Gordon Parks Biography

American photographer, musician, writer and film directorThis article is about the photographer. For his son, the American film director, see Gordon Parks Jr. For the Scottish sports journalist and former footballer, see Gordon Parks (footballer).

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who became prominent in U.S. do*entary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African Americans—and in glamour photography. He is best remembered for his iconic photos of poor Americans during the 1940s (taken for a federal government project), for his photographic essays for Life magazine, and as the director of the films Shaft, Shaft's Big Score and the semiautobiographical The Learning Tree.

Parks was one of the first black American filmmakers to direct films within the Hollywood system, developing films relating the experience of slaves and struggling black Americans, and helping create the "blaxploitation" genre. The National Film Registry cites The Learning Tree as "the first feature film by a black director to be financed by a major Hollywood studio."

Early life

Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Andrew Jackson Parks and Sarah Ross, on November 30, 1912. He was the youngest of 15 children. His father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens, and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens, and hogs.

He attended a segregated elementary school. His high school had both black people and white people, because the town was too small for segregated high schools, but black students were not allowed to play sports or attend school social activities, and they were discouraged from developing aspirations for higher education. Parks related in a do*entary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money.

When Parks was 11 years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, believing he couldn't swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldn't see him make it to land. His mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mother's coffin, seeking not only solace, but a way to face his own fear of death.

Soon after, he was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with a sister and her husband. He and his brother-in-law argued frequently and Parks was finally turned out onto the street to fend for himself at the age of 15. Struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player. In 1929, he briefly worked in an elite gentlemen's club, the Minnesota Club. There he observed the trappings of success and was able to read many books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, where he managed to land a job in a flophouse.

Career

Photography

At the age of twenty-eight, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine. He bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop and taught himself how to take photos. The photography clerks who developed Parks's first roll of film applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion *ignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, owned by Frank Murphy. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks and his wife, Sally Alvis, to move to Chicago in 1940, where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women. Parks's photographic work in Chicago, especially in capturing the myriad experiences of African Americans across the city, led him to receive the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, in 1942, paying him $200 a month and offering him his choice of employer, which, in turn, contributed to being asked to join the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was chronicling the nation's social conditions, under the auspice of Roy Stryker.

Government photography

Over the next few years, Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city's South Side black ghetto and, in 1941, an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the FSA.

American Gothic, Washington, D.C. – a well-known photograph by Parks

Working at the FSA as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C., named after the iconic Grant Wood painting American Gothic—a legendary painting of a traditional, stoic, white American farmer and daughter—which bore a striking, but ironic, resemblance to the Parks photograph of a black menial laborer. Parks's "haunting" photograph shows a black woman, Ella Watson, who worked on the cleaning crew of the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag hanging on the wall, a broom in one hand and a mop in the background. Parks had been inspired to create the image after encountering racism repeatedly in restaurants and shops in the segregated capital city.

A later photograph in the FSA series, by Parks, shows Ella Watson and her family.

Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and that it could get all of his photographers fired. He urged Parks to keep working with Watson, which led to a series of photographs of her daily life. Parks said later that his first image was overdone and not subtle; other commentators have argued that it drew strength from its polemical nature and its duality of victim and survivor, and thus affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson.

(Parks's overall body of work for the federal government—using his camera "as a weapon"—would draw far more attention from contemporaries and historians than that of all other black photographers in federal service at the time. Today, most historians reviewing federally commissioned black photographers of that era focus almost exclusively on Parks.)

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D.C., as a correspondent with the Office of War Information, where he photographed the all-black 332d Fighter Group, known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He was unable to follow the group in the overseas war theatre, so he resigned from the O.W.I. He would later follow Stryker to the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey, which *igned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. The most striking work by Parks during that period included, Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); Self Portrait (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Commercial and civic photography

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Following his resignation from the Office of War Information, Parks moved to Harlem and became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue under the editorship of Alexander Liberman. Despite racist at*udes of the day, Vogue editor Liberman hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. As Parks photographed fashion for Vogue over the next few years, he developed the distinctive style of photographing his models in motion rather than in static poses. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Do*entary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with America's leading photo-magazine, Life. His involvement with Life would last until 1972. For over 20 years, Parks produced photographs on subjects including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, and racial segregation, as well as portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. He became "one of the most provocative and celebrated photojournalists in the United States."

