Never-before-seen Gordon Parks photos at MFAH tell story behind Black Power
The year inside of Millennium Galleries at Museum of
Fine Arts, Houston is currently 1966. With “Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power” on view Oct. 16 through Jan. 12, MFAH curator of photography Lisa Volpe has constructed a time machine.
She describes the exhibition as an unabridged version of an essay Parks wrote and photographed for Life magazine. “Whip of Black Power” first appeared in print on May 19, 1967. The nuanced profile on activist Carmichael was Parks’ attempt to humanize the young civil rights leader, vilified overnight for introducing the term “Black Power” during the volatile summer of 1966.
“Stokely was 25 with a world of responsibility,” Volpe says.
As the newly elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael issued a fateful call to action on June 16, 1966 during a speech in Greenwood, Miss. “The only way we can change Mississippi is with the ballot,” he told the crowd. “That’s Black power.”
By the following morning, and for many years to come, Carmichael was cast as the face of racial division in the media. His message distorted, he was targeted by the FBI and unfairly blamed for subsequent violence and uprising.
On assignment, Parks set out to portray him in a different light. He shadowed the activist from autumn 1966 through the spring of 1967. Then the men went their separate ways.
“Gordon was no longer a full-time photographer for Life, but editors called from time to time asking if he’d take projects for contract,” Volpe says. “Gordon would later say this was one of the stories he wanted to do in the worst way.”
His first draft was rejected. For reasons Volpe doesn’t understand, Parks’ narrow focus on the anti-Vietnam War demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters — with Carmichael speaking alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte and Dr. Benjamin Spock — was never published. She included outtakes and a reenactment of the rally at the conclusion of “Gordon Parks.”
Of the 700 photographs Parks filed, five black-andwhite images of Carmichael ran on the pages of Life magazine. Volpe’s tightly edited selection of 50 never-been-seen shots doesn’t exactly rewrite history, though the photos do offer an alternative ending to a controversial story.
“As soon as Stokely said ‘Black power,’ mainstream press began to attack him,” Volpe says. “Parks wanted to give him a full character, not a caricature.”
Detective work
Volpe and Malcolm Daniel, the museum’s Gus and Lyndall Wortham curator of photography, spent five years searching for the right opportunity to showcase Parks. They knew the Gordon Parks Foundation, based in Pleasantville, N.Y., had partnered with various institutions on deep dives into photographer’s renowned career. A number of options were presented.
“There was a possibility of looking at his early work,” Volpe explains. She and Daniel considered Parks’ arrival to Washington, D.C., in 1942 after he accepted a fellowship at the Farm Security Administration. “That was a young Parks still trying to find his voice in a white-dominated field. The essay is him at his best.”
Spread across two glass display cases at the exhibitions’ entrance, Life magazine’s
“Whip of Black” is an ideal starting point. There, Volpe encourages visitors to take note of which photographs wound up on the pages — the story’s headlines, captions and pull quotes are worth deliberating, too.
Daniel likens her in-depth research to detective work. She tracked down 10 people who appear in the exhibition with Carmichael or knew Parks, including Houstonian and fellow Life photographer Bob Gomel.
“Gordon told him, ‘If you don’t want to see it published, don’t shoot it,’ ” Volpe says. She and Gomel agree his insight may have carried a double meaning; when Parks wanted to emphasize subjects or an ideology in a certain way, he photographed it repeatedly.
On the far-left wall of Millennium Galleries, Parks introduces viewers to Lowndes County, Ala., and the origin story behind Carmichael’s controversy. In 1965, the area’s population was 80 percent Black with not one African American resident on record as a registered voter. Convinced the county was key to revolutionizing the state, Carmichael created the Lowndes County Freedom Organization with a mission to grow the Black voter base.
In “Untitled, Lowndes County, Alabama (Carmichael in Lowndes County)” and “Untitled, Lowndes County, Alabama (Carmichael continuing the campaign for voter registration in Lowndes County),” Parks depicts a post-college graduate traveling door to door to register voters. Carmichael wears a zippered jacket, slacks, boots and sweater with a black panther on it layered over an Oxford shirt. Lowndes County adopted the animal as mascot in contrast with white residents’ rooster; in 1966, the feline symbol was later co-opted by what became the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther movement.
One silver, gelatin print shows Carmichael leaning against a tree between campaign stops. In another he converses with a young woman in front of a house; given her bare, stocking feet, Volpe muses she’s just arrived home from work.
There’s an entire contact sheet of Carmichael walking down a dirt road through Lowndes County at daybreak, composed in a similar fashion to a photo essay Life published in 1948 titled “Country Doctor” by W. Eugene Smith. The picture shows Dr. Ernest Ceriani crossing a field at dawn to reach a sick patient. Parks’ shot with Carmichael suggests both men personify the local, selfless hero.
Most everyone Volpe spoke with for exhibition remarked on Carmichael’s optimism and joyfulness.
“He was always joking, smiling and finding joy in the face of this tremendous responsibility,” said SNCC secretary Cleveland Sellers, who appears mid-laugh with Carmichael during portrait session in a pool hall.
Code switching
“Gordon Parks” captures his subject in all mood and situations. The photographer shot three rolls of film at Carmichael’s sister’s wedding.
Via wall text, Volpe explains the “variety, amount and quality of the images would have encouraged the editors to add one of the photos to the final printed essay. Parks knew that showing Carmichael as part of this conservative tradition would contradict the popular impression of him as an anarchist and outsider.”
The strategy worked. “Unti tled, New York City, New York (May Charles Carmichael serving her children Lynette and Stokely at Lynette’s wedding dinner in the Bronx)” appeared in the magazine story to illustrate Carmichael as a brother and son. It’s a divergence from the other images, which paint him as a “bodyguard of young cats” and “a bag of equalizers” on a “lonely road.”
Volpe doubts Parks nor Carmichael had any input on Life captions or pull quotes. By then, SNCC had hired its own photographer, rented a portrait studio and distributed pamphlets to steer a more positive narrative.
“Stokely was able to code switch,” she says. “He adapted presentations and his manner of speaking and clothing depending on the audience.”
In “Untitled, Los Angeles, California (Carmichael speaking at a private home),” Carmichael dresses formally to address a crowd rapt under chandeliers.
Parks wrote in “Whip of
Black Power”: “In the four months that I traveled with him I marveled at his ability to adjust to any environment. Dressed in overalls, he tramped the backlands of Lowndes County, Alabama, urging Negroes, in a Southern-honey drawl, to register and vote. The next week, wearing a tight dark suit and Italian boots…”
Houston connection
Houston stars in the series’ finale. Days after Parks’ photo essay hit newsstands, Carmichael delivered speeches at the University of Houston and Texas Southern University. Excerpts loop silently on two analog TV screens; a nearby iPad invites onlookers to investigate the social unrest at both schools at that time.
The best place to end “Gordon Parks” is at the beginning, with outtakes from Parks’ discarded first draft. A remaining wall illustrates Carmichael as he is remembered, sharing the New York City stage outside of the United Nations with other activists and civil rights leaders. A fiery figure, holding his own next to King, Belafonte and Spock.
Volpe’s exhibition revisits the cutting-room floor and pieces together the backstory history deemed unfit for print. Her twist ending is a parting shot of Carmichael commanding a crowd, with a single camera aimed at Parks — then, visitors exit 1966 and travel back to the future.