Gordon Parks: Documenting the Civil Rights Movement - Santa Fe Trail Center Presentation

Jill Warford, Executive Director of the Gordon Parks Museum will talk about LIFE Magazine’s first black photojournalist, Gordon Parks who documented the Civil Rights Movement and the unseen, and sometimes deeply private moments that unfolded behind the scenes. Park’s was allowed access to Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech as it echoed from the entrance of the Lincoln Memorial; he met Muhammad Ali after he evaded the draft: and he was permitted singular access tot he Nation of Islam. He was friends with Malcolm X and with Ralph Ellison, who published Invisible Man two years before the official start of the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King had “non-violence,” Malcolm X his “any means necessary.” Ali had his fists, and Ellison his pen. Gordon Parks had his Camera which was his powerful “Choice of weapons.”

This program is free and open to the public.