My grandfather was the managing editor at Life magazine and worked closely with Gordon Parks. They co-founded the Gordon Parks Foundation and passed away just two weeks apart in 2006.

However, Parks was unable to track down many of those classmates, and the essay turned into capturing life in Ft. Scott. That essay, titled “Back to Ft. Scott”, would go unpublished until 2015.

He captured photos of Flavio and his family while on assignment by Life magazine to shoot a story on poverty in Latin America. Parks was the popular magazine’s first Black staff photographer ...

While Gordon Parks had an extraordinarily creative career that included composing music, writing poetry and making films, it’s his powerful photographs that remain a major draw for audiences ...