His photographs for Life magazine, namely his 1956 photo essay, *led "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," illuminated the effects of racial segregation while simultaneously following the everyday lives and activities of three families in and near Mobile, Alabama: the Thorntons, Causeys, and Tanners. As curators at the High Museum of Art Atlanta note, while the photo essay by Parks served as decisive do*entation of the Jim Crow South and all of its effects, he did not simply focus on demonstrations, boycotts, and brutality that were *ociated with that period; instead, he "emphasized the prosaic details" of the lives of several families.

An exhibition of photographs from a 1950 project Parks completed for Life was exhibited in 2015 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Parks returned to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, where segregation persisted, and he do*ented conditions in the community and the contemporary lives of many of his 11 cl*mates from the segregated middle school they attended. The project included his commentary, but the work was never published by Life.

During his years with Life, Parks also wrote a few books on the subject of photography (particularly do*entary photography), and in 1960 was named Photographer of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

His fashion photography continued to be published in Vogue from the mid 1940s to the late 1970s.

Film

In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions. He later directed a series of do*entaries on black ghetto life that were commissioned by National Educational Television. With his film adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree, in 1969 for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It was filmed in his home town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Parks also wrote the screenplay and composed the musical score for the film, with *istance from his friend, the composer Henry Brant.

Shaft, a 1971 detective film directed by Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, became a major hit that spawned a series of films that would be labeled as blaxploitation. The blaxploitation genre was one in which images of lower-cl* blacks being involved with drugs, violence and women, were exploited for commercially successful films featuring black actors, and was popular with a section of the black community. Parks's feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad, black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer.

Parks also directed the 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score, in which the protagonist finds himself caught in the middle of rival gangs of racketeers. Parks's other directorial credits include The Super Cops (1974) and Leadbelly (1976), a biographical film of the blues musician Huddie Ledbetter. In the 1980s, he made several films for television and composed the music and a libretto for Martin, a ballet tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., which premiered in Washington, D.C., during 1989. It was screened on national television on King's birthday in 1990.

In 2000, as an homage, he had a cameo appearance in the Shaft sequel that starred Samuel L. Jackson in the *le role as the namesake and nephew of the original John Shaft. In the cameo scene, Parks was sitting playing chess when Jackson greeted him as, "Mr. P."

Musician and composer

Gordon Parks next to his piano, photograph by David Finn (late 1980s)

His first job was as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager. Parks also performed as a jazz pianist. His song "No Love", composed in another brothel, was performed during a national radio broadcast by Larry Funk and his orchestra in the early 1930s.

Parks composed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1953) at the encouragement of black American conductor Dean Dixon and Dixon's wife Vivian, a pianist, and with the help of the composer Henry Brant. He completed Tree Symphony in 1967. In 1989, he composed and directed Martin, a ballet dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., the civil-rights leader, who had been **inated.

Writing

In the late-1940s, Parks began writing books on the art and craft of photography. This second career would produce 15 books and lead to his role as a prominent black filmmaker. His semi-autobiographical novel The Learning Tree was published in 1963. He aut*d several books of poetry, which he illustrated with his own photographs, and he wrote three volumes of memoirs: A Choice of Weapons (1966), Voices in the Mirror (1990), and A Hungry Heart (2005).

In 1981, Parks turned to fiction with Shannon, a novel about Irish immigrants fighting their way up the social ladder in turbulent early 20th-century New York. Parks's writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction, including both photographic instructional manuals and books about filmmaking.

Painting

Parks's photography-related abstract oil paintings were showcased in a 1981 exhibition at Alex Rosenberg Gallery in New York *led "Gordon Parks: Expansions: The Aesthetic Blend of Painting and Photography."

Essence magazine

In 1970, Parks helped found Essence magazine, and served as its editorial director during the first three years of its circulation.

