Gordon Parks was born November 30th
1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas. The school he went to was segregated
because the town was so small that they couldn't afford to be
non-segregated when he was a teen and while there Black were not
allowed to play sports of go to any extracurricular activities. Parks
says that once a teacher told him that going to college would be a
waste of money. Sounds legit.
When he was 14 his mother passed away
and he moved in with other family members who quickly put him out on
the streets. His first job was as a piano player in a brothel. I
swear, those places must have been so much more prevalent back in the
day. At the age of 25 he became inspired to start a career in
photography. In 1940 he was encouraged to move to Chicago and he
started a portrait business specializing in photos of rich women. In
the 1950's he started working as a consultant on film production.
Later on he directed his own documentaries about life as a Black in
the ghetto. As well as being a photographer and a writer, he ended up
directing his own book The Learning Tree in 1969 making him
Hollywood's first Black director. Yeah. It took that long for that to
happen. He also composed the music for the movie. His most well known
film is Shaft. He's a bad mutha...
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