Gordon Parks' Never-Before-Seen Photos Of 1950s Segregation
Gordon Parks was only a teenager when he left his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas. The youngest of 15, Parks chose to make a living for himself after his mother passed away, and wound up becoming the first African American photographer for Life Magazine.
Only two years after his first Life assignment, Parks returned home for a photo essay on segregated education. Journeying to Fort Scott and other Midwestern cities nearby, Parks photographed his childhood classmates, capturing their faces, families and homes while recording details about their occupations and incomes. The photo essay, for reasons that remain unknown, was never published, and most of the images went unseen.
And then Karen Haas, curator at MFA Boston, stumbled upon an image of Parks' that changed everything.
"The museum decided to do a rather major publication on our African American collections across all our departments," Haas explained in a phone conversation with The Huffington Post. "I was asked to write the entries on the African American photographers because it was a particular interest of mine. One of the photographs by Gordon Parks was sort of a mystery -- it's simply titled 'Outside the Liberty Theater' and depicts a young couple outside a segregated movie theater. I contacted the Gordon Parks foundation and together we sorted out the fact that this was a photograph taken in Fort Scott, Kansas and related to a larger story that's widely unknown because it was never published in Life Magazine. That's really where it all began."
"They've never been exhibited together before, many of them have never been shown at all. They're completely unknown; the foundation didn't know the picture, no one knew what it really was. It's not that surprising that for a magazine photographer. Without that anchor to a story there's no reason for them to see the light of day again. There was this trail, this little thread I was following to figure out the story from this picture.
Mrs. Jefferson, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950
Untitled, St. Louis, Missouri, 1950
Uncle James Parks, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950
Read More http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/gordon-parks_n_6489120.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/gordon-parks_n_6489120.html
I am sure there will be a lot more at the MFA exhibit in Boston.
I guess a lot has to do with your interpretation of segregation seen and harshly experienced through a black persons eyes. If you didn't live it can you truly understand it?
Here
The photos were for his personal piece about segregated education, which Parks decided to tell through the lens of his own experience as a poor child, the youngest of 15, in Fort Scott, Kansas.
The MFA’s curator of photography Karen Haas says Park often got assignments about social issues that his white counterparts did not.
“In the end, the story didn’t get told in the magazine,” she explains, “but what I’m very excited about is that we can show it here — and in many ways I think it really resonates with people today as much as it would have at the time.”
Haas says the series of black and white photos got bumped more than once, presumably because they were seen as potentially controversial.
The intimate portraits show tight-knit African American families throughout the South and Midwest that contrasted with the predominantly white, middle-class imagery that typically dominated Life’s pages.
http://artery.wbur.org/2015/01/17/gordon-parks-mfa
So go with it. UNREC away. Since you don't see it or feel it, then it does not exist. Got it.
UNREC a thread that shows pictures from 1950's segregation (it's not just something to be seen obviously up front all the time, only an idiot would think that way). Really mature, but totally predictable by certain posters. 
you the thread title:
"Gordon Parks' Never-Before-Seen Photos Of 1950s Segregation"
And here's one of the pictures: It has nothing to do with segregation.
It was segregated.
"The museum decided to do a rather major publication on our African American collections across all our departments," Haas explained in a phone conversation with The Huffington Post. "I was asked to write the entries on the African American photographers because it was a particular interest of mine. One of the photographs by Gordon Parks was sort of a mystery -- it's simply titled 'Outside the Liberty Theater' and depicts a young couple outside a segregated movie theater. I contacted the Gordon Parks foundation and together we sorted out the fact that this was a photograph taken in Fort Scott, Kansas and related to a larger story that's widely unknown because it was never published in Life Magazine. That's really where it all began."
What about segregation do you not understand? And!
Read the article. I can only post 4 paragraphs. Read it!
READ IT! STOP TRYING TO BE BLIND. IT HAPPENED.
The poignant images depict everyday life for African Americans in the 1950s -- playing pool, reading a book, watching a baseball game -- all under the regulations of segregation. Along with the images, Parks recorded details about his former classmates current lives, for example, that Norman Earl Collins was doing quite well, making $1.22 an hour at Union Electric of Missouri.
"What I love about the pictures is the way I feel as though when I look at the expressions on their faces I can see the pride each of these families felt standing in front of their houses," explained Haas. "Parks made an effort to pose his subjects in front of their houses with these strong nuclear families -- the way so many families in Life Magazine are posed to begin with. That white middle class family pose. To pose African American families in front of their homes, I think, would have been quite startling to the readership. I'm fascinated by the gaze. Each of them trusting their friend, not only this fellow African American, but someone who'd grown up in Kansas with them. What they'd experienced together, the poverty, the childhood struggles. And now he's the famous New York photojournalist, he's a success story. And each of them is trusting him, telling him their stories."
from the very beginning. 
segregation exhibit.
Peeling away another layer of the onion.
Peeyew
Well done. 
What a Lucky find from Karen Haas, curator at MFA Boston, .. I'll bring this one over from your link..
Untitled, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950
The "youngest of 15".. wow! What a life he lived!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks
Here is Gordon Parks.
Photography career
At the age of twenty-five, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop.[11] The photography clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was owned by Frank Murphy. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, the elegant wife of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago in 1940,[12] where he began a portrait business and specialized in photographs of society women.
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 Farm Security Administration (FSA).
Working as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best-known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,[13] named after the iconic Grant Wood painting, American Gothic. The 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.[14] He urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, 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 so has affected far more people than his subsequent pictures of Mrs. Watson.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks
Thank you Cha.
"At the age of twenty-five, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $12.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop. The photography clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a women's clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was owned by Frank Murphy..."
I'm all Verklempt 
Mahalo to you, she
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And, these additional photos are Magnificent~
I have to find a way to see it. Sadly it makes for an expensive day. Hmmm maybe I can get my sister to give me an early Bday present.
Thanks Cha, the pictures are breathtaking in there depth.
PS glad your computer is up and working again.
be out of the question!
Mahalo again she for Gordon Parks' amazing life and pictures.
You are making it hard for me to chose. Idiot or troll to miss the point.
more
Thank you Rex. tears.
You cannot even tell me what segregation means! 
Seriously, keep being totally clueless it is cute.
this is all very tedious and nasty and I'm done.
don't worry, i'll leave any comment on segregation and civil rights to all of you; people who weren't there, didn't experience it, and are white. the real experts and judges of we lesser mortals.
here's a photo of a concentration camp for you:
don't see the camp? well, it's Germany in the 40s; the camp is there.
I want to see this exhibition at the MFA in Boston. If I can figure out how to afford it I will go.
Thank you Major. Damn it would be awesome to see.
The man was a true master photographer. 
