Gordon Parks (1912–2006)—the groundbreaking
photographer, writer, composer, activist, and filmmaker was only sixteen in 1928 when he moved from
Kansas to St. Paul, Minnesota, after his mother’s death. There, homeless and
hungry, he began his fight to survive, to educate himself, and to fulfill his
potential dream. This compelling autobiography, first published in 1966, now
back in print by popular demand and with a new foreword by Wing Young Huie,
tells how Parks managed to escape the poverty and bigotry around him and to
launch his distinguished career by choosing the weapons given him by “a mother
who placed love, dignity, and hard work over hatred.” Parks, the first African
American to work at Life magazine and the first to write,
direct, and score a Hollywood film, told an interviewer in 1999, “I saw that
the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts
of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” -Excerpt courtesy of goodreads.com.