Personal life

Parks in 2000

Parks was married and divorced three times. His first two wives, comprising almost 40 years of marriage, were Black. He married Sally Alvis in Minneapolis in 1933 and they divorced in 1961, after more than 25 years. In 1962, he married Elizabeth Campbell, daughter of cartoonist E. Simms Campbell, and they divorced in 1973. Parks first met Chinese-American editor Genevieve Young (stepdaughter of Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo) in 1962 when he began writing The Learning Tree. At that time, his publisher *igned her to be his editor. They became romantically involved at a time when they both were divorcing previous spouses, and married in 1973. This was his shortest marriage, lasting only six years. It ended in divorce in 1979. Parks was in a long term relationship with Gloria Vanderbilt until his death in 2006.

Parks had four children by his first two wives: Gordon, Jr., David, Leslie, and Toni (Parks-Parsons). His oldest son Gordon Parks, Jr., whose talents resembled his father's, was killed in a plane crash in 1979 in Kenya, where he had gone to direct a film. David is an author, with his first book, GI Diary, published in 1968. The book is included in the Howard University Press Cl*ic Editions, Library of African American Literature and Criticism.

Parks was a longtime resident of Greenburgh, New York in Westchester County, New York, and his house was landmarked in 2007.

Parks has five grandchildren: Alain, Gordon III, Sarah, Campbell, and Satchel. Malcolm X honored Parks when he asked him to be the godfather of his daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.

Legacy

In film

With his 1971 film Shaft (along with Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baad*sss Song, released earlier the same year), Parks co-created the genre of blaxploitation, an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The action film also helped to alter Hollywood's view of African Americans, introducing the black action hero into mainstream cinema.

Director Spike Lee cites Parks as an inspiration, stating "You get inspiration where it comes from. It doesn't have to be because I'm looking at his films. The odds that he got these films made under, when there were no black directors, is enough."

The Sesame Street character Gordon was named after Parks.

In music

• One of Parks' photographs, 1956 Alabama, is used for the album cover of Common's Like Water for Chocolate. It is a photo of a young black woman in Alabama, dressed for church, and drinking from a "colored only" drinking fountain.
• Parks is referenced in Kendrick Lamar's music video for his song "ELEMENT.". In the video, some of Parks's iconic photographs are transformed into moving vignettes.

Preservation and archives

Gordon Parks in his study, photograph by David Finn (late 1980s)

Several parties are recipients or heirs of different parts of Parks's archival record.

The Gordon Parks Foundation

The Gordon Parks Foundation in Pleasantville, New York (formerly in Chappaqua, New York) reports that it "permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media." The organization also says it "supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as 'the common search for a better life and a better world.'" That support includes scholarships for "artistic" students, and *istance to researchers. Their headquarters includes an exhibition space with rotating photography exhibits, open free to the public, with guided group tours available by arrangement. The foundation admits "qualified researchers" to their archive, by appointment. The foundation collaborates with other organizations and ins*utions, nationally and internationally, to advance its aims.

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center

The Gordon Parks Museum/Center in Fort Scott, Kansas, holds dozens of Parks's photos and various belongings, both given to the museum by Parks, and bequeathed to the museum by him upon his death. The collection includes "awards and medals, personal photos, paintings and drawings of Gordon, plaques, certificates, diplomas and honorary doctorates, selected books and articles, clothing, record player, tennis racquet, magazine articles, his collection of Life magazines and much more." The museum has also separately received some of Parks's cameras, writing desk and photos of him.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Library of Congress (LOC) reports that, in 1995, it "acquired Parks' personal collection, including papers, music, photographs, films, recordings, drawings and other products of his... career."

The LOC was already home to a federal archive that included Parks's first major photojournalism projects—photographs he produced for the Farm Security Administration (1942–43), and for the Office of War Information (1943–45).

In April 2000, the LOC awarded Parks its accolade "Living Legend", one of only 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC. The LOC also holds Parks's published and unpublished scores, and several of his films and television productions.

