In the fight for Black liberation, African-American photographer, filmmaker, author and composer Gordon Parks (1912-2006) transformed storytelling into activism. “Finally, after a long search to find weapons to fight off the oppression of my adolescence, I found two powerful ones, the camera and the pen,” Parks wrote in 1997’s Half Past Autumn: A Retrospective. He avowed, “Racism is still around, but I am not about to let it destroy me.”
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This was a lesson in survival gleaned in his youth. Born on Fort Scott, Kans., Parks weathered a childhood marked by abject poverty during one of the most violent eras of homegrown terrorism: Between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,440 lynchings occurred in the United States. At 11, Parks nearly met the same fate when three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River knowing he could not swim.
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Parks rarely shared his harrowing history with those closest to him; instead he channeled his experiences into his art—including work that examined the role of the criminal-justice system in Black American life.
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