It runs from October 16-January 16 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.īut what can a photo of Stokely Carmichael convey to a museumgoer that a film or essay can’t? Those five photos, along with 50 additional ones from the more than 700 which Parks shot, and ephemera from both men and the Black Power movement, are the basis of the exhibit Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power. It featured an essay by Parks with five photographs showing Carmichael in a variety of settings in the south and New York City. The resulting Life profile of Carmichael, called “The Whip of Black Power,” was published in May 1967. The two men would be put together to chronicle a speaking trip that ran through the spring of 1967. His assignment-whether it was actually voiced or not-was to illuminate through his work Black issues and interests to a largely White readership. His lens had already captured both Malcom X and Muhammad Ali. And the only Black man taking pictures for the then-dominating national periodical Life magazine, where he often chronicled the Black experience. The latter was a phrase he didn’t invent, but popularized in speeches filled with strength and urgency.Ī generation removed from Carmichael, Gordon Parks was a 53-year-old essayist and photographer. Recently elected as the Chair for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he set out on a travel campaign to spread the message of social justice of Black Power.
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