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Parks was the ﬁrst Black correspondent to work for the Ofﬁce of War Information, and one of his initial assignments was to photograph African American pioneers of another kind: the ﬁrst unit of Black ﬁghter pilots to serve in the American Army’s Air Corps, as part of the 332nd Fighter Group—known more famously as the Tuskegee Airmen. Parks began by documenting these pilots during their training at Selfridge Field, near Detroit, capturing the danger and exhilaration of young men preparing for war. His assignment called for him to accompany the group during their early missions in Europe.

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This picture is important because it is a demonstration against inequality in society. This picture shows someone at a protest protesting police brutality. Police brutality has been a huge issue in the black community for years. I think it is very monumental to capture an image oft this caliber so that audiences can really see the impact it has had on our community.

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In 1941, Parks relocated to Chicago and joined the South Side Community Art Center, where he established a studio and darkroom. In this picture, White is standing in front of his mural "Chaos of the American Negro" while holding his own tools. this image can be compared to Parks's Self-Portrait from 1941 to analyze the similarities and differences.

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This is one of Gordan Parks FSA photos that he took when he was in Washington D.C., June 1942. The photos captures 3 children steadily waiting to be served their food. You can see that the kids are either very focused or looking at the table with a gaze probably very hungry.

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New Harlem clinic rescues ghetto youth from emotional short circuit.” The article featured the work of psychiatrists Mamie and Kenneth Clark, whose “doll test” research investigated issues of segregation and self-esteem in black children. African American children in segregated schools were shown a black doll and a white doll and then asked to choose one. The majority picked the white doll, indicating that segregation impacted the children’s feelings of self-worth. Their research, while not wholly scientific, was used in school desegregation lawsuits including Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

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Parks was the ﬁrst Black correspondent to work for the Ofﬁce of War Information, and one of his initial assignments was to photograph African American pioneers of another kind: the ﬁrst unit of Black ﬁghter pilots to serve in the American Army’s Air Corps, as part of the 332nd Fighter Group—known more famously as the Tuskegee Airmen. Parks began by documenting these pilots during their training at Selfridge Field, near Detroit, capturing the danger and exhilaration of young men preparing for war. His assignment called for him to accompany the group during their early missions in Europe.

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This image is of a 17-year old Harlem gang leader. With the indirect eye contact, and the gazing he does out the window with lack of facial expression gives observers an opportunity to try to understand his disposition, understand what the image is saying. The picture speaks, but not verbally, and with a 17-year old being a part of the gang lifestyle, captured in a still image gives me wonders on why was that apart of his path in life.

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This picture stood out to me the most because of the kid facial expression. His expressions shows that he he confused and doesn't know which doll to chose and scared that he might choose the wrong doll. This picture shows the "dolls test" which impacted many young children in young doing segregation. The child ends of choosing the white doll because segregation has affect his emotions, his servility, and his self-worth.

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This image illustrates how children of youth were discriminated against and how African American children had low self-esteem. "The majority picked the white doll, indicating that segregation impacted the children’s feelings of self-worth." Gordan captures the emotions and issues in this picture.

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Gordon Parks, Tenement Dwellers, Chicago, 1950 a story about school segregation, then an increasingly important issue in the nation’s discourse on civil rights. Parks chose to return to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, to find out what had become of his classmates from the segregated Plaza School. Part documentary, part nostalgia, this trip offered Parks a chance to reflect on how his understanding of a place changed with time and how segregation affected the lives of his classmates and friends.

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This picture highlights the issue of segregation and the influence it had on the youth. African American children were shown two dolls, white and black, and when given the option to choose between the two, majority chose the white baby doll. This reveals how segregation impacted little black children's self worth and later helped to desegregate schools.

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This picture illustrates how black men were never seen beyond their skin color. This picture shows the reality of Gordon parks pictures and captures not only what you see but what was going on during the time the picture was taken

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A Great Day, 1996-1998, This highlights black success in this neighborhood particularly jazz. He took pictures every years to capture the end of the golden age. As the older musicians were aging the youth were coming in to keep it going.