National Film Registry

Parks's autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, and his African-American anti-hero action-drama Shaft, are both permanently preserved as part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The Learning Tree was one of the original group of 25 films first selected by the LOC for the National Film Registry.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

The National Archives hold the film My Father, Gordon Parks (1969: archive 306.8063), a film about Parks and his production of his autobiographical motion picture, The Learning Tree, along with a print (from the original) of Solomon Northup's Odyssey, a film made by Parks for a Public Broadcasting System telecast about the ordeal of a slave. The Archives also hold various photos from Parks's years in government service.

Smithsonian Ins*ution, Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Ins*ution has an extensive list of holdings related to Parks, particularly photos.

Wichita State University

In 1991, Wichita State University (WSU), in Wichita, the largest city in Parks's home state of Kansas, awarded him its highest honor for achievement: the President's Medal. However, in the mid-1990s, after Parks entrusted WSU with a collection of 150 of his famous photos, WSU—for various reasons (including confusion as to whether they were a gift or loan, and whether the university could adequately protect and preserve them)—returned them, stunning and deeply upsetting Parks. A further snub came from Wichita's city officials, who also declined the opportunity to acquire many of his papers and photos.

By 2000, however, WSU and Parks had healed their division. The university resumed honoring Parks and ac*ulating his work. In 2008, the Gordon Parks Foundation selected WSU as repository for 140 boxes of his photos, m*cripts, letters and other papers. In 2014, another 125 of his photos were acquired from the foundation by WSU, with help from Wichita philanthropists Paula and Barry Downing, for display at the university's Ulrich Museum of Art.

Kansas State University

The Gordon Parks Collection in the Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department Special Collections at Kansas State University primarily do*ents the creation of his film The Learning Tree. The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University holds a collection of 204 Gordon Parks photographs as well as artist files and artwork do*entation. This collection is made up of 128 photographs that were chosen and gifted by Parks in 1973 to K-State, after receiving an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university in 1970. The gift included black and white images printed from negatives made between 1949 and 1970 and stored in the LIFE magazine archives; the donation also included color photographs printed from negatives in the artist's private collection. The K-State gift is the first known set of photographs specifically selected by Parks for a public ins*ution. The collection also includes a group of 73 photographs printed after two residences by Parks in Manhattan, Kansas. Parks first returned for a residency in 1984, sponsored by the local newspaper The Manhattan Mercury for its centennial; he returned for another in 1985, initiated by the Manhattan Arts Council and sponsored by the city and various community organizations and individuals. Seventy-three photographs printed after these visits were transferred from the Manhattan Arts Center to K-State in 2017. The photographs are of locations in and around Manhattan, including churches and historic homes and K-State architecture and students.

Exhibitions

• 1984: The Photographs of Gordon Parks, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Landmark Center Galleries, St. Paul, Minnesota
• 1997: Half past autumn:: a retrospective Gordon Parks, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A career retrospective.
• 2013: Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument, New Orleans Museum of Art.
• 2015: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
• 2015: Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
• 2016: Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem, Art Ins*ute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
• 2017: Gordon Parks: camera is my weapon, Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw, Poland.
• 2018: Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story, Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Ontario and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
• 2019: Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.
• 2020: Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Comprising photographs from two Life magazine *ignments.
• 2020: A Choice of Weapons Honor and Dignity: The Visions of Gordon Parks and Jamel Shabazz, Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota.
• 2021: "The Impact of Gordon Parks," multiple Parks films (including Leadbelly) screened and retrospective panel, Tallgr* Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas

Collections

Work by Parks is held in the following public collections:

• Art Ins*ute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
• Minneapolis Ins*ute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
• Un*led, Harlem, New York. Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida

