Ernest “Ernie” Barnes was born on July 15, 1938, during the Jim Crowe era in Durham, North Carolina. Through out his long life Ernest wore many hats. He was a painter, professional football player, actor and author.
Ernest learned the value of hard work from his father Ernest E. Barnes Sr. who was a shipping clerk. His mother, Fannie Mae Geer oversaw the household staff for prominent Durham attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr.
When Ernest had the opportunity to accompany his mother to work, he used the time to study a collection of art books and listen to classical music in Fuller’s study. Ernest was inspired by the works of the master artist such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Rubens, and Michelangelo.
When it came to school, Ernest had problems most of us suffer today. He was a self-described chubby and non-athletic child. He was taunted and bullied by classmates. But he found refuge in his sketchbooks which he would take to his hiding place away from the other students.
Maybe it was fate on one of those unusual days when Ernest was hidden away in a quite place, that a teacher, Tommy Tucker, found him drawing in a notebook. Tucker was also the weightlifting coach and a former athlete.
Tucker was impressed with Ernest’s drawings so he asked the aspiring artist about his grades and goals. Tucker told Ernest about his own experiences of how weight training improved his strength and outlook on life. That one meeting began Ernest’s dedication which would change his life.
Ernest’s discipline paid off during his senior year at Hillside High School when he became the captain of the football team and state champion in the shot put and discus throw.
In 1956 Ernest graduated from Hillside with 26 athletic scholarship offers. However, because of segregation, he was not able to consider nearby Duke or the University of Carolina.
He chose the all-black North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) which was then located across the street from his high school. At NCC, he majored in art on a full athletic scholarship. On the football team he played Tackle and Center and was selected to the All-Conference Team.
At the age of 18, on a college art class field trip to the newly desegregated North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, Ernest asked where he could find “paintings by Negro artists.” The tour guide responded, “your people don’t express themselves that way.”
Twenty-two years later, in 1978, justice prevailed when Barnes returned to the same museum for a solo exhibition, hosted by North Carolina Governor James Hunt.
Sometime after his final football game, Ernest went to the 1965 NFL owners meeting in Houston in hopes of becoming the leagues official artist. There he was introduced to New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who was impressed with Barnes and his art. He paid for Barnes to bring his paintings to New York.
When they met at the gallery some days later, , Ernest was surprised to find three art critics there to evaluate his paintings. They told Werblin that Barnes was “the most expressive painter of sports since George Bellows.”
In what was probably the strangest move in the history of the NFL, Werblin retained Barnes as a salaried player, but put him in front of the canvas, rather than on the football field. Werblin informed Ernest, “You have more value to the country as an artist than as a football player.”
Ernest’s November 1966 debut solo exhibition hosted by Werblin at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York was critically acclaimed and all the paintings sold.
Several of Ernest’s paintings were seen by a different crowd from 1974-1978 during the “Good Times” television series. It was here that most of the paintings “created” by the character JJ Walker were actually painted by Ernest.
Ernest credits his college art instructor Ed Wilson for laying the foundation for his development as an artist. Wilson was a sculptor who instructed Ernest to paint from his own life experiences. “He made me conscious of the fact that the artist who is useful to America is one who studies his own life and records it through the medium of art, manners and customs of his own experiences.”
Ernie Barnes died April 27, 2009 from a rare blood disorder.
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