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This Picture is a picture of art during between 1800-1900s during segregation and racism. This picture shows young black kids on an opposite side of the fence. There side seems to have no fun, no excitement or nothing for the kids while the other side has everything a kid wants. This shows how young black kids are treated unequally and they are segregated.

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SEGREGATION IN THE SOUTH, 1956
Parks captured this brand of discrimination through the eyes of the oldest Thornton son, E.J., a professor at Fisk University, as he and his family stood in the colored waiting room of a bus terminal in Nashville. (Parks experienced such segregation himself in more treacherous circumstances, however, when he and Yette took the train from Birmingham to Nashville. With the threat of tarring and feathering, even lynching, in the air, Yette drank from a whites-only water fountain in the Birmingham station, a provocation that later resulted in a physical assault on the train, from which the two men narrowly escaped.)

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this is a picture of elisa and marcela, 2 woman from spain who pretended to be a straight couple. marcela (on the right ) cut her hair and transformed herself into “mario” by stealing her dead cousin’s identity. all of this was done to insure they could live life happily as a same sex couple even though it was illegal in spain. this photo was taken to put in their home so they could fool the catholics. - theo

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This picture is called "A Harlem Family", Gordan Parks was asked by his editor to explain why nation's cities was falling and he said Racism and Poverty. So he focused on impoverished black families and ask permission from the family to take their picture.

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100 members of the Ithica community protest the overturn of Roe v Wade.

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I think it's interesting that history is repeating itself, this photo is powerful because these ladies possibly protested in 1973, when abortion was finally made legal in all states of America.

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The struggle of Black women. This may not be the message behind it but it shows that women may go through things but still have other important things they have to do like take care of their kids. The title of this is "Bessie and Little Richard the morning after she scalded her husband" taken in New York, 1967

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This image symbolizes the innocence of children.No one is born racist they are taught it.

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Parks followed Leonard “Red” Jackson, a 17-year-old Harlem gang leader. Parks’s photo essay captured the violence and fear experienced by gang members and their families, and positioned him as an important documentary photographer.

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In 1952, Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison collaborated on a collection of staged photographs themed after Ellison's novel Invisible Man. The collection, entitled 'A Man Becomes Invisible', aims to portray the themes of the book, the main theme being the 'invisibility' the main character felt, as he felt the only thing people notice when they saw him was his skin color.

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This picture is about issues of segregation . African American where shown a white and a black doll and ask to choose one. In the end majority picked the white doll indicating that segregation impacted the children’s feelings of self-worth.

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This image here taken by Jordan parks shows the influence of segregation on children. This child is choosing the white doll after being asked which doll was better. By the child's face alone you can see that the child feels bad for choosing the white doll although knowing that the white doll in their society is better.

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As you can see in the image, a group of black children are watching from the sidelines as white children play in the park with their families but the black children are unable to do so because it is a whites-only park. This tells the story of how segregation in 1956 affected blacks.

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Parks gives us little visual information to answer those questions. Instead, he offers us a moment to contemplate each of these children individually. What must their lives be like? What do their expressions and crowded arrangement by the door tell us about their connections as family? Parks had a particular sensitivity to capturing the spirit, hope, and humanity of young people in urban and rural settings.

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photographer, captured the beauty, power, and stature of Chicago socialite Marva Louis; the spirituality of churchgoers in Washington, DC; and portraits of prominent African Americans like Richard Wright and Marian Anderson. But he would also use his camera to shine a light on the injustices faced by black Americans, showing the poverty, violence, and oppression that defined the decade from 1940 to 1950. In the midst of World War II, with the American military still segregated, photographs like Washington, D.C., Government charwoman (American Gothic) make a bold statement about the disparities between the promise and realities of the American Dream. When given the chance, Parks chose to “fight back” against the inequalities he witnessed; his choice of weapons was a camera.

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In 1952 Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man, today it is known as one of the most important American literary works of the twentieth century. Within months of the publication, Gordon Parks collaborated on "A Man Becomes Invisible" on August 25, 1952 of Life magazine. Parks recreated this image by bringing it to life, "I’ve wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it." ... "Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he’s made poetry out of being invisible."

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Parks started shooting fashion for a women's store in Minnesota. Following his fellowship at the FSA, Parks started looking for jobs in fashion. Soon after moving to New York, he worked for Vogue as a freelance photographer. He shot a collection of evening gowns for his first assignment.