Awards and honors

• Parks received more than 20 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.
• 1941: Awarded a fellowship for photography from the Rosenwald Fund. The fellowship allowed him to work with the Farm Security Administration.
• 1961: Named "Magazine Photographer of the Year" (1960) by the American Society of Magazine Photographers.
• 1970: Kansas State University awarded Parks the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
• 1972: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal.
• 1974: Kansas State University hosted a week-long "Gordon Parks Festival", November 4–11.
• 1976: Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Thiel College, a private, liberal arts college in Greenville, Pennsylvania
• 1989: The United States Library of Congress selects The Learning Tree as one of the first 25 films chosen for permanent preservation as part of the National Film Registry, deeming it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in part due to its being the first film directed by an African American to be financed by a major Hollywood studio.
• 1990: Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
• 1998: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement
• 1999: Gordon Parks Elementary School, a nonprofit, K-5 grade public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, was established to educate the urban-core inhabitants.
• 2000: The Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2000: Library of Congress selects Parks's film Shaft for National Film Registry preservation—deeming it to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
• 2000 (April): Library of Congress awards Parks its accolade "Living Legend"—honoring "artists, writers, activists, filmmakers, physicians, entertainers, sports figures and public servants who have made significant contributions to America's diverse cultural, scientific and social heritage"—one 26 writers and artists so honored by the LOC.
• 2001: Kitty Carlisle Hart Award, Arts & Business Council, New York
• 2003: Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.
• 2002: Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2002: Inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
• 2004: The Art Ins*ute of Boston awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
• 2008: An alternative learning center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, renamed their school Gordon Parks High School after receiving a new building
• 2021: The Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking, Tallgr* Film Festival, Wichita, Kansas, ins*uted in Parks' honor.

Works

Books

• Flash Photography (1947)
• Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Do*entary Portraiture (1948) (do*entary)
• The Learning Tree (1964) (semi-autobiographical)
• A Choice of Weapons (1967) (autobiographical)
• Born Black (1970) (compilation of essays and photographs)
• Flavio (1978)
• To Smile in Autumn (1979) (autobiographical)
  • New edition with foreword by Alexs D. Pate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009
• Voices in the Mirror, New York: Doubleday (1990) (autobiographical)
• The Sun Stalker (2003) (biography on J. M. W. Turner)
• A Hungry Heart (2005) (autobiographical)
• Gordon Parks: Collected Works (2012), Göttingen, Germany: Steidl; Slp Edition, ISBN:978-3869305301
• The New Tide: Early Work 1940–1950 (2018), Göttingen, Germany: Steidl

Poetry

• Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective, memoir excerpts by Gordon Parks. Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown (1997), ISBN:0-8212-2298-8
• A Star for Noon – An Homage to Women in Images Poetry and Music Bulfinch. (2000), ISBN:978-0821226858
• Eyes With Winged Thoughts Atria Books (2005) ASIN:B001EYHY00

Photography

• Arias of Silence (1994) Bulfinch Press, ISBN:978-0821221204
• Glimpses Towards Infinity. Bulfinch Press (1996), ISBN:978-0821222973
• A Harlem Family 1967. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl (2012), ISBN:978-3-86930-602-5
• Gordon Parks: a Poet and His Camera by Gordon Park, Viking Press (1968), ISBN:978-0233961088
• The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl (2020), ISBN:978-3-95829-696-1

Films

• Flavio (1964) (short)
• The World of Piri Thomas (1968)
• The Learning Tree (1969)
• Shaft (1971)
• Shaft's Big Score! (1972)
• The Super Cops (1974)
• Leadbelly (1976)
• Solomon Northup's Odyssey (1984)
• Moments Without Proper Names (1987)

Parks also wrote Diary of a Harlem Family (1968) for Joseph Filipowic, and appeared in the 2000 remake of Shaft as Lenox Lounge Patron / Mr. P.

Music

• Shaft's Big Score (1972)
• Moments Without Proper Names (1987)
• Martin (1989) (ballet about Martin Luther King Jr.)

