Gordon Parks is a photographer, journalist, and film director who has written books that in their way celebrate the black family, black strength, and the determination of blacks to survive. Also a composer and poet, he is a versatile man who has tried and succeeded at many kinds of artistic endeavors because, as he said upon receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1972, he was "a Black boy who wanted to be somebody." That most of his published work is either autobiographical or intensely personal in mood and intent attests to the fact that he strove to be a success and by any standards achieved it.

He was the youngest of fifteen children, born 30 November 1912 on a farm in Fort Scott, Kansas, to Sarah Ross Parks and Andrew Jackson Parks. After his mother's death when he was sixteen, Parks was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with a...