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Willie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956

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1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Life asked Parks to go to Alabama and document the racial tensions there. He would compare his ﬁndings with his own troubled childhood in Fort Scott, Kansas, and with the relatively progressive and integrated life he had enjoyed in Europe.

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Another of Parks’s ﬁve assignments for the Ofﬁce of War Information involved the ﬁshing industry on the Atlantic coast, as part of a larger documentary project on food production and war mobilization. The assignment led him to Gloucester, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s oldest ﬁshing communities. Its historic port and rugged workers inspired a series of images of patriotic Americans hard at work supporting the war effort despite the harsh conditions of their lives.

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In September 1956 Life published a photo-essay by Gordon Parks entitled “The Restraints: Open and Hidden” which documented the everyday activities and rituals of one extended African American family living in the rural South under Jim Crow segregation. One of the most powerful photographs depicts Joanne Thornton Wilson and her niece, Shirley Anne Kirksey standing in front of a theater in Mobile, Alabama, an image which became a forceful “weapon of choice,” as Parks would say, in the struggle against racism and segregation. While twenty-six photographs were eventually published in Life and some were exhibited in his lifetime, the bulk of Parks’s assignment was thought to be lost. In 2011, five years after Parks’s death, The Gordon Parks Foundation discovered more than seventy color transparencies at the bottom of an old storage bin marked “Segregation Series” that are now published for the first time in The Segregation Story.

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"Harlem Gang Leader. 1948"
"The ﬁrst story that Parks proposed to Life magazine was a piece on the gang wars that were consuming Harlem in the late 1940s. The great challenge was to gain to the trust of gang members. Parks found success when he met Red Jackson, a young Black man who led a gang known as the Midtowners. Pushing through the aggression and suspicion that at ﬁrst confronted him, Parks spent a week driving Jackson and his companions around in his Buick Roadmaster (which Jackson loved), learning where turf lines were drawn, weighing the value of honor and loyalty, and discovering the daily reality of death, before asking Jackson if he could use his camera."

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The story behind this picture was to capture the everyday lives of African Americans and what they went through. He wanted his photography to capture the struggle with racism and segregation. His work was meant to bring attention to the problem.

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Black children are identified differently than whites during the segregation, this picture shows the difference between children. "Parks took this picture on assignment for Ebony magazine in 1947 for an article called, “Problem Kids: New Harlem clinic rescues ghetto youth from emotional short circuit.” The article featured the work of psychiatrists Mamie and Kenneth Clark, whose “doll test” research investigated issues of segregation and self-esteem in black children. African American children in segregated schools were shown a black doll and a white doll and then asked to choose one. The majority picked the white doll, indicating that segregation impacted the children’s feelings of self-worth. Their research, while not wholly scientific, was used in school desegregation lawsuits including Brown v. Board of Education (1954)."

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This picture was used to show the institutionalized racism and confusion amongst the child's face. This was an experiment conducted among black children called the "Doll Test" to show which baby they would chose which would show how he/she would view themselves. Also this understanding of wether or not this brainwashing of others being superior started to begin. This study was used to see what African American children thought of themselves in terms of validating his/her self worth, segregation, self esteem in the segregated schools.

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Segregation in the South, 1956 - Photography Archive - The Gordon Parks FoundationWillie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956

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“a group as distinguished for their hatred of Blacks as the Ku Klux Klan” (To Smile in Autumn, 1979), they quickly left via back roads. After reconvening with Freddie, who admitted his “error,” Parks began to make progress. He soon identiﬁed one of the major subjects of the photo essay: Willie Causey, a husband and the father of ﬁve who pieced together a meager livelihood cutting wood and sharecropping. For a Black family in Alabama, the Causeys,  Allie Causey’s parents, and Parks was able to assemble 18 members of the family, representing four generations, for a photograph in front of their homestead.

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Red Jackson is pictured here as he ponders his next move having been “trapped in an abandoned building by a rival gang”. Parks spent 4 weeks following the 17-year-old leader around Harlem and the series highlights the violence and hardship these teenagers were exposed to.

