Stokely Carmichael and Black Power

Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was a photographer, filmmaker, musician and author whose 50-year career focused on American culture, social justice, race relations, the civil rights movement and the Black American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942, which led to a position with the Farm Security Administration. By the mid-1940s he was working as a freelance photographer for publications such as Vogue, Glamour and Ebony. Parks was hired in 1948 as a staff photographer for Life magazine, where for more than two decades he created groundbreaking work. In 1969 he became the first Black American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his semi-autobiographical novel, and his next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a film genre. Parks continued photographing, publishing and composing until his death in 2006.

Gordon Parks' 1967 Life magazine essay "Whip of Black Power" is a nuanced profile of the young and controversial civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael gained national attention and inspired media backlash when he issued the call for Black Power in Greenwood, Mississippi, in June 1966. Parks, on contract with Life, shadowed him from the fall of 1966 to the spring of 1967, as Carmichael gave speeches, headed meetings and promoted the growing Black Power movement. Parks' photos and writing addressed Carmichael's intelligence and humor in equal measure, presenting the whole man behind the headline-making speeches. In his finely draw n sketch of a leader and a movement, Parks reveals his own advocacy of Black Power and its message of self-determination and love.Stokely Carmichael and Black Power delves into Parks' groundbreaking presentation of Carmichael, and provides a detailed analysis of his images and accompanying text about the charismatic leader. Essays by Lisa Volpe and Cedric Johnson shed critical new light on the subject: Volpe explores Parks' complex understanding of the movement and its leader, and Johnson frames Black Power within the heightened social and political moment of the late 1960s. Carmichael's own voice is represented through a reproduction of his important essay "What We Want" from September 1966.Co-published by The Gordon Parks Foundation and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston