Gordon Parks's Church Diaries

In honor of Black History Month, a new coffee-table book collects never-before-seen images taken by the American photojournalist and civil-rights advocate during a 1953 assignment in Chicago for Life magazine

By Carolina de Armas

Born in 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of a farmer, Gordon Parks said it was the “rural influence” of his upbringing that taught him how to “get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.” The youngest of 15 children, Parks was educated at a segregated elementary school. His youth was full of hardship, discrimination, and a devastating loss: his mother died when he was 14. But those experiences didn’t deter him. They drove him to document what it was to be Black in America.

At 15, after being kicked out of his READ ON