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In 1967, Life sent three correspondents into the ﬁeld to document the living conditions that Black families endured in America’s ghettos. While his white colleagues Gerald Moore and Jack Newﬁeld produced broad studies of Chicago’s West Side and the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Parks concentrated on a single family in Harlem, the Fontenelles.

With winter approaching, British West Indies immigrant Norman Fontenelle, Sr., and his wife, Bessie, were falling short in their efforts to scrape together enough to feed their nine children. Jobless and frustrated, Norman Sr. would drink and then beat Bessie. With no food to offer, Bessie could not prevent her youngest child, three-year-old Richard, from eating the plaster that fell from the walls of their tiny dirt-covered apartment. On Thanksgiving, Parks photographed the family huddled around an empty oven, trying to stave off the cold with their only source of heat. The image selected for the cover of the March 8, 1968 issue of Life is one of Parks’s most arresting: a wailing ﬁve year-old Ellen Fontenelle, with a tear fully formed at the bottom of one eye, just before it descends her cheek.

These photographs—and the experience of taking them—compelled Parks to write a remarkable introductory text for the article, a desperate plea for the nation to set aside bigotry for a more hopeful future:

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The “Paris Fashions” issue of Life, from April 25, 1949, for instance, demonstrates his multifaceted skills in pictures that elegantly combine the movement of the streets, the plasticity of the clothing, and the statuesque poise of the models. The January 23, 1950 issue featured a photograph by Parks on the cover, celebrating the trend of “man-tailored shirts” that was popular at that time (“Women go dudish with piqué trim,” read the brief article’s headline). In the August 21, 1950 issue, Parks documented the Spanish inﬂuence on American women’s fashion, in images that highlighted the bright, severe outlines of matador-and-torero-inspired ﬁtting, and cleverly paid homage to the framing and backgrounds of revered Spanish painters such as Goya and Velázquez by including cats and lapdogs.

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PITTSBURGH GREASE PLANT, 1944/46PITTSBURGH GREASE PLANT, 1944/46

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PITTSBURGH GREASE PLANT, 1944/46PITTSBURGH GREASE PLANT, 1944/46

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The PITTSBURGH GREASE PLANT, photo was inspired by being one of Parkers early assignments of taking photos. He really enjoyed the black and white photos, he liked getting the back story and behind the scenes of the grease being transported while also getting the african american workers facial expressions while doing this hard labor. This create the image of hard work and dedication they put into their jobs. The plant’s grimy interiors gave Parks the opportunity to render dramatic contrasts of light and dark in his pictures, visible on machines and barrels and on the faces of the workers who handled them.

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The story behind the photo is how segregation in the 1956 has impacted blacks as you can see in the photo the group of black kids are watching from the side lines of white kids are playing at the park with there family while the black kids cannot because its a white only park

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the story behind the photo:
In 1956, 26 color photographs belonging to Parks were published in LIFE under the title The Restraints: Open and Hidden, which exposed Americans to the effects of racial segregation. Parks focused his attention on the Thornton family (pictured above) from Alabama and he captured their everyday struggles to overcome discrimination.

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He chooses the picture where black men is working. He's showing the conditions they would be working in and also the type of jobs black men were offered during this time.

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Notable among his many fashion assignments were the pieces he did for Life between 1948 and 1951. The “Paris Fashions” issue of Life, from April 25, 1949, for instance, demonstrates his multifaceted skills in pictures that elegantly combine the movement of the streets, the plasticity of the clothing, and the statuesque poise of the models. The January 23, 1950 issue featured a photograph by Parks on the cover, celebrating the trend of “man-tailored shirts” that was popular at that time (“Women go dudish with piqué trim,” read the brief article’s headline). In the August 21, 1950 issue, Parks documented the Spanish inﬂuence on American women’s fashion, in images that highlighted the bright, severe outlines of matador-and-torero-inspired ﬁtting, and cleverly paid homage to the framing and backgrounds of revered Spanish painters such as Goya and Velázquez by including cats and lapdogs.

