black children with white doll, Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks’s dramatic photographs document African Americans’ disillusionment with the American Dream throughout the 20th century. Black children with white doll starkly contrasts the disparities and privileges that define a racial divide. Red Jackson, Harlem Gang Leader suggests a dream shattered by economic inequalities and limited opportunities. Both images point to the unstable foundation upon which our nation lies. —Grant Heiman

Exhibition Label: “Embodiment,” Nov-2005, Kate Meyer Author, director, poet, composer, painter, and photographer Gordon Parks frequently turned to his camera in order to document injustice and racial inequality in the United States. This photograph forces the viewer to consider the role of race and minority status in African American early childhood development. Archive Label: Gordon Parks has enjoyed a long and successful career as an artist, working in poetry, fiction, autobiography, film, and ballet as well as in the medium for which he is best known, photography. During the 1940s he made photographs for the Farm Security Administration and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, projects that documented American life during that time. He joined the staff of Life magazine in 1949 as its first African-American photographer, working in France, the United States, and Brazil. He retired from Life in the early 1970s and now makes film, writes, paints, and composes music, in addition to his photography. Archive Label: This picture paralleled research being conducted at the time by the African-American psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, aimed at understanding the development of racial identification in young children. When asked to choose the better doll, young African-Americans overwhelmingly picked the white one, saying that it would be happier in life. NAACP lawyers presented this research as evidence of the adverse effects of school segregation in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled public school segregation unconstitutional.