Publications about Parks

• Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip Brookman (eds), Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Steidl, 2018, ISBN:9783958294943
• Paul Roth and Amanda Maddox (eds),Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story. Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2017, ISBN:978-3-95829-344-1
• Michal Raz-Russo and Jean-Christophe Cloutier, et al., Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison. Art Ins*ute of Chicago and Steidl, 2016, ISBN:978-3-95829-109-6
• Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Felix Hoffmann (eds), I Am You: Selected Works, 1942–1978. C/O Berlin, Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2016, ISBN:978-3-95829-248-2
• Karen Haas, Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott. Steidl, 2015, ISBN:978-3-86930-918-7
• Brett Abbott, et al., Gordon Parks: Segregation Story. High Museum of Art, Atlanta and Steidl, 2014, ISBN:978-3-86930-801-2
• Russell Lord, Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument. Steidl, 2013, ISBN:978-3-86930-721-3
• Peter Kunhardt, Jr. and Paul Roth (eds), Gordon Parks: Collected Works. Gordon Parks Foundation and Steidl, 2012, ISBN:978-3-86930-530-1
• Berry, S. L. Gordon Parks. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990, ISBN:1-55546-604-4
• Bush, Martin H. The Photographs of Gordon Parks. Wichita, Kansas: Wichita State University, 1983.
• Donloe, Darlene. Gordon Parks: Photographer, Writer, Composer, Film Maker . Los Angeles: Melrose Square Publishing Company, 1993, ISBN:0-87067-595-8
• Harnan, Terry, and Russell Hoover. Gordon Parks: Black Photographer and Film Maker . Champaign, Illinois: Garrard Publishing Company, 1972, ISBN:0-8116-4572-X
• Parr, Ann, and Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks: No Excuses. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2006. ISBN:1-58980-411-2
• Stange, Maren. Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks. Milan: Skira, 2006, ISBN:88-7624-802-1
• Turk, Midge, and Herbert Danska. Gordon Parks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1971, ISBN:0-690-33793-0

Do*entaries on or including Parks

• My Father, Gordon Parks (1969) (National Archives item #306.08063A)
• Soul in Cinema: Filming Shaft on Location (1971)
• P*ion and Memory (1986)
• Malcolm X: Make It Plain (1994)
• All Power to the People (1996)
• Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks (2000)
• A Great Day in Hip-Hop (2000)
• Baad*sss Cinema (2002)
• Soul Man: Isaac Hayes (2003)
• Unstoppable: Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis (2005)
• Do*enting the Face of America: Roy Stryker & the FSA Photographers (2008)
• A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (2021)

See also

• List of photographers of the civil rights movement

References

Other sources

Primary source materials

• Gordon Parks Collection. Special Collections, Kansas State University Library.
• Collected Photography, other artwork, and texts. Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
• Gordon Parks Papers Exhibit or Finding Aid. Special Collections and University Archives. Wichita State University Libraries.
• Digital Archive. Gordon Parks Foundation. Currently, the negatives are held at the Special Collections at Purchase College, New York.
• Gordon Parks FSA OWI Photos. Held by the Library of Congress.
• Gordon Parks Oral History from the National Visionary Leadership Project
• Gordon Parks in the Minneapolis Ins*ute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

Additional article-length works

• Director Guild of America profile
• International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum profile and biography
• "The Peoples' Champions: Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks—'Photographic Equality' and 'The Jackie Robinson/Muhammad Ali of the Arts'", two long articles in one booklet researched and aut*d by David Joseph Marcou and published in February 2016 by DigiCOPY of La Crosse, WI.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Gordon Parks (category)

• Gordon Parks at IMDb
• The Gordon Parks Foundation
• Gordon Parks Collection, photograph and poetry exhibit in Gordon Parks's hometown
• Some of his photography Archived July 23, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
• Luminous-Lint page
• Ordway Theater presents Gordon Parks in the VocalEssence Witness series
• C-SPAN interview with Parks, discussing the exhibit "Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks", November 25, 1997
• PBS Newshour, January 6, 1998 Archived December 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
• Further biographical information can be found at the Thomson/Gale Archived June 3, 2004, at the Wayback Machine
• Photo District News, Legends Online site for Gordon Parks
• Gordon Parks's oral history video excerpts at the National Visionary Leadership Project
• Gordon Parks Gallery at Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, Minnesota gallery devoted to preserving the legacy of Gordon Parks
• Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work Archived December 16, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
• Works by Gordon Parks at Open Library
• The chapter en*led "Gordon Parks: A Versatile *an Who Made His Name First As a Photojournalist" is included in this representative world photo-history The Photographic Spirit: Inspiring Photo Lives and Images, aut*d by David Joseph Marcou and published in 2013 online (La Crosse History Unbound website) and also in paperback.
• Audio recording of Gordon Parks, September 19, 1970, from Maryland Ins*ute College of Art's Decker Library, Internet Archive
• Gordon Parks interview on In Black America, September 1, 1984, at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Activist
groups

• Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
• Atlanta Student Movement
• Black Panther Party
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Committee for Freedom Now
• Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
  • An Appeal for Human Rights
• Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
• Council of Federated Organizations
• Dallas County Voters League
• Deacons for Defense and Justice
• Georgia Council on Human Relations
• Highlander Folk School
• Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Lowndes County Freedom Organization
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
• Montgomery Improvement *ociation
• NAACP
  • Youth Council
• Nashville Student Movement
• Nation of Islam
• Northern Student Movement
• National Council of Negro Women
• National Urban League
• Operation Breadbasket
• Regional Council of Negro Leadership
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Southern Regional Council
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• The Freedom Singers
• United Auto Workers (UAW)
• Wednesdays in Mississippi
• Women's Political Council

Activists

• Ralph Abernathy
• Victoria Gray Adams
• Zev Aelony
• Mathew Ahmann
• Muhammad Ali
• William G. Anderson
• Gwendolyn Armstrong
• Arnold Aronson
• Ella Baker
• James Baldwin
• Marion Barry
• Daisy Bates
• Harry Belafonte
• James Bevel
• Claude Black
• Gloria Blackwell
• Randolph Blackwell
• Unita Blackwell
• Ezell Blair Jr.
• Joanne Bland
• Julian Bond
• Joseph E. Boone
• William Holmes Borders
• Amelia Boynton
• Bruce Boynton
• Raylawni Branch
• Stanley Branche
• Ruby Bridges
• Aurelia Browder
• H. Rap Brown
• Ralph Bunche
• Guy Carawan
• Stokely Carmichael
• Johnnie Carr
• James Chaney
• J. L. Chestnut
• Shirley Chisholm
• Colia Lafayette Clark
• Ramsey Clark
• Septima Clark
• Xernona Clayton
• Eldridge Cleaver
• Kathleen Cleaver
• Charles E. Cobb Jr.
• Annie Lee Cooper
• Dorothy Cotton
• Claudette Colvin
• Vernon Dahmer
• Jonathan Daniels
• Abraham Lincoln Davis
• Angela Davis
• Joseph DeLaine
• Dave Dennis
• Annie Devine
• Patricia Stephens Due
• Joseph Ellwanger
• Charles Evers
• Medgar Evers
• Myrlie Evers-Williams
• Chuck *er
• James Farmer
• Walter Fauntroy
• James Forman
• Marie Foster
• Golden Frinks
• Andrew Goodman
• Robert Graetz
• Fred Gray
• Jack Greenberg
• Dick Gregory
• Lawrence Guyot
• Prathia Hall
• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Fred Hampton
• William E. Harbour
• Vincent Harding
• Dorothy Height
• Audrey Faye Hendricks
• Lola Hendricks
• Aaron Henry
• Oliver Hill
• Donald L. Hollowell
• James Hood
• Myles Horton
• Zilphia Horton
• T. R. M. Howard
• Ruby Hurley
• Cecil Ivory
• Jesse Jackson
• Jimmie Lee Jackson
• Richie Jean Jackson
• T. J. Jemison
• Esau Jenkins
• Barbara Rose Johns
• Vernon Johns
• Frank Minis Johnson
• Clarence Jones
• J. Charles Jones
• Matthew Jones
• Vernon Jordan
• Tom Kahn
• Clyde Kennard
• A. D. King
• C.B. King
• Coretta Scott King
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Martin Luther King Sr.
• Bernard Lafayette
• James Lawson
• Bernard Lee
• Sanford R. Leigh
• Jim Letherer
• Stanley Levison
• John Lewis
• Viola Liuzzo
• Z. Alexander Looby
• Joseph Lowery
• Clara Luper
• Danny Lyon
• Malcolm X
• Mae Mallory
• Vivian Malone
• Bob Mants
• Thurgood Marshall
• Benjamin Mays
• Franklin McCain
• Charles McDew
• Ralph McGill
• Floyd McKissick
• Joseph McNeil
• James Meredith
• William Ming
• Jack Minnis
• Amzie Moore
• Cecil B. Moore
• Douglas E. Moore
• Harriette Moore
• Harry T. Moore
• Queen Mother Moore
• William Lewis Moore
• Irene Morgan
• Bob Moses
• William Moyer
• Elijah Muhammad
• Diane Nash
• Charles Neblett
• Huey P. Newton
• Edgar Nixon
• Jack O'Dell
• James Orange
• Rosa Parks
• James Peck
• Charles Person
• Homer Plessy
• Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
• Fay Bellamy Powell
• Rodney N. Powell
• Al Raby
• Lincoln Ragsdale
• A. Philip Randolph
• George Raymond
• George Raymond Jr.
• Bernice Johnson Reagon
• Cordell Reagon
• James Reeb
• Frederick D. Reese
• Walter Reuther
• Gloria Richardson
• David Richmond
• Bernice Robinson
• Jo Ann Robinson
• Angela Russell
• Bayard Rustin
• Bernie Sanders
• Michael Schwerner
• Bobby Seale
• Cleveland Sellers
• Charles Sherrod
• Alexander D. Shimkin
• Fred Shuttlesworth
• Modjeska Monteith Simkins
• Glenn E. Smiley
• A. Maceo Smith
• Kelly Miller Smith
• Mary Louise Smith
• Maxine Smith
• Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
• Charles Kenzie Steele
• Hank Thomas
• Dorothy Tillman
• A. P. Tureaud
• Hartman Turnbow
• Albert Turner
• C. T. Vivian
• Wyatt Tee Walker
• Hollis Watkins
• Walter Francis White
• Roy Wilkins
• Hosea Williams
• Kale Williams
• Robert F. Williams
• Andrew Young
• Whitney Young
• Sammy Younge Jr.
• Bob Zellner
• James Zwerg

