Karen E. Haas Knihy

In the spring of 1950, Gordon Parks returned to his hometown in southeastern Kansas to create a series of photographs for Life magazine, focusing on the issue of segregated schools and their effects on black children before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Fort Scott, the town he had left over twenty years prior, served as a backdrop for revisiting his early memories, many of which involved racial discrimination. Parks sought to reconnect with his junior high school graduation class, discovering that only one member remained in Fort Scott while the others had migrated to cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbus, and Chicago in search of better opportunities. Traveling to these urban centers, Parks photographed his friends and their families in various settings—on porches, in parlors, and at work—while interviewing them about their decisions to leave the segregated environment of their youth for the North. Although his photo essay and cover were set to appear in Life in spring 1951, they were ultimately sidelined due to the political climate, specifically Truman’s firing of General MacArthur, and the work was never published.

Considered one of the most significant painters of the period between the two world wars and founder of the precisionist school, Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) was also one of the pivotal photgraphers of the modernist movement in America. His direct style can be likened to that of his contemporaries Paul Strand, Edward Weston and Edward Steichen and he is probably best known for documenting the transformation of the American urban landscape (in both his photos and paintings), and for an early series of photos that pay homage to his 19th-century farmhouse in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.