Gordon Parks and the Imperative to Resist

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation, Bryan Stevenson curated a solo exhibition by the incomparable photographer Gordon Parks. Presented by Alison Jacques in partnership with the Foundation, Gordon Parks: We Shall Not Be Moved demonstrates the power of art to advance social justice.

Mr. Stevenson selected photographs that span 25 years of Gordon Parks's work (1942-1967). "The scope of the images from Parks represents the struggle, resilience, and constant striving of Black Americans," he said.

Mr. Stevenson's curation of the exhibition focuses on Mr. Parks's deep commitment to social justice. "As an African American survivor of racial injustice," Mr. Stevenson said, "Parks was keenly aware of race and class in America, and this palpably informed his work."

The exhibition includes some of Mr. Parks's most well known works, including American Gothic, Washington, D.C. (1942) and photographs of the 1963 March on Washington, including his portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. making his "I Have a Dream" speech.

The show includes iconic works Outside Looking In, Department Store, and Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, from Mr. Parks's Segregation Story series, commissioned by Life Magazine and published under the title "The Restraints: Open and Hidden" in 1956.

Mr. Parks often wrote his own articles, "allowing him to inject his personal perspective and challenge stereotypes," the Foundation explained. "His Segregation Story series humanised the effects of Jim Crow segregation by following the daily lives of Black families in Alabama, creating narratives that consistently expressed the dignity and complex humanity of his subjects, starkly contrasting with mainstream representations."

In "a moment when there is an intense and active effort of erasure, retreat from civil rights and silencing of Black voices and history in the United States," Mr. Stevenson said, Gordon Parks's images "provide insight and relevance to our current discourse. His work absolutely suggests resistance to bigotry and oppression."

In his essay for the exhibition, Mr. Stevenson provides historical context and explains why the courageous, innovative, and challenging work of Gordon Parks compels us to resist contemporary efforts to erase and distort American history.

We Shall Not be Moved

Over the course of 246 years, ten million Black people were enslaved in what would become the United States. Following the Civil War in 1865, four million enslaved people were emancipated and made the remarkable decision to commit to creating a more just America. The formerly enslaved could have chosen retribution and revenge against their enslavers, tormentors, and abusers, but instead, they chose citizenship; they chose to build America. Black Americans created churches, schools, and families and embraced freedom in the United States with extraordinary fortitude. This extraordinary commitment of freed Black people to America, however, was not honored or supported by the powerful. Just over a decade following the war, protections for African Americans were withdrawn. Former enslavers, white supremacists, and those who believed in racial hierarchy took power while Congress and the Supreme Court abandoned constitutional commitments to equal protection and voting rights for emancipated Black people.

Gordon Parks was born in the early 20th century, when most African Americans were marginalized, excluded, and humiliated by racial segregation laws, terrorized by mob violence and lynching, and denied the essential right to vote. Parks witnessed and endured the stress and degradation of racial hierarchy in the United States, but he also understood the strength, resilience, artistry, resolve, and beauty that animated Black life.

Amid the struggle, Parks picked up a camera as his "weapon of choice." He documented the story of America, focusing on the lives of Black people. He illuminated the pain and humiliation of segregation, the despair of poverty, the violence of abusive law enforcement officers, and the appalling hypocrisy of an America globally on the rise-preaching democracy and equality abroad while mired in racial bigotry at home.

Parks was energized and excited by resistance to oppression and creativity within the Black community. The civil rights movement, the emergence of "Black power," the triumph of Black athletes, musicians, and even gang leaders were all counter-narratives to racial discrimination that Parks brilliantly brought to life. His art helped challenge the legitimacy of racial caste and enabled a new generation of Black and white leaders to tear down the architecture of Jim Crow laws. Gordon Parks helped imagine a more hopeful future less burdened by racial bigotry and violence, an artistic narrative to help create in the words of the Black poet Langston Hughes, "America be America."

The art and photography of Gordon Parks is powerful because his work details the reality and history of America that is now being distorted and denied. Today, many in the United States are retreating from a full commitment to equality and justice for all. Powerful people are trying to rewrite history, minimizing the harms of slavery, lynching, segregation and racial bigotry. People of color are being demonized and castigated because of their race, ethnicity or national origin. And once again, many Black Americans are recognizing that their struggle is still unfinished. A reinforced presumption of dangerousness, guilt or incompetence is being assigned to many Americans based simply on their color. Black political power is being sabotaged through a multitude of schemes that the Supreme Court seems ready to legitimate.

As the gains of the civil rights movement are being taken away, as censorship and the whitewashing of history are on the rise and even artistic freedom is being attacked, it's easy to understand why many people might want to escape, retreat and once again become silent. To many, silence seems safer.

Gordon Parks is an artist who absolutely rejected silence or retreat. He knew too much about the persistence and strength of the human spirit to put down his camera, even in the face of cruel and abusive power. His art has renewed significance in 2026 because it is a retort to those who want to force Americans back to some earlier era of perceived greatness when racial and gender hierarchy reigned.

This exhibition is history, education and protest.

The art of Gordon Parks makes clear that we cannot turn back, we cannot remain silent and we cannot retreat from advancing true justice. The artistry of Gordon Parks makes clear what many of us are prepared to say, and we will say it. We shall not be moved.