By region

• Omaha, Nebraska
• South Carolina

Movement
songs

• "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
• "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
• "*baya"
• "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
• "Oh, Freedom"
• "This Little Light of Mine"
• "We Shall Not Be Moved"
• "We Shall Overcome"
• "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"

Influences

• Nonviolence
  • Padayatra
• Sermon on the Mount
• Mahatma Gandhi
  • Ahimsa
  • Satyagraha
• The Kingdom of God Is Within You
• Frederick Dougl*
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Mary McLeod Bethune

Related

• Jim Crow laws
• Lynching in the United States
• Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Separate but equal
• Buchanan v. Warley
• Hocutt v. Wilson
• Sweatt v. Painter
• Hernandez v. Texas
• Loving v. Virginia
• African-American women in the movement
• Jews in the civil rights movement
• Fifth Circuit Four
• 16th Street Baptist Church
• Kelly Ingram Park
• A.G. Gaston Motel
• Bethel Baptist Church
• Brown Chapel
• Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
• Holt Street Baptist Church
• Edmund Pettus Bridge
• March on Washington Movement
• African-American churches attacked
• List of lynching victims in the United States
• Freedom Schools
• Freedom songs
• Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
  • "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
• Voter Education Project
• 1960s counterculture
• African American founding fathers of the United States
• Eyes on the Prize

Legacy

• In popular culture
• Birmingham Civil Rights Ins*ute
• Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
• Civil Rights Memorial
• Civil Rights Movement Archive
• Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
• Freedom Rides Museum
• Freedom Riders National Monument
• King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
  • other King memorials
• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
• National Civil Rights Museum
• National Voting Rights Museum
• St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument

Noted
historians

• Taylor Branch
• Clayborne Carson
• John Dittmer
• Michael Eric Dyson
• Chuck *er
• Adam Fairclough
• David Garrow
• David Halberstam
• Vincent Harding
• Steven F. Lawson
• Doug McAdam
• Diane McWhorter
• Charles M. Payne
• Thomas E. Ricks
• Timothy Tyson
• Akinyele Umoja
• Movement photographers

:Civil rights movement portal