Gordon Parks, Ella Watson, a Boy, a Bugle, and the American Flag

Pictures are complicated.  So is being black in America.  Throughout his life,  Gordon Parks wrestled with both of these enduring truths.

At first glance, Gordon Parks' most famous photo -- his portrait of Ella Watson -- looks pretty simple. 

 

Gordon Parks/Farm Security Administration:  Government Charwoman (Ella Watson).  Washington, D.C., August 1942.

It's usually read bitter indictment of American racial hypocrisy.  A protest against the reality that although this nation claims that it was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," as our greatest president once put it, it was, in fact, established on the foundation of slavery and rose to power and strength while practicing racial discrimination and the vilest forms of racial terrorism.

There's plenty of anger in that portrait.  But there are other emotions in it as well.  A profound sense of betrayal might be the most important.  Understood, as it has to be, in the context of Parks' life, it is an anguished lament over the failure of America to honor its promissory note to its black citizens.  Parks also felt a personal sense of betrayal, in part because his mother, Sarah, spent her working life cleaning up after white people, despite her widely acknowledged intelligence and high moral character.  There were few other jobs for black women in Fort Scott, Kansas.  I'm sure that he saw Sarah's reflection when he came across Watson scrubbing the floors of a federal government office building.

Parks' sense of having been betrayed by his country also grew out of a series of racial humiliations that he endured during his first few weeks in Washington, D.C., in the late spring of 1942.  He had grown up the hard way and had suffered more than his share of discrimination and abuse.  But he had come to Washington bursting with energy and enthusiasm.  Having received a prestigious Rosenwald Fund fellowship to join the famed Farm Security Administration documentary project (he was the first and only African American on the staff), he thought his future in the capital of our democracy was a bright as the sun.  Washington's racism and segregation greeted him like a sharp slap in the face.

Anger, betrayal, lamentation...  All of these are in the portrait.  But we can't stop until we see the photograph as an exhortation America to practice what it has been preaching since July 1776 -- to act according to its creed that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

So pictures are complicated.

At first glance, one of Gordon Parks' least known photographs is a simple celebration of patriotism and boyhood innocence. 

 

Gordon Parks/Office of War Information:  Mess call.  Interracial activities at Camp Nathan Hale, where children are aided by the Methodist Camp Service.  Southfields, New York, August 1943.

And it is, in part.  Like so many black Americans, over so many generations, he believed in the American creed and hoped against hope that someday the nation would make good on its promise of "liberty and justice for all."  Parks' patriotism was real, and it animates this photo.  But, as you know by now, there's more to it than that.

The photo is also a celebration of racial integration in what was still a rigidly segregated America.  Parks made it at Camp Nathan Hale, which was run by the Methodist Church and was designed to build friendship and understanding between black and white children.  For all of his adult life, he envisioned, and fought for, a racially integrated America.  Not surprisingly, many of the photos that Parks made at the camp emphasize the friendships that black and white boys had made with each other.

 

 

Gordon Parks/Office of War Information:  First aid.  Interracial activities at Camp Nathan Hale, where children are aided by the Methodist Camp Service.  Southfields, New York, August 1943. 

 

Gordon Parks/Office of War Information:  A scene at the swimming dock.  Interracial activities at Camp Nathan Hale, where children are aided by the Methodist Camp Service.  Southfields, New York, August 1943. 

The fact that Parks made the photo of the boy and his bugle in the midst of World War II underscores the patriotism that's part of its message.  But it can equally serve as a reminder of the Double V campaign -- black America's struggle to ensure that the war would end in the defeat of tyranny both at home and abroad.  Seen this way, the boy in the photo sounds a call to arms -- against racism as much as against fascism.  Racism has, of course, proven to be a much more formidable foe than the Nazis and the Japanese.

Many years later, when Parks was in his sixties and nation was turning 200, Newsweek magazine asked him and other prominent citizens to answer the question, "What is an American?"  Parks acknowledged the country's "inexhaustible potential."  Yet he also wrote that

To be an American is one thing.  To be an African American, which happens to be my lot, is another.  I face each day, never forgetting the torture my forebears suffered here, nor those countless other blacks still waiting for deliverance.  Such memories, such things, prevent my being an ardent flag-waver for the Stars and Stripes.  ...The years past have left me... a human being whose foremost loyalty is to all mankind.

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Comments

[Daniel Steinhauer]

When we regard anyone as the best or the greatest we often bite off more than we can chew. In the case of Gordon Parks, I can never feel that I have overstated his importance to photography and to America in having stated that. I knew from a young age that photography was going to my life's passion. Gordon Parks ignited that flame in me. Life magazine came into our home each week and in the 60's that brought Gordon Parks' view of the world as well. In the 25th anniversary issue of the magazine the Harlem gang leader story was reprinted. I remember lying in the floor staring for hours at Red Jackson and his family and that haunting photo of him staring out the broken window. Gordon Parks helped me understand the other America, that as a white Southern child I was so often confused about race and my own place in a very confusing time. With Vietnam Nam raging, riots, our icons being murdered it was very scary. I was blessed with parents of strong moral compass and the ability to impart lasting wisdom. Gordon Parks how you inspired me, you were perhaps the first Nike photographer because you "Just did it". When I started to print in the darkroom I wanted that full tonal look that your photos possessed. Most importantly, I wanted to tell a story. I think that what Gordon Parks taught me, to be a good storyteller. Not enough to infer your idea, tell it! I enjoy your website, kudos to the importance of the picture not so much to the gear that we use. No one covets equipment more than myself but the image, that lasting split second of our vision that will forever be stopped....it's all that matters.