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Story behind photo: When Parks received a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation in 1941, the foundation’s president, Dr. Edwin Rogers Embree, was writing a book on exceptional African Americans. Embree gave Parks a list of 13 distinguished Black Americans to photograph. The individuals named on that list would be the subjects of Embree’s heralded book 13 Against the Odds, published in 1944. One of them was Richard Wright, whose novels and short stories about the plight of African Americans were central to discussions of race relations in the mid-twentieth century.

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Story behind photo: This images forms part of a series called, A Harlem Family, which Parks worked on for LIFE and focuses on the life of the Fontenelle family. Parks was asked by his editors to explain why the nation’s inner cities were falling apart and the photographer felt it was down to two things: racism and poverty. To bring these issues to life, Parks once again focused on the daily lives of an impoverished black family.

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Semaijah Gilbert - 2A-----Harvey Turner and William B. Wilson Weighing Lime, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1946

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Semaijah Gilbert - 2A-----Harvey Turner and William B. Wilson Weighing Lime, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1946

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One of the early assignments Parks undertook on behalf of Standard Oil was to photograph a grease workers’ plant in Pittsburgh. The plant’s grimy interiors gave Parks the opportunity to render dramatic contrasts of light and dark in his pictures, visible on machines and barrels and on the faces of the workers who handled them. Among the most notable images from the series are those of a Black worker in the cooper’s room, where a spectral steam rises around the barrels and drums he is reconditioning.

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Self Portrait, 1941 - Paisley Eclarino 2A

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Self Portrait, 1941 - Paisley Eclarino 2A

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Parks purchased his first camera in 1937 and committed himself to becoming a photographer. A consummate observer of the world, he found inspiration in magazines, museums, and books. He began experimenting with portraiture and some of his photographs were featured in newspapers. He would go on to achieve extraordinary success in his field. Parks was just 28 years old when he took this self-portrait. He carefully composed it to demonstrate his close connection with his vocation.

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Invisible Man, Outside Looking In (1956) - Gabrielle W: 2A

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Invisible Man, Outside Looking In (1956) - Gabrielle W: 2A

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This photo was inspired by The Invisible Man book by Ralph Ellison. The novel is about an African-American man whose color renders him invisible to the world. The photo evokes a sense of horror and loneliness, just as the novel describes it. The man in the photo is afraid of the outside world and does not want to leave the sacredness of his home. He is hiding in the ground, as that is a place where Whites feel like they don't belong so they won't venture there.

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The baby doll test was conducted to test how segregation impacted African-American children. As shown in the photo above, the black child chooses the white baby doll. This proves how black children's mindsets were molded into believing that being white is greater than being black. Gordon's shot of this moment is significant to history because it shows how great of an impact segregation had on the black community.

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Story behind the photo is from African American photographer Gordon Parks and his encounter one of the most important subjects of his career: Flávio da Silva. Parks featured the resourceful, ailing boy, who lived with his family in one of Rio’s working-class neighborhoods known as favelas, in his 1961 photo essay “Freedom’s Fearful Foe: Poverty.” Which resulted in donations from Life readers but also sparked controversy, particularly in Brazil, where the popular picture magazine O Cruzeiro issued a scathing condemnation of Life’s coverage.

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Story behind photo:The Fontenelle family
Families all over are falling apart because they aren't given the same jobs and opportunities as everyone else which causes families to fall apart and people dying because of illnesses and hunger.Parks uses people's situations as well as black and white to bring out the heartbreak and sorrow they were feelings trying to find a home to keep their family safe.This was a family of 11 who soon died because of the father being abusive and didn't care for his family.

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Two Pilots, Selfridge Field, Michigan, 1943 Ms. Becker-2A

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Two Pilots, Selfridge Field, Michigan, 1943 Ms. Becker-2A

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Story behind photo:Parks was the ﬁrst Black correspondent to work for the Ofﬁce of War Information, and one of his initial assignments was to photograph African American pioneers of another kind: the Tuskegee Airmen. Unfortunately, when southern senators learned of Parks’ involvement with the 332nd Fighter Group, they were hostile to his assignment (as they were to the very existence of the Tuskegee Airmen. Parks was repeatedly told that his papers to travel to Europe were “not in order,” and in the end, he was not permitted to accompany the Tuskegee Airmen overseas. Still his photos reveal Parks’s heartfelt admiration for the men, their mission, and their accomplishments.