events. "At the time, though," he said, "I never thought that I was involved in anything that was history-making or great. To me, it was just a day-to-day-assignment."

Visitors can see a few of the images that came from Rivera's many assignments today during an opening reception for the exhibit "Alexander Rivera: Pioneer Photojournalist for Black America" at the N.C. Central University Art Museum. The exhibit has more than 40 images drawn from the university's archive of Rivera's photographs. The exhibit includes images of Rivera's civil rights coverage, as well as historic photos of NCCU and Durham.

Kenneth Rodgers, director of the NCCU Art Museum, remembered Rivera, who died in 2008, as gracious and humble, not one to seek accolades for his work. When Rodgers became the museum director, he would see Rivera come to exhibit openings. Only later did he learn of Rivera's legacy as a photojournalist, "and it was a wonderful and amazing discovery," Rodgers said.

Rivera was born in 1913 in Greensboro, and his father Alexander Rivera Sr. was involved in the NAACP's efforts to fight segregation and injustice, knowledge that would serve Rivera well later in life. Rivera first began taking photographs while a student at Howard University. In 1939, NCCU founder and chancellor James E. Shepard asked him to start the first news bureau for the school. Rivera later served in World War II, and led NCCU's public relations office until his retirement in 1993.

After the war, he became a correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier (while setting up the NCCU publicity office), a nationally renowned African-American newspaper. Rivera covered events in the Southeast for the Courier, which made him an observer of some of the most significant moments in the movement for civil rights.

The series of school integration cases that were consolidated in Brown v. Board of Education was "the biggest thing I was ever involved in," reads a quote from Rivera included in this exhibit. This exhibit has seven photos from Rivera's coverage of the Brown decision. A photo from the late 1940s shows a young Thurgood Marshall, who led the school desegregation fight for the NAACP, with James M. Hinton (president of the South Carolina NAACP) planning strategy for a Clarendon County, S.C. school suit. Another photo from this series shows parents in Clarendon reading the results of the decision from a newspaper. Yet another photo shows supporters collecting money to defray the NAACP's expenses for challenging the district's segregation policies.

Rivera also investigated, reported and photographed the aftermath of the last lynchings in South Carolina and Georgia. This exhibit has two photos Rivera took of the family of Isaiah Nixon, who was lynched in Alston, Ga. In the photo, taken days after the lynching, viewers can see Nixon's hat, sitting next to some cotton, on the porch of the family's home. This exhibit also has an excerpt of a news story he wrote about the incident, with the headline "Widow, 25, Tells Courier How Husband Was Slain in Ga. ... Because He Voted."

Rivera did not just cover the Southeast. In 1957, the office of then-Vice President Richard Nixon called Rivera and asked if he wanted to accompany Nixon on a trip to Africa commemorating Ghana's independence. Rivera thought the call was a prank, and begged off, Rodgers said. Nixon's office called again, and Rivera photographed the tour. Several photos from Rivera's coverage is in this exhibit, including one of Nixon with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

The exhibit also contains numerous local images. A photo from the early 1950s shows voters casting ballots at Hillside High School. A photo of James E. Shepard with Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. may be the only photo taken of Shepard in a standing posture, Rodgers said. One photo shows a young actor Ivan Dixon -- Staff Sgt. Ivan Kinchloe of "Hogan's Heroes" TV fame -- at an NCCU student play production in the early 1950s. Other photos show musicians, writers and athletes who visited the school, among them Duke Ellington, James Baldwin, Richard Wright (photographed with playwright Paul Green), and Zora Neale Hurston, who was a visiting faculty member at one time at NCCU.

This exhibit represents "only a small percentage of the total number of negatives" stored at NCCU, Rodgers said. The total number of Rivera negatives ranges "into the thousands," he added. A long-term project that Rodgers hopes to pursue is seeking funding to catalog more of this extensive collection of Rivera's images.